Avatar is the biggest box office behemoth of all time and I'm curious as to why that is the case. Are we going to have a generation of Avatar fans who are as dedicated as Star Wars fans? Will James Cameron's sequels live up to the ludicrous expectations that fans of the first film will have? I remember reading on the release of the film that people were getting depressed and even semi-suicidal that they could not live their lives on Pandora. So immersive was the world Cameron created and so luscious was his 3D cinematography that fanatical fans were taking the whole cinema as escapism thing a bit far and walking out of the darkened theatre back into their real lives and feeling miserable.
I'd like to think that some of these fans found the environmental warnings of the film also very concerning and decided that we needed to make a change right here and right now on Planet Earth and start looking after the rainforests better and getting back to nature a bit more. Perhaps as they left the cinema and saw their decaying, dirty, polluted cities, they did indeed feel depressed at what this planet was becoming. If that is the case, then good on Mr Cameron for making people think twice about the destruction of our planet.
In completely different news, Sam Mendes stepped away from Bond after his huge success with Skyfall. I think it's a real shame but I'm sure there are plenty of others who are thinking that Mendes should get back to making sensible films about suburbs and repressed emotions and stuff. Skyfall was a truly awesome Bond film. I'm not the biggest fan of the franchise but this one had loads of great character stuff as well as some breathtaking action. Sam Mendes and Roger Deakins made it both beautiful and thrilling and I would have loved to see them have another go. However whoever takes the reigns now has seriously big boots to fill and I don't envy them!
What do you think about Avatar's success? Does it really deserve to be the biggest film of all time or do kids just have more money to spend on going to the cinema these days or what?
And who do you think should direct the next Bond film?
Been a bit quiet on the blogging front and that's because for the last week I've been working on clarifying what my thesis is actually aiming to do. It's taken me eight drafts to get this right. I won't bore you with the details but for anyone who is interested. This is the nuts and bolts of what I've been researching for the last year and a half and what I will be working on for the next three and half years:
Identification, Self-Consciousness and
Proof in the ‘First-Person’ Contemporary Horror Film
My investigation will focus on the use
of the mock-documentary format in contemporary horror cinema, and more
specifically on those films such as The
Blair Witch Project (Myrick and Sanchez, 1999), Paranormal Activity (Peli, 2007) and Cloverfield (Reeves, 2008) that create the impression of a
character within the film being in control of the camera. It is my aim to
analyse the aesthetic, technological and perceptual elements of these films in
order to:
Ascertain all the key influences on the body of films
studied here as concerns production, reception and aesthetics
Establish who or what the audience is encouraged to
identify with when viewing the films and why this identification occurs
Establish the aesthetic, technological and psychological
means by which the audience is primed for the viewing experience of these
films
Ascertain how the level of self-consciousness (e.g. the
characters’ awareness that they are being filmed) impacts on the viewing
experience and thought processes of the viewer
Determine how video recording technology is used as a
method to gain proof and often fails in the task of collecting evidence of
the supernatural by the characters in the film
So that's it bascially. That's what I'm spending five years of my life and a shitload of money on. If anyone does have an interest in seriously academic analysis, I will try and do the occasional update on this but I can completely understand if you think this sounds desperately boring and pretentious. And if so, my humble apologies!
Meanwhile in completely unrelated news, have you seen the Skyfall teaser?
What do you reckon, best Bond ever? Well until Nolan grabs the reins (fingers crossed)!
Big news today! Bond 23 gets a title... wait for it... Skyfall! Wow! As usual this means nothing to me. It's just another random naming of a Bond adventure that will inevitably lead to another completely average theme song and a much more interesting trippy opening credit sequence featuring sillhouetted women posing suggestively with guns... or something. Slightly more promising than the underwhelming title is the news that Javier Bardem will be following his creepy turn in No Country for Old Men with a stab at a Bond villain. Oh and apparently Bond may have a beard in this one. Being directed by Sam Mendes could be reason to get very excited or it could be a reason to go; Bond? The director of American Beauty? WTF???
Forget Bond. The real big bit of news for today is the signing of Andy Serkis to the Rise of the Planet of the Apes sequel. Recently I suggested here that this might be the first prequel ever to not suck. After getting all excited by the trailer, I was not disappointed by the film and actually really hoped that there would be more to come in this franchise. The prequel spent so much time setting up a great character in Caesar (played perfectly using performance capture technology by Andy Serkis), that it only just got to the rising of the apes in the last few minutes of the film. The scope for the sequel is epic. I can't wait to see how these apes are going to bring an end to the rule of us pesky humans on this planet. It should be two hours of (guerilla/gorilla) warfare!
The signing of Serkis means the return of the prequel's anti-hero Caesar. This is a character easy to empathise with and root for, the CGI playing second fiddle to Serkis' motion-captured performance. Go read this excellent post on why Serkis should get an Oscar nomination for his work! It remains to be seen if James Franco will return, though despite being the hero and a great actor to watch, it was Caeser's story that needed to be continued as he leads the revolution.
Anyway, despite the ever increasing reliance on franchises, sequels, prequels and the ever-diminishing originality in Hollywood, this is a sequel to a prequel that will hopefully be a pleasure to see rise at the box office.
