So, new 3-D technology has revolutionised the cinema experience, granting us more immersive environments and more amazing effects. Only, it hasn't, and it doesn't matter how many times directors or studios try to tell us it has. Mostly, it's a gimmicky and pointless effect, and now that the novelty has worn off it's becoming annoying. First off, it's not true 3-D - you can't look behind you and see more of the film; you still see seats and people eating popcorn. It just fools your eyes by projecting additional images that, when viewed through the glasses, make it look as though some images are separate from and in front of the flat background.
The first film me and Rach watched in 3-D was Pixar's Up, and we were actually very impressed - rather than pointlessly throwing things out of the screen in an attempt to make you go 'oooh', it added a depth and clarity to the picture that made the film look gloriously and intricately layered. We have since bought Up on Blu-Ray and although the 3-D was impressive, the film loses nothing in 2-D.
Then came Avatar. There is no doubt where the rumoured $400+ million budget went - James Cameron's film simply has to be seen to be believed. Effects like nothing ever seen, Cameron intended on 3-D from the film's early inception. He conceived, designed, developed and built the technology used to make it. As such, Avatar is the pinnacle of modern 3-D technology, even (just) managing to cover the cracks in the undercooked and cliched plot, to the point where it would probably scrape a 9/10 if I was ever to review it. Striking, subtle, incredible; if you didn't see it at the cinema in 3-D, you'll probably never really understand. As with Up, while the initial impact will always remain, provided you managed to catch it on the big screen, very little is lost re-watching it in 2-D.
Smelling cash, studios have begun to embrace 3-D in earnest, to the point where they'll give 2-D films post-production botch-jobs to make them 3-D-ish and then market them as genuine 3-D - Clash of the Titans, hang your shitty fake 3-D head in shame. As we had been so impressed with the 3-D in Up, we caught Toy Story 3 in 3-D, and either the 3-D wasn't as good or the effect had simply lost the initial impact. It added nothing. Not a thing. Toy Story 3 is such a wonderful film anyway, however, the extra cash we forked out for the 3-D that we may as well have pissed away didn't really annoy us all that much.
Recently the final Harry Potter movie was released. Filmed using 3-D cameras, this was to be genuine 3-D, not shameless post-production fakery. Even so, we didn't really want to see it in 3-D. In the end we had to because the cinema times were against us and we only had a limited window of time during which we could lose the kids. Not only did it not add anything to the film, now that I've also seen it in 2-D, it's clear that it actually removes a fair bit of it. The 3-D works in as much as the characters are separated from the background, but as most of the film is set in fairly lightless places, the background detail is often lost, merging into an indistinct blurry mess, in front of which only the character is in focus. In 2-D, the image is clearer, the backgrounds are sharper, and the experience is more satisfying for it.
I hope the current fad fades away soon, to be honest. 3-D TV? Shut up. They sell it on the idea of watching your favourite football team or film in 3-D at home, but really, beyond that who wants to watch Have I Got News For You in 3-D? Or Question Time? 3-D gaming might have potential, but I think the novelty will soon wear off there as well. And I hate mobile phones at the best of times, so making them 3-D will certainly fail to endear them to me any further. 3-D has officially outstayed its welcome. Unless James Cameron's doing it.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
The biggest and most successful rebranding trick the right ever pulled.
One of the most common criticisms directed at left-leaning folk like myself is the moniker 'bleeding-heart lefties', or the supposedly critical 'do-gooder' (as if it's somehow better to do bad). It's also often intimated that we are immature and under-developed in our worldview; our hope that all kinds of different people could learn to live as equals a childish dream that our right-thinking betters have long outgrown. What's interesting is that this is a nice trick to disguise the real differences between us.
The point of view that we should do what we can to assist those less fortunate than ourselves in an effort to live in a shared community where everyone is valued is immature and unrealistic they say, and we should get on with the more highly evolved business of amassing wealth at the expense of others. If they can't succeed as we have done, the mature thinkers insist, they deserve to be crushed beneath the giant boots of our capitalist steel. Look out for the ones that appear to be all for ending poverty but at the same time refuse to even pay their fair share of taxes (*cough* Bono *cough* cunt *cough*), because they're worse than the ones who don't give a toss openly. This apparent uncaring attitude of the right would seem to be a sham, and much of the policy of the right looks to stem from an inability to think and act rationally, to separate the world in which others live from their own emotional hang ups.
Take the attempt to reduce the legal abortion limit - led mostly from the right. It stems from a failure to differentiate a foetus from a baby. They think they are protecting the rights of innocent little babies from the monstrous and evil medical professionals. They refuse to distinguish fact from an immediate emotional response. It forms part of an attempt to hold on to the outdated doctrine of their religious texts, which leads to a general automatic knee-jerk rejection of science and progress, a refusal to teach evolution as an established scientific theory rather than an alternative to hardline religious creator myths, and to a baffling all out rejection of climate science (however this also comes from good old fashioned greed and the need to hold on to their fortunes - the idea that there is somehow more money in carbon reduction and clean energy technologies than in the continued use of fossil fuels is laughable (although, there is, admittedly, a lot of earning potential in some areas of green technology, just nowhere near as much as the established oil and coal)). These trends, stemming from an inability to change and progress are not just misinformed, but downright dangerous for us as a species.
