2013-05-25T11:23:58-04:00 Paul Bullock http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=paul-bullock Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Paul Bullock Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1642774 2012-07-04T19:00:00-04:00 2012-09-03T05:12:07-04:00

Paul Bullock http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-bullock/ Prometheus and Avengers Assemble already out and raking in the cash, and The Dark Knight Rises and The Amazing Spider-Man coming soon, Summer 2012 is looking set to be one of the biggest in recent Hollywood history. It's also gearing up to be one of the least original. All those four films are prequels, sequels, reboots or remakes and in The Dark Knight Rises' case, both reboot (of a franchise that was itself a reboot) and sequel.

They're not the only ones. This blockbuster season will also see a second outing for The Expendables, a third for Madagascar, a fourth for the Bourne, Ice Age and Step Up franchises and - most astonishingly - a fifth for the Resident Evil saga. There's even a remake of Total Recall thrown in for good measure. Exciting times, eh?

It's easy to indulge in such sarcasm when you realise just how ubiquitous sequels, prequels, reboots and remakes (let's call them SPRRs for brevity) have become in the modern movie programme, but let's forget cynicism for a while - it's not like there's not enough of it going round as it is. Instead, let's look on the bright side because to dismiss all SPRRs is to be blind to their potential.

Along with Nolan's Dark Knight saga, the likes of The Godfather Part II, The Empire Strikes Back, The Coens' True Grit, Werner Herzog's ethereal Nosferatu and last year's Rise of the Planet of the Apes have proven that SPRRs can not only match, but in some cases surpass, their predecessors. It's just a case of getting the right timing and talent.

Despite such successes, there's still resistance to even the most promising of SPRRs. Ridley Scott's forthcoming sequel to Blade Runner and the long-mooted remake of Paul Verhoeven's Robocop have both attracted vociferous online criticism and, in one sense, it's not hard to see why. Much of Blade Runner's beauty derives from its ambiguity, something that a sequel may scupper, and Robocop is a near-perfect 80s satire that should perhaps stay in the chronological context it was created in. Neither film really 'needs' a sequel, but The Godfather didn't really 'need' The Godfather Part II...

Let's consider the potential that rests in Blade Runner 2 and Robocop then. The original films are noted for their revolutionary special effects, and while those effects are still impressive today, technology has advanced so far that there's a great opportunity to explore their worlds in more detail. This certainly seems to be a major attraction for Scott and reason enough alone to get excited for Blade Runner 2; how could you not be salivating at the prospect of one of cinema's greatest visualists revisiting one of his most fascinating worlds?

Thematically too there's real scope. The dark, dystopian cityscapes and nightmarishly advanced technology that Blade Runner proposed seemed fanciful in 1982, but it's now becoming tangible reality. Who's to say that our symbiotic relationship with technology won't be explored in Blade Runner 2 in a deeper, even more fascinating way than it was in the original? Robocop, meanwhile, could touch upon the use of technology by security services and the legal and moral implications this raises. Just because technology exists does that mean it should be used?

Of course, Robocop may end up being nothing more than empty spectacle and Blade Runner 2 a pale imitation of the original, but that shouldn't devalue SPRRs as a whole. They've been around for years (the first sequel came in 1916 with The Fall of a Nation and the first remake in 1904 with The Great Train Robbery), are by no means singularly cinematic phenomena (as the works of JRR Tolkien and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle prove) and arguably date back to the dawn of oral storytelling, when each narrator brought something new to his or her version of the tale.

Back then, the original telling wasn't superior to the others simply because it came first and the same is true today. SPRRs can be awful and they can be made for purely financial reasons, but they can also be enthralling, expansive and deeply revealing about a story, the culture it was first made in and the one it has been remade or continued in. Maybe it's time we embraced this potential and learned to love SPRRs, because if the successes of this summer's batch prove anything it's that there are plenty more (both good and bad) to come.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1558215 2012-05-31T19:00:00-04:00 2012-07-31T05:12:17-04:00

Paul Bullock http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-bullock/
The form's bad rep is hardly surprising and in many ways self-inflicted. Murky post-conversion and dubious price-hikes have bred a distrust among movie fans that hasn't been helped by low quality schlock like Piranha 3DD and notable flops like John Carter. This distrust has told at the box office and as The Guardian notes the medium's share of total ticket sales fell from 24% to 20% in 2011, despite a record 47 3D films hitting UK screens last year. "The reality has set in and the momentum has gone," Alice Enders, who compiled the stats, told the paper. "The recession is a factor and families are pushing back against 3D."

Will fortunes improve in 2012? Certainly the staggering performance of The Avengers will help, but Joss Whedon's superhero epic seems to have succeeded despite 3D, with many fans taking to Twitter to complain of the flat and dark stereoscopic presentation.

Meanwhile, of the films still to come, even heavy-hitters like Ridley Scott and Baz Lurhmann are being greeted with suspicion. Again Twitter has been the platform of choice for dissenters and many have said that they will see Scott's Prometheus in 2D, while others have criticised Lurhmann for his surprising use of 3D in the forthcoming adaptation of The Great Gatsby.

While I too have doubts about 3D, I'm rather disappointed by how closed-minded the reaction to the technology and Scott and Lurhmann's use of it has been. Both have shot their films using 3D cameras, so there'll be no dingy post-conversion, and as two of cinema's great visualists, surely it's worth at least seeing what they can do with 3D before condemning them. In fact, if we are to truly assess the successes or failures of their respective movies, surely seeing them in the form they were intended is not just beneficial, but vital.

