Alternate Takes 01.17.09: My Bloody Valentine 3-D
Posted by Shawn S. Lealos on 01.17.2009
On the heels of the first 3-D original horror movie to be released in over 20 years, Alternate Takes looks at the past, present and future of the 3-D technology, from Dial M for Murder to Monsters vs. Aliens.
Finally, I want to answer a comment from the Golden Globes coverage column.
"Am I the only one who has never even heard of Slumdog Millionaire? Why is this movie winning everything and ive never even heard of it? I havnt seen a commercial for it on TV, any reviews, or even a trailer at the movies." - Posted By: wertgasdgf
- I am going to assume you meant that you were surprised a movie that is considered as great as Slumdog Millionaire is not getting publicity and advertising where you live. The only other idea is that if you never heard of a movie, it should not win and that is an idea best left to the Wrestler of the Week comment section. I live in Oklahoma, where movies usually hit last. We are the last stop for The Wrestler, but no worries because Bride Wars is showing in every theater in the state. However, we have a couple of theaters that makes it a point to try to book prestige pictures and one of them is showing Slumdog Millionaire. The television advertising is very much invisible and was sparse when the film was released in December.
However, it has still made $34 million, which is about where There Will be Blood and No Country for Old Men were sitting last year prior to their awards boost. That amount also doubles the pictures budget, so it is a success no matter what financially. Critically, Slumdog Millionaire is sitting at 94% with 179 reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, so it has been reviewed rather generously as well. As for you never having seen the trailer, never say I never gave you anything...
And... here... we... go...
My Bloody Valentine 3-D
"My Bloody Valentine 3D doesn't reinvent the rules, subvert expectations [or] offer anything new. It simply takes what's worked before, mixes them together well, applies some 3D and brings the results to you in a well-made, well-paced, well-done way. My Bloody Valentine is an in-your-face bit of bloody fun that's guaranteed to thrill those looking for a gory good time." - Devin Faraci, CHUD.COM
The trailers started screening for the latest horror remake, My Bloody Valentine 3-D, and it looked like business as usual. Hollywood has become a remake monster and this looked no different. But then something strange happened. Good word of mouth began to spread. How was this possible? Why was another horror remake, this time of a movie that wasn't even successful the first time it was made, getting positive responses?
I once heard someone say the best movies to remake are the ones that weren't that good to begin with. If a person remakes Psycho, they will get dog-piled in criticism because what makes them think they can do something better than the master? If a person remakes Ocean's Eleven, they get cut some slack and even get a lot of credit for making one of the coolest movies of its time. I guess that is why Platinum Dunes got a lot of slack for remaking Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Many people consider it one of the best horror movies ever made. Remake My Bloody Valentine and half the audience won't even know it's a remake. Ninety percent won't even have seen the original.
My Bloody Valentine 3-D gets some geek credit for casting Jensen Ackles from television's Supernatural. It also stars the very hot Jaime King, who thankfully finally stopped using the name James. Ackles plays Tom, a survivor of a madman's massacre that killed 22 people ten years ago. He was also the catalyst for those murders as he caused the accident that originally drove the killer crazy, leading to the devastating killing spree. He returns home and the murders start once again, with him as the number one suspect.
What makes this movie any better than other slasher flicks? There are 22 deaths alone in the prologue.
The prologue.
And the movie is in 3-D.
ANAGLYPH TECHNOLOGY
"This is the marriage of old school horror mixed with a great story and unbelievable new technology. There's also some good old-fashioned gore. It's the intersection of so many different things. We're doing a 3-D movie; we're doing a slasher film, but it's much more than that. It requires a new way of looking at storytelling, and it's a very exciting opportunity." - Director Patrick Lussier
3-D technology has existed since before cinema became popular. The first attempts at watching movies in 3 dimensions were way back in the 1890's. The entire process was to force each eye to see a slightly different image. The red and blue glasses everyone is familiar with, known as anaglyph, were developed in 1922. It is clear why these glasses, with their wonky color schemes, failed to catch on.
Studios tried to make it work, but most 3-D efforts failed. There were a few successful 3-D films in the 1950's, including Bwana Devil (1952), It Came from Outer Space (1953), The Mad Magician (1954), The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) and Dial M for Murder (1954), Alfred Hitchcock's foray into the world of three dimensional filmmaking. There are very few 3-D prints of this film surviving today.