The general instinct of the left to invest in, and be guided by scientific research, rather than being bleeding-heart wet-blanket immaturity as the right would see us painted, is instead based on reason and rationality, which you'll find is more mature than restricting women's rights because you think doctors are baby murderers, not less. Rather than choosing to assimilate new information and revise their notions of the way the Universe functions, they instead choose to cling to their quaint stories and parables written thousands of years ago (it should be pointed out that I'm not just referring to the bible here, as other religious texts are equally outdated and nonsensical in light of what we've learnt as a species since the time of their writing), like children refusing to relinquish a treasured picture book from babyhood even though they've long outgrown it.* That they have somehow taken that inability to think or reason without letting primal emotional instincts guide them, to let go of infantile ideas about the nature of the Universe, to concede the truth about their morally dubious economic practices, lest it reduce their grossly unfair share of wealth and made it stick to the left is possibly the greatest con the right has ever pulled off. Of course, this is core ideology I'm referring to here - I realise in practice Labour, Lib Dem, Conservative, Democrat and Republican have little to distinguish them nowadays, but there are still different degrees of shiteness - a sliding scale of shiteness, if you will, with Labour & Democrat at the top and the Conservatives and Rebublicans at the bottom, and the Lib Dems positioning themselves wherever they think they'll get the most power.
*Obviously not everybody - I know both religious and right-leaning people, both friends and family who are brilliant in every way - it's aimed more at the Michele Bachmanns and Sarah Palins of this world, and there are many more of them than you'd believe; enough to be frightening.
The point of view that we should do what we can to assist those less fortunate than ourselves in an effort to live in a shared community where everyone is valued is immature and unrealistic they say, and we should get on with the more highly evolved business of amassing wealth at the expense of others. If they can't succeed as we have done, the mature thinkers insist, they deserve to be crushed beneath the giant boots of our capitalist steel. Look out for the ones that appear to be all for ending poverty but at the same time refuse to even pay their fair share of taxes (*cough* Bono *cough* cunt *cough*), because they're worse than the ones who don't give a toss openly. This apparent uncaring attitude of the right would seem to be a sham, and much of the policy of the right looks to stem from an inability to think and act rationally, to separate the world in which others live from their own emotional hang ups.
Take the attempt to reduce the legal abortion limit - led mostly from the right. It stems from a failure to differentiate a foetus from a baby. They think they are protecting the rights of innocent little babies from the monstrous and evil medical professionals. They refuse to distinguish fact from an immediate emotional response. It forms part of an attempt to hold on to the outdated doctrine of their religious texts, which leads to a general automatic knee-jerk rejection of science and progress, a refusal to teach evolution as an established scientific theory rather than an alternative to hardline religious creator myths, and to a baffling all out rejection of climate science (however this also comes from good old fashioned greed and the need to hold on to their fortunes - the idea that there is somehow more money in carbon reduction and clean energy technologies than in the continued use of fossil fuels is laughable (although, there is, admittedly, a lot of earning potential in some areas of green technology, just nowhere near as much as the established oil and coal)). These trends, stemming from an inability to change and progress are not just misinformed, but downright dangerous for us as a species.
The general instinct of the left to invest in, and be guided by scientific research, rather than being bleeding-heart wet-blanket immaturity as the right would see us painted, is instead based on reason and rationality, which you'll find is more mature than restricting women's rights because you think doctors are baby murderers, not less. Rather than choosing to assimilate new information and revise their notions of the way the Universe functions, they instead choose to cling to their quaint stories and parables written thousands of years ago (it should be pointed out that I'm not just referring to the bible here, as other religious texts are equally outdated and nonsensical in light of what we've learnt as a species since the time of their writing), like children refusing to relinquish a treasured picture book from babyhood even though they've long outgrown it.* That they have somehow taken that inability to think or reason without letting primal emotional instincts guide them, to let go of infantile ideas about the nature of the Universe, to concede the truth about their morally dubious economic practices, lest it reduce their grossly unfair share of wealth and made it stick to the left is possibly the greatest con the right has ever pulled off. Of course, this is core ideology I'm referring to here - I realise in practice Labour, Lib Dem, Conservative, Democrat and Republican have little to distinguish them nowadays, but there are still different degrees of shiteness - a sliding scale of shiteness, if you will, with Labour & Democrat at the top and the Conservatives and Rebublicans at the bottom, and the Lib Dems positioning themselves wherever they think they'll get the most power.
*Obviously not everybody - I know both religious and right-leaning people, both friends and family who are brilliant in every way - it's aimed more at the Michele Bachmanns and Sarah Palins of this world, and there are many more of them than you'd believe; enough to be frightening.
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