Orca and Ripoff Flicks

I've acknowledged The Big Picture as one of my favourite web series before, and its best moments often come in October when "MovieBob" does an annual feature called "Schlocktober." For a full month Bob gives us episodes on "obscure and/or bizarre horror and monster movies," basically ensuring that Christmas comes an extra four times a year for horror/monster movie nerds. This year Bob has decided to feature Orca as one of his movie picks, and the results are fantastic. Give the episode a watch below (major spoilers for Orca):

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Schlocktober 2012: Orca

This video brings up a long-time curiosity of mine: movies that were green-lit strictly to feed off the popularity of blockbuster hits. One of my all time favourite films, Ridley Scott's 1979 masterpiece Alien, is perhaps the best example of this phenomenon. Dan O'Bannon's script was approved for production largely by virtue of the fact that Star Wars was an unprecedented hit in 1977, leading movie execs to say "People love space!" and fast track potential contenders for said space-fans' money. But the story of Alien is a serious diamond in the rough type scenario, as more often than not these "ripoff flicks" end up as poor shadows of the films that inspired them. Just watch Moonraker and you'll see what I mean.

As Bob indicates in the video, the release of Jaws had a similar effect to that of Star Wars, and Orca was one of many attempts to steal Steven Spielberg's crown as the king of underwater horror (to date none have succeeded, IMHO). Another illustrious contender was Joe Dante's Piranha, a parody of the many Jaws imitations. It is notable both for being "the best of the Jaws ripoffs" in Spielberg's own estimation (source: Wikipedia), and because James Cameron made his directorial debut with the sequel, Piranha II: The Spawning. Also the hilarious 2010 remake, Piranha 3D, featured a 3D underwater nude ballet sequence that might be most exploitative thing ever filmed.

The ripoff flicks phenomenon has intrigued me for years because when things go right (see: all of the aforementioned examples besides Moonraker) it's the perfect confluence of the financial and artistic motivations behind filmmaking. Granted, things tend to go wrong more often than not (see: Moonraker), but the best examples make all of the worst movies worth it (others might not agree with me). Hell, the superhero film genre is itself an example of this phenomenon, and I'd watch Catwoman a hundred times if that's what it took to get The Dark Knight. I might revisit this subject in more depth in a future post, but for now it's enough to say that ripoff flicks present a more nuanced picture of the business side of filmmaking.

How To Train Your Dragon 3D

I saw How To Train Your Dragon in 3D last night. I had been trying to make it out to the theatre for a few weeks now, and I had worried that I might miss its run and not get to see it in 3D. Thankfully the somewhat lackluster box-office performance of Kick Ass gave me a bit of extra time. A month into its release How To Train Your Dragon is sitting high with a 98% rating at Rotten Tomatoes, and so I was fairly confident that it would be worth the $15 3D ticket price. And for the most part it was.

The film is cute. It's by far the best animated feature that Dreamworks has ever produced and yet it still doesn't approach the level of quality of most Pixar releases. The script is sloppy at times and the voice acting could be better, but overall it's a very solid effort. I laughed, I felt a modicum of emotion during the "sad" parts, and I was pleased that I saw the movie. I doubt I'll be much interested in seeing it again though.

The biggest problem with How To Train Your Dragon is that its plot feels underdeveloped. It isn't so much that what happens seems odd as much as the progression from one event to the next doesn't flow adequately. There is often too little justification for the next occurrence, however logical, which forces the viewer to forgive the movie for not using its time effectively. Instead of showing the characters evolving, for example, How To Train Your Dragon spends more time focusing on spectacle. The story makes complete logical sense (relative to its fantasy) but everything that happens feels taken for granted. How To Train Your Dragon does very little to make you care about what's happening but assumes that you will because the archetypal characters are basically good and the dragons are cute. This results in a film that isn't bad but is a lot more superficial than I had been hoping for.

All that aside, the use of 3D in How To Train Your Dragon is absolutely incredible.

This film is one of the best examples of 3D visuals to-date. Not once does the effect call attention to itself, instead merely accentuating everything onscreen. As always it goes a long way in making the fantasy world come alive by giving it tangibility, but what's most impressive here is the visual fidelity. I conferred with my fellow viewers after the screening and we agreed: only once in the entire film is there an example of the "motion blur" effect that plagues so many 3D films. It's even more jarring than usual here and so it sticks out, highlighting the impressive quality of the 3D throughout. It's really just incredible.

