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10 E X T R A Avatar: The IMAX Experience Daniel Collard Film Editor ***** When a film arrives surrounded by as much hype as James Cameron’s Avatar (and let’s face it, no film before it ever has), it is hard not to react with an air of cynicism. Having been in development for over a decade, with production costs in the rather astronomical $280 million region, and having been hailed as one of the most significant cinematic accomplishments in history, a significant part of me couldn’t help but feel like it might just be one big blue disappointment. So, 2 Golden Globes, 7 Academy Award nominations and a record-breaking several hundred million dollars profit later (having swept away the previous holder Titanic – Cameron’s last epic), it was finally time to see what all the fuss was about and experience Avatar through the medium for which is was made – 3D cinema. I was wrong. So very, very wrong. After 12 years in the making, Cameron has brought about a cinematic revolution, condensed into a mere two-and-three-quarter hours. The otherwise hefty running time seems so paltry because with Avatar you are not so much watching a film as experiencing a world, one that completely engrosses your imagination until your cruel jettison back into the real world upon the story’s conclusion. Sam Worthington heads a very engaging cast as crippled-marine-turnedgiant-blue-cat-man Jake Sully, very much the archetypal (yet no less likeable) ‘John Smith’ in what is for all intents and purposes a sci-fi retelling of Pocahontas, with Zoe Saldana as feline alternative to that stories eponymous heroine, the captivating, free-spirited Neytiri. Cameron-favourite Sigourney Weaver is the idealistic scientist trying to understand the Na’vi (the inhabitants of the alien jungle-world Pandora), Stephen Lang is the ruthless army colonel determined to destroy them, and Michelle Rodriguez does her ‘good girl with an attitude and a disdain for authority’ thang. Story- and character-wise, there is really nothing new here, something which had been lamented in several wordof-mouth reviews I had heard in the lead-up to seeing it. Yes, in that regard, the is relatively little originality. But is that in any way, shape or form a problem in this case? Absolutely not. The film’s originality lies in the experience it provides, and in that department it has original ideas in spades. It really is very hard to describe quite how Cameron manages to create such an entirely believable and engrossing world, even with the visual aid of all the movie stills and trailers cascading across the interweb. This is one of those rare cases (very annoyingly, for a film critic) where something must truly be seen to be believed. Whether it be the epic battles between the human warmachines and the forces of nature, the inspired and often nightmarish wildlife and the impossibly expansive and intricate junglescapes of Pandora, or the little things – tiny spinning lizards; plants that light up when touched; flecks of ash passing before your eyes – no amount of descriptive prose could ever do them justice. In utilising the highlydeveloped performance capture technology in his own mo-cap stage ‘The Volume’ and the digital effects wizardry of Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital studio, Cameron ensured that the epic concept that his mind concocted in the mid-90s finally made it to the big screen as it was meant to be; settling for secondbest, it would seem, is something Cameron simply does not do. The story is, as previously stated, predictable – after the first twenty minutes or so, you could The Founder | Thursday 11 March 2010 Film quite easily anticipate how the rest of the film would eventually pan out. Yet even this potential weakness is in fact a stroke of genius. By taking a well-known – and, more importantly, well-loved – story as his basis, Cameron was able to focus all his energies into retelling that story in a way no one would believe possible unless they saw it with there own eyes (through a pair of 3D-specs). And, though a fellow cinema patron had previously seen the film, they admitted that nothing compared to seeing it with the aid of the all-encompassing sound and screen of the IMAX theatre. See Avatar, preferably at the IMAX (screenings are still running until March 4th, but are selling out fast), but whatever you do, see it.
