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You know, I’ve seen a movie or two in Leicester Square and even the best of them would have been improved if they gave out huge fucking helmets.
“I just torrented Testosteronin. Wanna come over and watch it?”
“Fuck that. I’m paying to see it in huge-fucking-helmet-vision”
Which is, I guess, what Hollywood hopes will come of all this nonsense with 3D IMAX.
I saw Pixar’s UP the other night on a screen bigger than God, but you know what… when a film’s got that much heart it’s gonna play as well on a watch dial. The stuff you are required to see while the very latest technology skull-fucks you into submission (Dark Gnat, Avatard etc) tends to lack something.
Heart usually.
My favourite movie as a kid was without a doubt Raiders of the Lost Ark. I was almost 9 when I first saw this:
Looking back it was probably Indy (and The Empire Strikes Back) that instilled in me a life long love of movies. When I go see most new releases its like looking into that empty armchair in UP and I guess writing Slingers is a result of finding a note telling me to go have my own adventure. If you wanna stretch that to breaking point I guess meeting George Lucas was a little like Mr Fredricksen meeting Charles Muntz. Lots of backing away slowly.
Anyways…
I wasn’t reading the Observer at such a tender age, but believe I would have found this review insulting even then:
“Children may well enjoy its simple-mindedness, untroubled by the fact that it looks so shoddy and uninventive.”
In reply; fuck you.
Luckily for us both I was too busy with Judge Dredd and building ramps for my BMX to be aware of Pauline Kael back then:
“Kinesthetically, the film gets to you, but there’s no exhilaration, and no surge of feeling at the end. It seems to be edited for the maximum number of showings per day.”
Which brings us back to the crux of the problem. Kael believed (wrongly I’d argue) that the movie let a commercial head lead a wheezing heart (maybe she just got a premonition of Crystal Skull) whereas the little idiot that I was saw nothing but heart. All be it wrapped in a ‘kinesthetic’ and overtly exhilarating package. Now I’m an older and wiser idiot and it remains one of my favourite examples of film making.
But I think her summary fits perfectly to a lot of the stuff I’ve sat through over the last couple of decades. Which is a damn shame.
But we’ll have time to talk about all that.
Go find your beat up old fedora while I adjust my huge fucking helmet. I seem to be blogging again.
Raiders was one of my first as well (behind Watership Down, Superman, Star Wars and Empire). I think at the old Essoldo in Quinton, Birmingham.
I remember me and our kid had gone with our mom and dad to see something else (Flash Gordon?) but it had already started, so instead we settled for Raiders of the Lost Ark. Still one of my favourites.
Same can’t be said for my mom, who, like Indy, has a phobia of snakes. She spent most of the film hiding in the toilets. True story.
Love the new decor.
Good to have you back Mike.
The movie industry has always been about getting customers back from competing entertainment. Talkies, Colour, Widescreen, CinemaScope, Surround Sound – now we have all those at home, the latest wheeze is 3D. I wonder how long before you can *only* get the 3D experience at the cinema. The DVD will just be in boring old 2D.
But, like you say, it’s not the effects – it’s the movie. I really can’t think of a single effects shot in Star Wars that I’d have changed. Possibly because I only saw it on the small screen – which does tend to hide blemishes – but mostly because I love the story, the character and the action.
The play Twelfth Night is entirely simple-minded and uninventive. It’s a shameless crowd pleaser which has been trotted out every Christmas for the last 400 years. And it doesn’t need a special effect more complex than a pair of yellow tights.
Hey Jeff,
I saw The Fantastic Mr Fox the other night (really wishing I had a huge fucking helmet to isolate me from the idiots around me) and it began with a warning that night vision was being used at the cinema. Just have sniper’s nests and be done with it. I remember going to Unit 4 in Wigan where if you were late for a movie you just walked in and then stayed for the next showing to watch the part you missed. We’d go see Back to the Future or Big Trouble in Little China at the earliest screening possible and then just stay and watch ‘em four times. Before going back the next day.
Wasn’t all great. I remember being turned away from The Blues Brothers because it was an AA.
Doc – Cheers. Still mad busy, but I miss blogging. Trying to find a way to fold it all together again. Glad to hear you’re playing again by the way
Terence,
I remember watching Star Wars on a tiny black n white portable TV. I sat there for the duration with a crappy microphone plugged in to a crappy tape deck recording the audio onto cheap C-60s. I probably owe Lucas a couple of quid for copyright infringement right there. Spent the rest of that year listening to the audio in bed at night. Han Solo occasionally being drowned out by the sound of my parents cooking in the next room. Cutting edge it was not. Didn’t matter a damn.
As for the tights… cross gartered I believe. The BBC production with Richard Briers is still one of my faves. Must track a copy down…