Avatar may have had more spectacular visuals but they were generally a lot blurrier than those of How To Train Your Dragon.

I enjoyed How To Train Your Dragon. It's a fun adventure film that unfortunately doesn't have the emotional impact I was hoping for, but does have some of the most impressive 3D visuals I have ever seen. If you like animated films or dragons or have any desire to see it at all then I recommend you go now, while it's still in theatres in glorious 3D. After that it'll lose much of its appeal.

From Around the Web - 4/14/10

Some of the coolest art I've seen recently, as pictured above.

Joss Whedon? The Avengers? Please yes please!

3D Televisions: Unsafe for Children, Pregnant Women, Drunk People and the Elderly

The furry forest creatures equivalent of Gears of War. Amazing.

Library of Congress acquires entire Twitter archive. I suppose that means my writing is now published and in a library?

Michael Bay on 3D Upconversion

I've made it clear in the past that I'm not the biggest fan of Michael Bay. His testosterone-fueled approach to film making encapsulates all of the irritating stereotypes about Americans: the overt racial and sexual insensitivity, the sheer superficiality, and the obsession with the military, to name but a few. His films are gloriously tepid affairs purporting to be epics due to the size of their pyrotechnic budgets. He seems to be doing nothing but perfecting his financially-guaranteed production formula, and each of his films comes at a steep cost to the collective intelligence. Bay's movies are the cinematic equivalent of McDonalds, and so as far as I'm concerned the dude can go drown in one of his many swimming pools filled with money.


For the sake of full disclosure I should note here that I fucking adore The Rock, and am thus a giant hypocrite. Moving right along...


Because Avatar made more money than AIG lost in 2008, 3D is now the next big thing for movies. At least as far as the suits are concerned it's a good way to make a lot of money, and so there are going to be a lot more 3D films in the future. In particular studios are pushing for their blockbuster tentpole releases to come out in 3D, and that includes the next iteration in the cultural vortex that is the Transformers franchise. A year ago Bay stated his suspicions about 3D being a fad, and his hesitancy to adopt it. At the time it was a reasonable stance to take given the unproven nature of the medium. On this side of Avatar, however, there is a little bit more pressure for him to utilize the technology for his next act of intellectual terrorism. He acknowledged this pressure a few months ago when he started doing tests to give the technology a shot.


A little over a week ago Bay clarified his stance on 3D, and specifically addressed the difference between shooting in 3D and converting 2D film to 3D. The former was on display in Avatar, the latter can be seen in piece of shit like Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland or the remake of Clash of the Titans. I'm including Bay's quote in full below, as I read it over at /Film:


“I shoot complicated stuff, I put real elements into action scenes and honestly, I am not sold right now on the conversion process. … I am trying to be sold, and some companies are still working on the shots I gave them. Right now, it looks like fake 3D, with layers that are very apparent. You go to the screening room, you are hoping to be thrilled, and you’re thinking, huh, this kind of sucks. People can say whatever they want about my movies, but they are technically precise, and if this isn’t going to be excellent, I don’t want to do it. And it is my choice. … I’m used to having the A-team working on my films, and I’m going to hand it over to the D-team, have it shipped to India and hope for the best? This conversion process is always going to be inferior to shooting in real 3D. Studios might be willing to sacrifice the look and use the gimmick to make $3 more a ticket, but I’m not.  Avatar took four years. You can’t just shit out a 3D movie. I’m saying, the jury is still out.”


Wow. In a stunning turn of events, Bay seems to have a completely reasonable and awesome perspective on the whole debacle. His movies are, yes, technically precise, and if he thinks the 3D cameras are too bulky for his style of shooting then fair enough. As with IMAX technology, 3D necessitates certain sacrifices and considerations; it is different from traditional 2D film and thus requires a different style in order to make it work. If Bay doesn't want to deal with all that then he is well within his rights, and frankly no big loss. It is incredibly refreshing, however, to hear his open dismissal of the 3D upconversion process. I am in complete agreement with his evaluation of that practice as a money-grabbing gimmick. Nothing that has been produced using the conversion process has been notably good, and much of it has been abhorrently bad, in particular the recent Alice in Wonderland. That movie featured sequences that were near unwatchable due to the crappy use of 3D technology, such as the rabbit hole scene which looked more like an extended motion blur than anything else.

