Trailer of the Day : Die Hard

A classic Christmas movie....

Avatar reassesed

Unleashed upon the world in December of last year Avatar was hailed as a bold new step forward in cinema, as the greatest thing you will ever see. It was James Cameron's new monster following Titanic and almost one year later it has indeed gone on to be one of the biggest ever box office hits, taking over $760m in the USA alone.

People like it, people liked it a lot. People went to see it in 3D at the Cinema multiple times, some even complained that they felt depressed that they didn't live on the fictional world of Pandora. At the time I thought, well, I thought it was alright. A little overlong with a simplistic set of characters and story with a 3D element I found technically impressive but I felt didn't really add that much to proceedings.

I recently picked up the Blu-ray however (it was a quiet week and disc appeared good value with three cuts of the film and two discs worth of extras) and have rewatched the film in a longer cut plus a good deal of the supporting production material and I feel it's time to look at the film again.

First of all I'll start by saying I enjoyed the film much more the second time round probably due to a different level of expectation of what I was going to get from it and it is still worth talking about what works and doesn't work.

The version I put on was the latest cut released which clocks in at about two hours fifty minutes or so and one of the key differences is right at the start. Here we open up the film on Earth and witness the dead end existence Jake (Sam Worthington) is in until executives approach him with an offer and the news of his brother's demise.



This helps gives a little more colour to where Jake is coming from and is interesting in it's depiction of what has become of Earth, but is far from essential and as Cameron himself observes it does slow down the start of the film delaying the arrival to Pandora. The other major piece of material re included brings more depth to Sigourney Weaver's Grave as she recalls past days in the school and gives you more of sense of the friendship she shared with Neytiri's sister.

Elsewhere it's mainly extension of already existing scenes with a few seconds added here and few more over there and whilst the extra material gives a bit more breathing space to a couple of characters the truth is the cast of players is still very much a set by the numbers.

Jake is fairly strong as a lead character and whilst is never quite comes across that he has truly taken to the heart the ways of the Nav'i he does convince as someone who could a leader of people with Worthington giving a strong authoritative air when required.

The one moment when the film really puts across a strong sense of what Jake is feeling is during his first session in his avatar body, in particular the joy as he breaks out into a run for the first time since being crippled.

Zoe Saldana's Neytiri is probably the strongest character in the film, whilst she does start of as something of a cliche woman of the wild as the film runs we get a better sense of the pride in and duty to her people she feels. And it is interesting to obverse the differing take of Yunjin Kim in some test footage seen in the behind the scenes material when test sequences were put together.

In fact having seen the making of material a word of praise must go to all the Nav'i performers who went through a lot of work from classes in Archery to movement workshops to develop an 'alien' way of moving and it is true that if watch all the Nav'i move and walk in a way that is both different to the human cast and consistent as a group.

Character wise everyone else is there to move the story along pretty much. Grace is on hand to provide exposition when required, Michelle Rodriguez's Turdy flies people about, Stephen Lang's Colonel is evil (upto the point of almost having a black moustache to twirl) and Laz Alonso's Tsu'tey there to provide the required initial distrust and acceptance of Jake.

But most wasted I feel is Giovanni Ribisi's company man who seems to have had a character arc sent to the cutting room floor at some stage entirely. We're given just enough to think he isn't a bad guy and that he might feel what he is doing wrong at some level but by the end his only contribution seems to be to cheer on the Colonel. I not sure if this is what was intended but it does seems strange to make such little use of the character.

Whilst the characters are a little shallow the cast all put in decent to strong performances with Stephen Lang probably taking the right route of being ever so lightly pantomime in his role. But it is Zoe Salanda who stands out, which is a remarkable achievement given her performance is completely behind the technological CGI wizardry.

Now, there is where I shall divert onto the production side of things for awhile. Back when it was released I wasn't convince why Avatar was a "game changer" but now I start to see.

All the performances beneath the CGI are genuine performances you see, just ones that happen to look like blue cat people. The system used basically allows the actors to perform as they would normally but wearing special suits that are tracked by a number of cameras, footage for which is then captured and used to render the final images.

The facial performances are captured by cameras rigged to helmets fitted to the actors which gives close up footage of the all important element, the face. Which is then used to ensure the captured performance is translated as well as possible when it comes to be turned into the CGI image. Some minimal animation is applied by essentially what you see on screen is what the actor did.

Taking things to really the next level is the fact that Cameron can watch all of this virtually, instantly. That is to say that looking at a monitor connected to a collection of sensors and a no doubt very expensive computer rig he can view the actors and action in front of him pretty much as it will finally appear, from any angle.

