The Movie Hobbyist

So here we are, the Oscars behind us. It was a nice night with some worthy and good winners. I had some great luck and predicted a personal best 19 categories correct, baggin me certain honorable mentions on several websites.(Here (second place), here (top 25))

The show itself though, was pretty awful at times. Nonetheless I was happy with The Hurt Locker win across the board. I was especially pleased with the Star Trek win for makeup. The first ever Oscar for a Star Trek film! Extraordinary and really deserved.

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I’m surprised this hasn’t been picked up yet by an American or British outlet, but there’s huge BREAKING NEWS regarding the release of Alice in Wonderland next month! After last week’s anouncement that Disney wants to narrow the release window between cinematic and dvd releases to a mere 13 weeks with the upcoming big-budget 3D flick Alice in Wonderland. Again the usual b/s regarding combating piracy and stuff is being mentioned. Read about that news here.

But it’s the result of that announcement that is really shaking the world right now. Cinema chains all over the world REFUSE TO SHOW THE FILM because of that short window of time. That’s right, the Dutch organisation of theatre chains won’t show this movie in theaters, at least that’s what they’re currently claiming. The article is in Dutch but it also claims that there’s even theaters in the US that refuse to show the film, which was supposed to open march 12 orso. The chains claim Disney had breached the agreements with the chains to not narrowing the cinema-dvd window any further, like they did with Up. Now they’ve apparently had it and are taking harsher measures.

Of course it’s probably all going to end in a whimper and the movie will be shown everywhere as planned, except for perhaps a few theaters. But it’s also possible it’ll play at very little screens and the results for this mega-blockbuster and for Disney could be disastrous. The Dutch article can be found here.

This is just in:

Warner Bros. has given Christopher ‘The Dark Knight’ Nolan the developing reigns over the next Superman film(s). This is huge news. After succesfully reinventing the Batman franchise for the big screen, with two films totalling nearly $1.5 billion worldwide, they’ve decided it’s time for him to also re-do the man in Blue Tights. We all know what this will mean: A darker more realistic Superman.

Which is hard, since he’s an alien in the first place, but that aside. Will this also mean we’ll finally see that long gestating Superman vs. Batman thing finally coming? I hope so. But this is good news. Bryan Singer’s 2006 revamp of Supes was not all that exciting. In fact I thought it was quite a bore featuring the by now over-used archnemesis and a movie that felt hopefully out of date, even though there were clear 9/11 allegories present. I’d would rather like to see that third Batman movie made before that. Thank you, but Jonathan Nolan is already working on that as well.Yippie!

So the Oscar nominations were finally revealed this tuesday and the list can be found here.

I ain’t gonna post the whole thing here simply because it takes up too much space, however, I would like to comment

on some of the nominees and snubees (is that even an existing word?).

All in all the Academy had few surprises in store both for those that got nominated and those that weren’t. Here’s a rundown of the pro’s and con’s of this year’s nominees and my personal views on some of the categories.

Star Trek

Abrams brilliant reboot managed to score a mere 4 nods, only in the technical categories. I suppose I let myself get carried away a little too much on the hype of a possible Best Picture nod for this film. Although probably deserved, even with 10 nominees 3 sc-fi movies is a bit too much, concidering the fact very few of those films ever get nominated for the Big Prize. Too bad. It still equals the Voyage Home’s record 4 nods in the tech categories and stands a good chance of winning too.

Two Horse Race

As if it weren’t clear enough after The Hurt Locker’s DGA and PGA wins last week the race is even more narrowed down with the equal number of nods for Avatar and The Hurt Locker. 9 each. Avatar lacking a possible writing and acting nod means that The Hurt Locker currently has the momentum and the edge. Even though Avatar has surpassed the incredibly astounding 2 billon dollar mark and is the biggest film of all time.

Sir Paul got Snubbed

Plain and simple, Paul McCartney should have gotten a nod for his beautful song “I Wanna Come Home”. Giving out 2 nods to the Princess and the Frog and some unknown other film (Paris who?) sure seems like a shame if they could’ve gotten the ex-Beatle into the mix and perhaps even let him win. However, there was a little bit of compensation from the music branch because they nominated…

Hans Zimmer

Finally. His first nod in nearly a decade. While the score for Sherlock Holmes is joy to listen to it’s still not his best work of the pas decade but it seems they’ve finally managed to set aside their quarrels with the fact he uses so many composers to assist him. That one made me happy, especially since I wasn’t expecting it.