It's not often that someone like Michael Bay comes out and says something so honest and awesome about the film industry. I just wanted to acknowledge this moment for the sake of posterity, and to highlight the fact that 3D upconversion is a shitty fad that we hopefully wont have to suffer through for very long.

3D in the Tron Legacy Trailer

I just saw Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland in 3D, and it was negligible. Things happened onscreen, money was exchanged, and Tim Burton should be ashamed of himself. The most positive aspect of the experience was the trailer for Tron Legacy that played beforehand.



The embeded video above contains the footage I saw, but unfortunately I can't share the way it looked. Back in January I wrote about the use of 3D visuals in Avatar, and wondered what could have been had James Cameron chose to use the revolutionary visual technology as a true storytelling device; by matching Jake Sully's entrance into the avatar body with the introduction of 3D the audience could have shared Sully's newfound bodily experience through the style of the film. As with colour in The Wizard of Oz, 3D could have come to us suddenly and in such an arresting way as to capture the imagination of viewers for years to come. That didn't happen, but clearly 3D was a success that is here to stay regardless.

Now, with Tron Legacy, my fantasy of 3D being used as a tool instead of a gimmick has come true, albeit on a much smaller scale.

When you watch the trailer above you will see exactly what I saw in the theatre until about 1:18, when the white light shines into the camera and then the screen goes black. After that you will see the updated visual style of Tron Legacy, but you won't experience it like I did. That's because it isn't in 3D.

It may have only been a trailer, but I can't tell you how startling and pleasant the shift to 3D visuals was. Some may complain that it is jarring, but I felt that it brought the entire fantasy world to life in a whole new way. More so even than with Pandora in Avatar, which I merely saw in a movie that was shown in 3D. Here I felt the difference between my world and the fantastic one of the film, a feeling that is an integral aspect of the story itself, and the transition actually made the whole experience stronger.

I sincerely hope that this is a sign of what we will see when Tron Legacy is released, and of the level of technique that will be used in the approaching flood of 3D films. Avatar has come and gone, was what it was, and it has forever left its mark on cinema; this use of 3D gives me hope that the revolutionary visual technology may have a positive effect, and will be used well in better things to come. After sitting through Alice in Wonderland, I need that.

From Around The Web - 2/15/10

An interesting and informative explanation of How 3-D Works. [Link Broken]

Another piece on Dollhouse. I need more time to think about this show before I do my own write up on it.

Norwegians are hilarious. Also, Google Street View truly is a worldwide phenomenon that is distinctly of our time.

I'm going to pick up Heavy Rain on my way home, based on these reviews, and you can be sure I'll be writing about it soon...

I'm thinking about moving away from Blogger based on recent reports of their... inflexibility... If any of you have thoughts on the matter then please let me know.

Thoughts on Avatar Part 1: The Use and Potential of 3D

After fifteen years in development James Cameron's Avatar was finally released this past holiday season. Billed as a film that would change cinema forever, it was essentially marketed as the best movie ever made. It promised a completely new experience with its incredible motion capture and 3D visual technologies, and I for one was totally caught up in all the excitement. I trusted James Cameron to deliver something spectacular, and after seeing Coraline I trusted that 3D was the way of the future.

Remember when people were still wondering if Avatar would make back its budget? Now the talk is whether or not to account for inflation and 3D ticket prices when comparing its total gross to that of Titanic. There is no question as to the success of this movie, it has already become one of the most profitable movies of 2009, and potentially of all time. On top of that it actually seems to have somehow lived up to all the ridiculous hype it was built up to, and people are going wild for it. There has quite simply never been a phenomenon like Avatar in my lifetime.

So, with all that in mind, where do I begin to describe my personal thoughts on this historic film?

In installments.

3-D/Coraline Rant (More about 3D really)

James Cameron has said that he thinks the future of film, and visual media in general, is 3-D. He has repeatedly extolled the unrivaled degree of immersion and realism that can be achieved with three-dimensional film technologies, calling it a “form of pure creation where if you want to move a tree or a mountain or the sky or change the time of day, you have complete control over the elements.” When someone like James Cameron goes on record to say what he thinks about the future of cinema, I pay attention.