That is to say the system is applying the CGI and animation on the fly, instantly and it is very impressive indeed. It is this and the effectiveness of translating the actors performance that is potentially a changer of the game. As Weaver observes now she can play anything; a blue cat-person, a small girl, a younger version of herself, a blading middle age midget and it will still be her performance we see rather than a cruder mash of her and a bunch of animators.

And it is this technological leap that helps the film in it's most successful aspect, it's overall production design. Whatever you may say about everything else the world of Pandora is glorious to look at (botanists and biologists were consulted alongside a team of some of the best fantasy/science fiction artists out there) from the bio-luminance of the foliage to the impressive array of creatures that populate the forest.



If I was ten the visuals and imagination would blow my mind completely, as it is I am quite impressed. The sight of Pandoran horses running through a burning forest is as striking an image as you'll find anywhere. Though I admit I still have some doubts on the design of the human technology, as much as I like the Shuttlecraft I don't like the cumbersome looking giant helicopter thingy.

James Horner's score is perhaps not that distinctive but is effective in doing it's job, contrasting the tribal rhythms and sounds of the Nav'i's world with more traditional orchestral bombastic scoring when called for, i.e when things are fighting.

Yes it's simple, it's a little over earnest and it's all about the spectacle but then so was Star Wars. So whilst I wouldn't say I think the film is a great one, I will happily sit and watch again when in the mood for something that looks glorious but isn't too taxing on the brain it will fit the bill perfectly.

On a small note I will say that for all the hoopla the 3D version I saw at the cinema was spoilt slightly by the 3D as it seems rather than proving more immersive it had the opposite effects and pulled me out of the film a little. Thus I was prevented from allowing myself to be swept along by it and left to admire it on a technical basis.

The Academy still called it right though, Hurt Locker gave me heart attacks.

The best scene of television I've seen in a long, long time...

Sadly no link to embed, but follow the link and witness three and half smart, heartfelt, fantastic moments of drama.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suRDUFpsHus&feature=fvw

Brilliant even if you've not been watching the series and just breathtaking if you have (the end of this episode is a gut punch as well)

Trailer Of The Day : Your Highness

This looks very immature, but like it could be really quite funny. Doing what Tropic Thunder did for the way movie for the fantasy epic?

Oh, this Red Band trailer probably a little unsafe for the more staid offices....

Chelsea vs Sunderland

An unexpectedly excellent point for Sunderland at the Bridge. Yes, Chelsea were poor and off the pace but credit to Sunderland for taking advantage. Bruce bravely went with two front men and the side responded as everyone had a good game.

Combing energy and commitment with some phases of excellent play Sunderland were rightful winners. Not allowing to Chelsea to settle on the ball they ensured the opponents didn't create any real chances in the opening thirty minutes or so and with the crowd quiet, the Black Cats began to push forward.

The pace of Welbeck and determined play of Gyan started to unsettle a makeshift Chelsea defence and it wasn't long before Sunderland fashion a series of excellent chances with Cech keeping them out. It was actually after a great double save by Cech that the opening goal of the game came.

Nedum Onuoha had followed the play froward from right back, picked up the ball near the edge of the area and dramatically ran through a gap of the center of the Chelsea defence, eluded a couple of chances and managed to scuff the ball into the far corner of the net.

Amusing when asked on the radio after the game if knew what he was going to do upon collecting the ball his response was to observer that he knew he was too far to shoot and just decided to push forward and see what happened.

In the second half it was fair to expect a response from the champions, but it never really came as again dogged defending from Sunderland (Zenden in particular was excellent in this regard) denied them a clear opening and seven minutes into the half a counter attack saw Welbeck combine with Henderson who played Gyan through on goal for the Ghanaian to finish comfortably.

Impressively Sunderland's work ethic didn't falter throughout the rest of game and Chelsea appeared to lack imagination enough to unlock and well organised defence. Turner and Bramble proving strong in the center as the full backs and wingers did well to keep Chelsea quiet on the flanks denying Cole and Boswinga the change to push forwards.

Sunderland's third came from a mistake from Cole as he undercooked a pass back to his 'keeper but it was a goal well deserved for young Wellbeck who I'd pick as today's man of the match for the red and whites.

Predators

A follow up to the 80s action 'classics' (let's face the originals are both kind of ropey albeit entertaining) Predators sees a band of survivors thrown together in a mysterious jungle to battle eponymous creatures.