The first surprise you may have is that Alfred Hitchcock actually made a 3-D movie. Dial M for Murder is a strange little film, never spoken of when discussing the great Hitchcock masterpieces. It was shot right before Rear Window and is based on a stage play by Frederick Knott. Hitchcock claims to have been a bit down at the time and stated "When the batteries are running dry, take a hit play and shoot it."
Hitchcock told fellow director Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show) that the choice to keep the film restrained was because "what you're buying when you buy a play is you're buying the construction. It is the construction that makes it a hit. If you change that, you're ruining the very thing you bought. Just shoot the play." However, even with Hitchcock shooting a play it is still better than anyone else could have done.
Almost the entire film takes place in an apartment, similar to a few of his other very confined films (Rope and Lifeboat) and is a precursor to what he used in the more successful Rear Window. Dial M for Murder stars Ray Milland, Robert Cummings and Grace Kelly in her first Hitchcock film. The plot presents a tennis player (Milland) concerned with his wealthy wife's (Kelly) interest in a novelist (Cummings). He decides to murder her and blackmails a criminal into committing the crime for him while he establishes his alibi. Things go wrong when the wife turns the tables and kills her attacker and her husband must figure out how to keep the evidence from pointing back at him.
"In Dial M for Murder, I did my best to avoid going outside," Hitchcock said during his interviews with fellow director Francois Truffaut. "It happened only two or three times, when the inspector had to verify something, and then, very briefly. I even had the floor made of real tiles so as to get the sound of the footsteps. In other words, what I did was to emphasize the theatrical aspects."
This was only Hitchcock's third color picture, so the idea that he would use a new technology such as 3-D in its early state was surprising. Unlike films such as Bwana Devil, Hitchcock used the 3-D effects not to throw things in the audience's face but to bring out details in the background. "The impression of relief was especially in the low-angle shots," Hitchcock explained. "I had them make a pit so that the camera could be at floor level. Aside from that there were very few efforts directly in relief." Among the objects projected in 3-D were a lamp and a flower vase, a keyhole and the scissors when Grace Kelly is looking for a weapon to defend herself.
If you are lucky, you might still catch Dial M for Murder when it hits an art house. It is well worth catching on the big screen to see how Hitchcock used the 3-D process, not as a gimmick, but to bring out the background in the scenes. The DVD version does not include the 3-D print, but does include a feature explaining the process by director Joe Alves (Jaws 3-D). In the feature they explain that the way Hitchcock shot the film was to put many items in the foreground to make it look more like you are watching a play, through glass instead of watching a movie. As always with Hitchcock, he didn't use anything as a gimmick, only using the technology as a storytelling devise.
THE RETURN OF 3-D - 80s HORROR
"A 3-D Jason Cam dispatches a new batch of teen shishkebob at Crystal Lake, including a cleaver to the chest, a knitting needle through the noggin, a pitchfork piercing, death by plumber's wrench, speargun through the eyeball, knife through the neck, and the piece de resistance: a guy who gets cut in half LENGTHWISE, starting at the groin area. The canonical 13 dead bodies. Heads roll. Two breasts." - Joe Bob Briggs
The 3-D craze died a quiet death around the time Dial M for Murder was released and most theaters showed the flat print version instead, hence the lack of quality 3-D prints surviving. It would not stay dead and soon the crazy red and blue glasses made their return. Fans of the gimmick didn't need to worry about prestigious Hitchcock films this time around. The 3-D craze of this era was all about the horror genre.
A look at the titles released during this revival of the 3-D process finds films such as Amityville 3-D, Friday the 13th Part 3, Jaws 3-D and Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare. Amityville 3-D has the distinct reputation of being the first in the series to not be inspired by the alleged true story of the original book and movie. This movie would not be considered a sequel to the original films thanks to a lawsuit filed by the Lutz family, who were angered for not being involved in the film's storyline.
Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare is noted for being the film that ended the franchise until Wes Craven would return years later with the excellent New Nightmare. It was also the film that ruined the entire mystique of Freddy by telling his back story of a life with an abusive father (Alice Cooper), as well as cameos by Roseanne and Tom Arnold. This is the only 3-D movie I personally saw in theaters and my memories of it are simply of the gimmick and not of the story itself which was very poorly executed. Once this movie was released, Freddy was indeed dead.
Freddy himself, Robert Englund knew the movie was outlandish, but still seems to have a soft spot for it. "It's finally time for me to hang up Freddy's glove," he would state in the film's original theatrical press release. "I am extremely pleased that so much effort has gone into The Final Nightmare, making it, I believe, the most outstanding installment yet."