The Founder | Thursday 11 March 2010 E X T R A Cult Corner: The Room Natasha Baddeley Welcome, explorers of the Movie Cosmos, to Cult Corner. Here dwell the films built on ideas too big, too extravagant and too bizarre to fashion a place in mainstream movie history. Instead, they have become part of something deeper, threads woven into the rich tapestry of the cinematic underworld that is...CULT. To call The Room the worst film ever made would undermine the immense enjoyment that watching it incurs. The script is atrocious, the acting is wooden, every aspect of it should have led to complete and utter failure, but seven years after its first release it has become a cult hit. Why? Because it has sutccessfully navigated the full loop: The Room is so bad it’s good. The film owes its existence to the mysterious and multi-talented Tommy Wiseau. Mysterious because no one is entirely sure where he’s come from. Multi-talented because he not only wrote and starred in The Room, adapted from his novel of the same title, he directed and produced it too. The plot (knowing it beforehand will not detract from your viewing experience) centres on a love triangle between Johnny (Wiseau), his fiancée Lisa, and his best friend Mark. Lisa no longer loves Johnny because he’s “boring” and didn’t get his promotion at work. She starts an affair with Mark, which leads him to reflect on all women: “Sometimes they’re too smart. Sometimes they’re flat-out stupid. Other times they’re just evil.” The sex scenes are all painfully long. Lisa and Tommy indulge one of the most clichéd bedroom scenes outside of the porn industry, complete with candlelight, rose petals and a water feature. The image of Wiseau’s steroid addled bottom thrusting towards Lisa’s navel is as disturbing as it is comical. Viewers have the chance to see it all again as Wiseau later recycles the same footage, cunningly disguising it with a different soundtrack. New characters enter at intervals, many of whom appear to have keys 1001 Films to See Before You Die: The Breakfast Club Tom Watts I’m going to level with you: I only watched The Breakfast Club for the first time on New Years Eve 2009. Yes, correct, I stayed in on my own and watched The Breakfast Club. What I discovered was one of the late John Hughes’s masterpieces sitting in the DVD rack tantalisingly waiting for me. You see, it were quite good as it goes. The plot follows five American high-schoolers who are forced to spend a Saturday in detention together. Each student represents a different clique of society (a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal) who come to realise that they are each deeper than their respective label. It is these realisations that create the moments of poignancy in a film that outwardly appears to be a light-hearted comedy. As the audience comes to relate with each character, we cannot ignore the fact that through the earnest and beautifully written script, we see ourselves. Even taken out of its eighties context, The Breakfast Club addresses the problems that everyday kids deal with or have dealt with: the pressures of puberty, losing one’s virginity, a broken home, getting good grades, lack of social skills or crumbling under peer pressure. It is these problems that are tackled head on in the moving finale of the movie, as the gang of kids sit in a circle and reveal their underlying pressures, motivating each other to tears of empathy, tears that are undoubtedly shared by the audience, even if it is just an up-welling. But, don’t let me paint too depressing a picture of The Breakfast Club, as the soundtrack is classically eighties; ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’ by Simple Minds anyone? It is the razor sharp dialogue, however, penned by John Hughes himself, that really entrances the audience. Take for example a conversation between Carl the Janitor and Mr. Vernon, the film’s villain per se who repeatedly emotionally bullies to Johnny and Lisa’s apartment. There is man-child Denny who Johnny once wanted to adopt. Denny gets embroiled in drugs and has a nasty encounter with gun wielding dealer Chris-R. Lisa’s mother Claudette also makes several appearances. At one point she casually announces to her daughter, “I got the results back. I do have breast cancer”. Lisa seems surprisingly unconcerned and her mother’s illness is never referred to again. Michelle and Mike claim to be doing their homework in Johnny’s apartment, even though they are at least ten years too old to be assigned any, whilst really using the place to “make-out” (their words not mine). It is unclear why they don’t just go to their own houses. Claudette, walking in on them, sums it up for everyone watching when she asks her daughter ,“Who are these characters?” – exactly what we were wondering! Every so often the action is interrupted by long panning shots across the Golden Gate Bridge and other sights of San Francisco (although the film was shot in Los Angeles). This is presumably to show time passing, even though it doesn’t. During one party scene, Wiseau cuts to these shots at least eight times. Wiseau originally publicised The Room as an “electrifying drama with the passion of Tennessee Williams” but has attempted to the detentionees, in which Vernon expresses his worries of today’s culture: “Someday these kids are gonna be running the country. This is the thought that wakes me up in the middle of the night. Someday, these kids are gonna take care of me,” to which Carl replies, “I wouldn’t count on it.” Not only save his reputation by rebranding it as a “quirky black comedy”. Read interviews with him and it’s apparent that he does not understand why theatres full of movie-goers spend the full running time in fits of laughter but he clearly revels in his new-found fame, turning up to does Hughes deal with teenagers coming of age, but he also examines the worries of the older generation throughout the movie and questions the divide between the young and old. Although a cult classic in its own right, The Breakfast Club paves the way for the future Hughes classics monthly screenings for Q&A sessions and autograph signing. Despite containing all the elements of a complete flop, The Room has managed to make itself utterly watchable. Go and see it...bring a book for the sex scenes. 11 Film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Pretty In Pink and Weird Science. The character of Ferris Bueller can be seen as a ‘cooler’ version of The Breakfast Club’s rebellious and violent Bender. So why not hang out in detention with the Club and experience the true trials of adolescence, because Saved By The Bell this ain’t.
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