Right, so yes they are on an alien planet but no there are nowhere near as many Predators involved as you have been led to believe. (To the point where one part of the trailer is a complete lie). Our group of characters nee disposable ciphers are all vicious killers of one type or another but sadly most of the fail to carve out any kind of memorable feature.

Leading the lot is Adrien Brody doing his best Christian Bale as Batman impression as some kind of tough but honorable underneath mercenary soldier, the type essayed so much better by Vin Diesel in Pitch Black. Suffice to say he really doesn't convince, nor does Alice Braga in the standard tough woman role who just doesn't make you believe this woman is a soldier, it's a part that should have gone to Michelle Rodriguez who plays this type of part in her sleep.

Elsewhere Laurence Fishburne is entertainingly mad in a brief appearance about halfway through and Topher Grace's character at least has some development but it is left far too late to really make much of impact on things.

So the characters aren't that interesting, what about the action? Sadly this isn't great either. There is less of it than you would of thought and when it does arrive unfortunately director(and Robert Rodriquez understudy)Nimród Antal makes it hard to really tell what is going on for large parts and fails to inject any sense of excitement into other parts.

Take for example an early section where are group of survivors are attacked by alien dogs things. They all turn and start blasting away with their various weapons...and apparently hit nothing at all as the dogs keep coming. Even the girl with the sniper rifle is just blasting away and the guy firing the minigun which should be destroying the forest (a la the first film) is doing no damage to anything, anywhere. Of course as the scene moves on our 'heroes' become deadly accurate as needed by the beats of the action.

"We're much better than these guys"

It's not helped by the Predators themselves which seems to act in different ways depending on what the script dictates. At first they creep around using their camo tech to sneak up and skewer people, then they seem happy to just blast away with their shoulder canons before illogically accepting stand up sword fights with a Yakuza gangster wielding a samurai sword in an open field.

We even have a Predator vs Predator fight for no clearly explained reason but even this is unengaging. In fact nothing interesting is done with the Predators themselves, they just become fairly unimaginative monsters. You could probably replace them with any other cinematic boogie man without really changing the film. They simply turn up, kill people, vanish, turn up again and them get themselves killed in idiotic ways.

It's like someone put together a list of cool things to have in a Predator movie (see the above mentioned samurai sword wielding Yakuza), scratched their heads to string them to together and threw in a couple of references to the original and filmed that.

Unfortunately this means you're left with a film everybit as unfocused, underdeveloped and half cocked as that makes it sound. In short it's very disappointing to the point where I'd say AVP: Alien vs Predator is a much better Predator film than this one.

Bollywood Action : What the hell...? Seriously, whaaaa....???

The Social Network

I've been a bit slow to put something up on this one having seen it last week. It's the story of Mark Zuckerberg who became the youngest billionaire on the planet by striking lucky with Facebook. But was it all his idea and who got burnt in the process?

Now admittedly in it's purest form the story may not seem that interesting to many (I find this kind of thing fascinating) and the way the film unfolds is potentially alienating as it skips between three different strands; two lawsuits and the past events involved. But I thought there was life enough in the film to make it a fine watch.

Jesse Eisenberg's Zuckerberg is something of an enigma. It's hard to really warm to the character but a combination of wry wit and the fact he often seems to be something of a rabbit in headlights keeps you on his side. Just about. It's a strong performance and astute writing (from Aaron "West Wing" Sorkin) that pulls of the balancing act of the character.

But it's Andrew Garfield's role as co-founder Eduardo Saverin that more often than not you're sympathising with as he remains the level headed one just trying to keep control in the escalating phenomenon around him. There is also a stand out turn by Armie Hammer as the twin brothers who argue the site was their idea.

Justin Timberlake also continues to build himself a respectable acting career in his turn as Sean "Napster" Parker coming across as something approaching Tyler Durden for the IT crowd.

Away from that the film is of course as technically excellent as all of Fincher's work. Smart mise en scene and editing means we never lose track of where we are as the film jumps between the two lawsuits and the evolving story of the site's creation.

Added to this is an excellent sound design (note the slyly changing volume levels during the house party) with an off kilter soundtrack provided by Trent Reznor of 'Nine Inch Nails' fame that keeps the film always seeming slightly out of control as were the real life events.

And you would never guess that the Winklevoss brothers are one actor.

Good old Roger Ebert sums up it well when says ""David Fincher's film has the rare quality of being not only as smart as its brilliant hero, but in the same way. It is cocksure, impatient, cold, exciting and instinctively perceptive"