Hollywood | Talking Bollocks

Posts Tagged ‘Hollywood

Jan

Avatar – dull people shouting in desperate attempt to assert individuality

Categories: Technology, Science Fiction, Fiction and Film
Tags: Hollywood, movie review, film review, Avatar, James Cameron, cliche, stereotype, media industrial complex

Chairman of the Avatar screenplay writing committee

Watched Avatar yesterday. The science fiction film written and directed by James Cameron which debuted in 2009 amid plaudits for it’s impressive Computer Generated Imagery.

Wikipedia states “Avatar is primarily an action-adventure journey of self-discovery, in the context of imperialism and deep ecology.”

Bollocks! This is yet another production line Hollywood amalgam of previous Hollywood action films. A stereotyped military/industrial complex plays token imperialism while over-romaticised Native American guff is trotted out to portray tribes of “spiritual” indigenous aliens. The real themes, as usual, are idiot American maverick belatedly turns on idiot American establishment with a backdrop of dieing foreigners.

CGI, imperialism and ecology are merely the vehicles which Mr. Cameron uses as a skeleton to support this staggering Cadaver of cliched, uninspired tripe. The helicopter attack on the Home Tree could have been taken straight out of Apocalypse Now. The alliance with Tsu’tey is too reminiscent of Top Gun. The “switch to manual” for the last battle must have been inherited from Star Wars and the pause in midst of battle for slow motion observation of the horrors of war accompanied by ethnic style vocals has been done too, too many times. One can almost hear the minutes of the production committees micro managing every bloody aspect: “Make her reach up and flick switches like in Black Hawk Down“, “Make the birds fly close and low like in Top Gun”, “Make the alien dog trip over like in Jurassic Park“. Even the inclusion of Signorie Weaver cannot save this dogs breakfast.

History will judge Avatar, not for it’s paper thin anti-imperialism or ecological credentials, but for it’s GCI and that is as it should be because the alien world created by the technicians is tremendous. However, this films narrative and scripts digs Hollywood deeper into it’s navel gazing rut and the true theme remains: Dull people shout at each other in desperate attempts to assert individuality as instructed by the media/industrial complex.

There is also a very silly song at the end.

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Sep

Inception

By jonesxxx 1 Comment

Categories: Art and Film
Tags: car chases, Cillian Murphy Tom Berenger, Claire Geare, Dileep Rao, Ellen Page, explosions, Film, film review, guns, Hollywood, Inception, Joseph Gordon, Ken Watanabe, Leonardo DiCaprio, Lukas Haas, machine guns, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine, movie, movie review, Pete Postlethwaite, Phillip K. Dick, sleep, Tom Hardy

Free fall

Isn’t it that I’ve seen the new movie Inception this evening?

The trouble with ‘olliwood these days is that they lack subtly. If this were demonstrated only by the way the plot plods along it would be bad enough but it is as if, once completed, the entire movie is then rechoreographed and explosions, car chases and machine guns inserted liberally to compensate for the lack of subtly in the script. I have come to theorise that most mature artistic media become reliant on technique and neglect inspiration and imagination.

OK, that is my pompous criticism out of the way. The story itself is about a bunch of people who can wrap little wrist straps on and become players in other people’s dreams. Hollywood has had this “what is real and what is not?” thread running for a while now inspired by the brilliant Phillip K. Dick. So this is really more recycling of the same ideas as Total Recall and other movies of that ilk.

Having said that the concepts were interesting. The idea of a “motif” as a small object carried and known only to the carrier which could be observed during a dream to determine whether one was dreaming or not was good. The sequence where one level of dream entered free fall and the only member of the team “awake” had to tie the sleepers together and drag them into a lift to be jolted back into life bordered on farce but was entertaining. In the film dream time is longer than reality so that a dream within a dream within a dream meant that an hour became many years, I liked that idea. The team’s planning seemed to leave a lot to be desired and partly consisted of a deliberate and considered plan to race around in a van with 5 sleeping team members in the back while being attacked by numerous protagonists sporting machine guns in cars and on motorbikes. All planned with split second timing of course.

Worth seeing but I’d prefer to see the same story tackled in a more thoughtful way. But then, what do I know.