I really can’t stand when people in the movie business get to acting like what they do is really so damn important. It’s movies, guys! You’re entertaining us, keeping our minds off the woes of life, and treating us to some good times. That’s it. Sure, you’re opening our eyes from time to time, exposing us to the things we don’t always pay attention to, but should. Sure, you’re revealing to us worlds outside our own. And most importantly, you’re doing it all while providing us the besest looking faces and most beautiful bodies imaginable! So, um... thank you for that.
But... What irks me is when I read about some blowhard saying blowhard stuff, like all of a sudden, they are the most important thing ever, just because they made a film that a bunch of people went to see. Shite like the interview in Vanity Fair, where blowhard James Cameron makes it known to all us peasants that he is the one, the only, the savior of cinema, and that no one else can or should be do anything other than exactly what he’s doing. Apparently, he thinks he owns the rights to making movies.
One of the more ridiculous arguments he makes, while bashing other 3D dreck, is that Piranha 3D has cheapened the world of 3D cinema. Huh? If anything, Piranha would be cheapened without the 3D!
Here’s a snipet of what Sir James in his Vanity Fair interview:
Was there any sense of nostalgia when the Piranha movie came out last weekend?
Zero. You’ve got to remember: I worked on Piranha 2 for a few days and got fired off of it; I don’t put it on my official filmography. So there’s no sort of fond connection for me whatsoever. In fact, I would go even farther and say that... I tend almost never to throw other films under the bus, but that is exactly an example of what we should not be doing in 3-D. Because it just cheapens the medium and reminds you of the bad 3-D horror films from the 70s and 80s, like Friday the 13th 3-D. When movies got to the bottom of the barrel of their creativity and at the last gasp of their financial lifespan, they did a 3-D version to get the last few drops of blood out of the turnip. And that’s not what’s happening now with 3-D. It is a renaissance—right now the biggest and the best films are being made in 3-D. Martin Scorsese is making a film in 3-D. Disney’s biggest film of the year—Tron: Legacy—is coming out in 3-D. So it’s a whole new ballgame.
Does this guy ever have his fat swollen head so far up his own hairy Na’vi blue ass, or what! Jimmy, they’re just movies. C’mon, it’s like you never heard of a genre 3D movie before. The technique was practically invented for films like this. See if these ring any bells: House of Wax, Bwana Devil, Thirteen Ghosts, It Came From Outer Space!! Hell, didn’t the 3 Stooges make a 3D comedy, too? So, let’s not get all pinched up in the nether regions, alrighty? Or, wait -- you didn’t invent 3D yourself, did you? It Came from Outer Your Ass, no? Oh. Well, forgive me. The way you’ve been hissy-fittin’ around, I thought maybe you had.
Look, 3D is, afterall, just a gimmick. It always has been, and it always will be just a gimmick that makes all the eye candy just a lot more eye-gasmic. It adds nothing whatsoever to the worth or value of the story. Citizen Kane would not be a better story if the snow globe fell (seemingly) right into our laps. The saga of the Corleone family would not be more meaningful if we were convinced that Sonny’s blood had splattered all over our clothes. The testos-tremotions of Brian’s Song would not be felt anymore than it already was had we seen the tears spitting forth from the screen from Billy Dee Willams’ eyes. It’s just a gimmick. It’s just for fun!
And gimmicks are something you know quite well -- right Jimmy? You know what I think cheapens the medium? Raking in enough money from your movie about your virtually built world -- which could now afford you to construct your own actual world -- and then turning right back around and re-releasing your precious Avatar just weeks after it’s bowed from theaters, and tossing in a few extra scenes --which weren’t important enough to put in the first time around, even though you had total control over the entire film -- and then making the fans pay yet another 12 bucks (before they then have to shell out, no doubt, top dollar to buy the Blu-Ray disc set... which, by the by, will then have subsequent “Special Edition” sets to roll out out every Christmas time for the next 10 years.
Really, it’s just showbiz. So dry up Jimmy. It’s not like you’re saving the world with your work anyway! Oh wait. I forgot -- you and Kevin Costner have come up with the solution that will rescue us all from that tragedy of the BP oil disaster. Sorry I underestimated you... But anyway... your argument that bad horror movies, enhanced 3D, will cheapen the medium is tantamount to a chocolate syrup maker complaining that the introduction of sprinkles has cheapened the ice cream sundae
So, just go play with your 3D toy, and quit your bellyaching. Go dip into your Titanic well for the umpteenth time, so you can bilk your audiences some more with your digitally enhanced retreads. Titanic 3D! What next? True Lies 3D? Rambo: First Blood 2:3D?
Well... Look, as long as you give Kate Winslet’s nude scene the extra 3D bonanza effect, all will be forgiven.
As the plot goes (reading from the press release)... "It's graduation weekend, and Sandy Channing, the popular class president of her small-town high school, should be enjoying the time of her life. But when her friends start disappearing, Sandy discover