Scott and Lurhmann are by no means the only respected film-makers taking to 3D. Last year, Steven Spielberg (The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn), Wim Wenders (Pina) and Werner Herzog (Cave of Forgotten Dreams) tried the technology, while Ang Lee (The Life of Pi) and Jean-Luc Godard (Adieu au Langage) will follow in coming months. Even David Lynch, that most independent of independent directors, has called 3D "cosmic" in its possibilities.

Those possibilities were certainly realised by Martin Scorsese's Hugo. Released at Christmas, the film was a triumph for the medium as the director used 3D not merely to add spectacle (though those dreamy Parisian skyscapes were a sight to behold in three dimensions) but to enhance his themes. By gaining a greater control over each element in the frame, Scorsese visually, as well as emotionally, alienated his hero, making him seen hopelessly lost against his vast 3D surroundings. What suggests that Scott and Lurhmann won't do the same? What suggests that 3D won't be used similarly well further into the future?

The answer is nothing but our own prejudice - and that's something we need to put an end to. As with all films, 3D movies should not be judged on the basis of the medium's reputation or a few fleeting minutes glimpsed in a hyperbolic trailer, but the finished product. Prometheus may still be rubbish and The Great Gatsby may well have us scratching our heads, but the growing contingent of respected directors using 3D suggests that the medium is here to stay. So maybe it's time to stop the grumbling, put those specs on and see what some of cinema's leading lights do with a technology that still has such potential. If nothing else, it'll be a fun ride.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1550444 2012-05-28T19:00:00-04:00 2012-07-28T05:12:10-04:00

Paul Bullock http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-bullock/ Jaws and the man was one Mr Fidel Castro. The Cuban leader liked what he saw and would reportedly go on to proclaim it one of the greatest American films of all time. The chances are you feel the same, but Fidel saw something in Jaws that perhaps you don't.

For him, this iconic tale of a small town with a big, fishy problem is a Marxist critique of Capitalist oppression, and its hero isn't Roy Scheider's embattled everyman, Police Chief Martin Brody, but the shark - a valiant crusader who takes justified revenge on a bourgeois and excessive American elite.

Castro's unique take serves to show just how popular, thought-provoking and misunderstood Jaws was and still is. Since its release, Steven Spielberg's landmark blockbuster has attracted thousands of pages of analysis, each one seeking to unlock the mysteries of a film that struck a nerve in the summer of '75 and went on to smash box-office records.

Depending on who you read, Jaws is a misogynist tract that revels in the opening sequence death of the sexually-liberated Chrissie Watkins; a psychosexual thriller with a distinctly phallic antagonist; a middle-class manifesto (sorry Fidel) that only resolves itself when Robert Shaw's working schmoe Quint perishes, or a Watergate dissection that vilifies a corrupt mayor not a thousand leagues away from Richard Nixon. Take your pick, there's plenty to choose from...

All such readings have value, but only one captures the true secret of Jaws' unexpected success and long-lasting popularity. Writing about the most influential films of all time in the Telegraph last year, Mark Cousins argued that Jaws created a culture of 'want see' - in other words, it gave filmgoers the chance to witness the kind of spectacular sights they wanted to see in real life, but couldn't outside of the cinema.

This primal urge was exploited in the film's revolutionary promotional campaign, which cost over $1.8 million to create and prominently featured the iconic image of a shark surging upwards through the water towards a helpless female swimmer. Revealing so little, but suggesting so much, this single image was a masterpiece of movie marketing, not just selling a film, but an emotion. Something, somewhere, is out to get you.

Ever the crowd-pleaser, Spielberg repeatedly delivers on that emotion in the film proper. The opening sequence (which inspired the poster), sees young swimmer Chrissie Watkins get torn beneath the ocean surface by our fishy menace. Cutting from the shark's POV to shots of an oblivious and helpless Chrissie, Spielberg provides an electrifying thrill ride that forces us to jolt from one extreme to the other, making us both victim and attacker.

Later, we become passive observer as he puts us in the place of Scheider's thalassophobic Brody during the build-up to the attack on young Alex Kintner. Spielberg's camera twitches anxiously across the beach just as Brody's eyes do, watching and waiting for the disaster we know lays in wait. When it does come, Spielberg's famous dolly zoom makes explicitly visual the sequence's underlying fear and confirms our intense relationship with the film. We're not just watching Jaws; we're living it.

Such a visceral approach was by no means rare in the 70s, a period characterised by gritty police dramas, paranoid conspiracy thrillers and violent gangster epics, but Jaws' common touch was. Aided by Carl Gottlieb's smart script and Scheider's sensitive performance, Spielberg's Brody is a flawed everyman struggling to conquer the shark, his fear of the water and Amity's corrupt mayor. These are more grounded threats than those faced by many other 70s leads, and the fact that Brody emerges from all three as a stronger man makes the film a deeply relateable piece of escapism, as well as an intense ride. This is 'want to be' film-making as much as 'want to see' film-making.

Nearly 40 years on, Jaws is being re-issued in a climate similar to the one it debuted in. Politicians are still corrupt, the year's big releases are still dark, moody and morally ambiguous, and audiences are still searching for visceral cinematic kicks.

The only difference now is that those kicks are more difficult to find. Cinema's obsession with the methods of film-making - 3D, high-definition, digital projection - is beginning to conceal the message. Building an imaginary barrier between the audience and the movie itself, Hollywood is forever reminding us that this shimmering, crystal clear, 'immersive' piece of entertainment isn't real. That film you're watching really is just a film.

Still razor-sharp and scenting blood, Jaws is anything but.]]>