Cinephemera

So this is the trailer for the upcoming My Bloody Valentine 3D.

Are audiences really as stupid as this trailer makes them out to be? I’m hoping that this is at the very least insulting to the people who watch it. Does anybody honestly think that fire is going to leap out of the screen? I sincerely hope not and yet I cannot help but think that Lionsgate knows exactly what it’s doing. I just know that there are some people out there thinking “I’d better sit near the back so I don’t get my hair singed”.

And really, does anybody need to be sold on the concept of 3D these days? It isn’t like this is new or even foreign technology. It seems like everybody is doing 3D now. I recently saw Bolt in 3D and I’m almost certain that making it 3D was almost an afterthought as it didn’t really add anything to the movie. James Cameron’s Avatar will be in 3D and Toy Story 3 will be as well. I have no problem with 3D but I think that unless it adds something, it’s just a cheap gimmick. Beowulf was made with the intention of being in 3D and used it appropriately. I’m hoping that the upcoming movies I’ve mentioned will do as Zemeckis did and not just use it as a selling point.

Is the average movie goer stupid enough to think 3D means “things literally fly out at you”? Is 3D a cheap gimmick or a legitmate film device?

I read a news story recently about the death of Polaroid film. The Polaroid company has announced that they are ceasing production of their Polaroid film effective December 31st. I’ve wanted to purchase a Polaroid for a while because I love the way that the pictures turn out and it is now perhaps too late. The passing of physical film most likely due to the prevalence of digital cameras.

Of course this is not entirely unexpected. The writing has been on the wall for quite a while. You can find digital cameras now in mid to high double digits. Seems everywhere you look now teens and even kids are sporting point-and-click cameras (usually pointed toward themselves and a group of friends all throwing gang signs). While it is not a complete surprise, it is still a rather sad passing of an era.

I am certain that the film medium will never really die. There are still far too many artists and filmmakers who still use it but there is definitely a huge shift to digital media not only in regards to photography, but music and movies as well. Thanks primarily to iTunes, digital music and movie rental has gotten a major boost. A lot of major DVD releases now come with digital copies.

All of this makes sense financially of course. If you shoot everything on a digital camera, you don’t have to worry about buying film, developing it and having to store it. I know some people who swear by digital media and wonder where it has been all their lives. I also know people who will cling to their film and CDs until they die. I happen to fall in the middle. I own a digital Canon Rebel and I love it to death but I also cling to my DVDs and CDs and rarely ever buy digital music.

So let us have a moment of silence for the passing of Polaroids and remember to hug a CD.

Ah, the Christmas holidays. A time of joy and good will to men. A time for food, family and festivities. A time to focus on those things that are most important to us. It’s also a good time to consider recent trends in American horror films.

What? Don’t tell you’ve never thought about this very topic on many a Christmas Eve as you listened to your favorite carols in front of a crackling fire. Really? Just me? You are all strange people.

You look at horror movies these days and American cinema is severely lacking in originality. We lean on our “heroes of horror” (Freddy, Jason and the like), we ruin remake any foreign film that made a decent amount of money and we copy redo our own movies of old. I can’t remember a recent American horror movie that wasn’t either a remake or just copying elements of other horror films.

I’m not entirely sure if this is a purely American phenomenon but we just can’t seem to help making countless sequels featuring Freddy Krueger (8), Michael Myers (9), Jason Voorhees (12). All of which have recently made or are planning to make “reboots”. One could make the arguement that the dozens of Godzilla movies shows that Americans are not the only practitioners of this horor sequel frenzy. However, Godzilla has become more of a benevolent protector of Japan rather than the destroyer of civilization that he was in the first few. We just can’t get enough of our beloved serial murderers.

Attention film makers of the world! Make a decently profitable horror movie in a language other than English and you too could have your work absolutely wrecked by American cinema in less than 5 years! Seriously though, this is getting nuts. We had the J-horror remake craze a few years ago where we laid our grubby hands on every single Japanese horror film that we could find and this trend continues to this day. The Ring, The Grudge, Dark Water, Pulse, The Eye, and One Missed Call have all been given the Hollywood treatment. We’ve gotten a much better turn around rate in recent years. The Spanish horror film REC was released in November 2007 and the remake Quarantine was released less than a year later in October 2008. The recent Swedish hit, Let The Right One In, had a remake being planned even before its release.

Not only do we remake everyone else’s movies, we are constantly remaking our own movies. As I mentioned before, we have had recent remakes of Friday the 13th and Halloween. In recent years we’ve also had remakes of Black Christmas, House on Haunted Hill, The Hills Have Eyes, Prom Night, When a Stranger Calls, House of Wax, The Fog, The Amityville Horror, the list goes on and on. You know what all these remakes have in common? They were all HORRIBLE!

Is there no end to this madness? Will we ever be able to recognize a good horror film even if the actors don’t speak English? Will we ever be able to come up with original ideas again? Will our horror icons lay down their weapons before they make it to movie #20?

What do you think about our seemingly endless remakes and sequels? Is there hope for American horror cinema or are we just whipping a horse that died back in the 80s?