A Single Man

I haven’t had a chance to review it yet but I can tell that Tom Ford’s directing debut is an astonishingly beautiful and heartbreaking film. It’s not just Colin Firth’s amazing performance but it is so much more. Hence the reason I am so puzzled it has gotten so little Oscar-attention. The nomination for Firth was inevitable, particularly after his win at Venice, but Abel Korzekiowski’s haunting and beautiful score (with additional sections by Shigeru Umebayashi) is a masterpiece on its own. The art direction, cinematography are pure cinematic art. On top of that add a slightly non-linear and deeply involving and 3-dimensional narrative and the movie should’ve been nominated for so much more. However, the season precursors (DGA, PGA, WGA) were already snubbing the film so the Oscar snub wasn’t all that surprising after all, a missed opportunity though it was.

In the end though, like I said, the overall spread was good and I am looking forward to the ceremony, even though most of the acting races have already been decided, but with the Best Picture award certainly up for grabs, and the fact the preferential balloting system allows for a wholly different surprise makes it an exciting month to come.

When I started studying film theory one of my primary concerns from the start was the fact that movie analysis is prone to the scholar’s mind and ideas. This is of course both the strength and the weakness of the science, and of course the insights that really matter quickly become widely accepted views within the film community. Though, there’s also the possibility of a film anaysis going the whole other wa. While adhering to the principles of the craft one can easily assume certain matters that simply are too far fetched to be true. Jay Weidner’s analysis is both solid in its basis but assuming something absolutely ridiculous. I know, it’s a leftist paranormal and conspiracy website, but that’s not the point. The point is that it’s the whole of film theory that is being ridiculed here. Simply, because the man’s theory is, as presented, solid. No matter how far fetched. His main argument consists of this:

Kubrick has made some deliberate changes in adapting Stephen King’s novel The Shining to the screen because he used the book as a vessel for telling his own story. A story of deception and the greatest cover-up in human history. Kubrick supposedly directed staged footage of the lunar landings. THE lunar landings.

It’s a couple of pages long but it’s really got to be read to be believed. It’s totally insane yet so logical within its own content. The interesting thing is also that he takes a previous assumption, namely the hotel being a metaphor for the USA, only this time he replaces the guilt with the Indian massacre with the struggle against the Soviets for reaching the moon. Or at least, making people believe there was an actual struggle.

I particularly like the part with the kid wearing the Rocket-sweater rises slowly…

http://www.jayweidner.com/ShiningSecrets.html

By now everyone realises that Avatar actually is the biggest movie of all time. It surpassed Titanic’s previously insurmountable $1.8 billion worldwilde within a mere 38 days. Astonishing, like it’s entire ride has been. This comes also a week after the not much surprising Golden Globe Best Picture and Director win. There’s some things though that need to be said.

Some ground is covered in this CNN article. Basically if you put the gross income in perspective, Avatar isn’t as high on the list yet. Adjusted for inflation, Avatar currently floats around the 25th all time place. A whole lot less impressive but also not a dealbreaker either. Also, there’s the issue with the 3D tickets being more expensive in general. If you concider that nearly 70% of the overseas screens (outside of the US) aren’t 3D almost nullifies this advantage.

Fact remains, Avatar is the biggest film since Titanic and a worldwide phenomenon coming virtually out of nowhere for those not interested in film or the industry. In the US it’s been #1 for 6 consecutive weekends now. Something that hasn’t happened since, right you guessed it, Titanic. Bottom line, I’m gonna see the film again soon!

UPDATE: David Poland explains just posted again about the dubious numbers posted by BOM.

Happy New Year Folks! May it bring you al the best of luck and happiness….blah..blah…etc… etc…

I was on holiday for 2 weeks but I’ll soon post some rants about Crashing films, Jewish Revenge and some other rumblings.

Oh and Avatar will bag 1 BILLION DOLLARS worldwide after this weekend…AMAZING!!!

The story I ran earlier, I also e-mailed to Jeff Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere. He asked me to call him but that would’ve been a pretty expensive call from the Netherlands so we handled it by e-mail. It still peaked his interest and he posted my story on his site. The screenshot below is one of the shots I believe was missing from the regular 3D version. However, more and more I’m getting the idea I’ve been imagining things.

But there is one difference in Avatar I hadn’t posted before: The subtitles of the Na’Vi dialogue were the same font as the translations of the English diagogue with the IMAX version but with the regular 3D version they used a different font for the Na’Vi dialogue translations. (the one used in the trailers as well). Which is the font below spelling “Avatar”.

My Earlier Post

Jeff Well’s Post

So today I’ve seen both the IMAX 3D cut and the Regular Digital 3D of Avatar and I noticed two small changes in scenes (or at least I think I did)

First: When the Hometree gets destroyed, the IMAX cut shows the clansmen trying to fly of their Banshees (correct name?) from the top of the falling tree, this was not in the regular version.

Second: there’s a shot in the trailer of Sam sitting by his Avatar-machine in the lab in his wheelchair. The little scene preceded the final video recording in the IMAX version but was cut from the regular version.

Is there more or am I just imaginging things?

(Note: this is just a little scrabble I’m posting just because no one else seemed to have noticed this)