His most recent picture was the Jenna Jameson headlining Zombie Strippers, so take his praise however you want. It should be noted, if you but the Nightmare on Elm Street box set, it comes with 3-D glasses to watch the movie as it was meant to be seen, one of the very few movies with that option.
Jaws 3-D is very well known as the worst Jaws movie ever released. Dennis Quaid and John Putch play the sons of police chief Brody and are left protecting civilians of a SeaWorld theme park when a 35-foot shark is trapped in there. This was Quiad's first starring role, and thankfully things could only get better from there. It is almost wishful thinking to wonder what would have come if the producers had followed through with their original idea of making the film a spoof called Jaws 3 People 0. It would have been better than this.
Will Helm, here at 411, spoke at length of Jaws 3-D in his Misunderstood Masterpieces column. "Even though the filmmakers decided against making Jaws 3-D into a comedy, in the long run it ended up an unintentional comedy," Helm said. "While the acting is dull and lifeless and the characters and dialogue hackneyed – which isn't that big a deal in the big picture – the terribly low-rent special effects and forced need to fling things at the audience are from where the laughs spawn. In some scenes – especially in the "underwater deathtrap" – the sets are translucent; meanwhile, in the submersible scenes, the "special effects" – with an emphasis on "special" in the little bus way..."
Jaws 3-D was shot with the Arrivision 3D technique and, as a result, was never able to be reproduced for television viewing. The method of 3-D filming before involved using two cameras side by side and then creating the 3-D effects using the two different shots. With Arrivision 3-D, a special twin-lens adapter is fitted to the film camera, and divides the 35 mm film frame in half along the middle, capturing the left-eye image in the upper half of the frame and the right-eye image in the lower half. The theatre has to have a special projection lens and a reflective "silver" screen to enable the polarized images to reflect back to the viewer. This kind of 3-D effect does not work on television without special electronic hardware at the viewer's end.
The one movie on the list that is known for something other than being a bad movie is Friday the 13th Part 3. This installment of the franchise introduces the most popular key element into the Jason mythos as Jason dons the iconic hokey mask for the first time in the series. For those who have lived in a cave and are just now discovering movies, the killer in the first movie was not Jason, but instead was his psychotic mother, crazed because Jason drowned as a child. Jason appeared for the first time in the sequel, with a bag over his head.
The third film begins one hour after the second film ends, with an injured Jason making his way to an old barn where he hides out. He proceeds to kill anyone and everyone who enters the barn, taking his hokey mask from one of his victims. As with Jaws 3-D and Dial M for Murder before that, the 3-D elements of Friday the 13th Part 3 are not available on the DVD. JD Dunn put it best in his Cool Channel DVD Review here on 411. "Originally filmed in 3-D during the technology's early-1980s rebirth, Part 3 suffers from a move to the small screen," Dunn observed. "Many of the scenes are designed around throwing something at the screen or poking something at the screen. As a result, most of the scenes play out in a clunky fashion."
Larry Zerner, who portrays the character of Shelly in the movie, understands the lack of appreciation of this movie on the DVD format. "I went on opening night in Westwood," he states in The Friday the 13th Chronicles 8-Part Featurette. "It was sold out ... The crowd was yelling and screaming and they were really into it. They had a good time. A lot of the people had never seen ... a 3-D movie before. It was a new wave of 3-D ... It wasn't the red/blue 3-D process. The glasses were clear and polarized. It looked great and I think people were really reacting to the 3-D a lot because there's a lot of stuff in the movie which on the DVD ... doesn't play as well if it's not jumping out at you it doesn't mean anything ... When you see it in the theater it really plays and adds a lot to the movie."
This is a fear for the release of My Bloody Valentine 3-D. In the recent Fangoria review, it is made clear "without the 3-D experience (especially if the theater is packed with fellow fans), it would lose its luster and what you'd be left with, while decent, is nothing too special. But once you put on those 3-D glasses, you'll be dodging pickaxes and shielding yourself from blood that doesn't quite make its way from the screen onto you."
That has been the problem with 3-D horror pictures, and with this being the first original 3-D horror film released in over twenty years, remains a problem. The New York Times reported that Lionsgate expects to have only 900 HD screens available when the movie is released and will have to present it on conventional screens in the other 1,600 theaters. How will the movie play when it comes out? Will it be as memorable as Creature from the Black Lagoon or will it be the next Jaws 3-D?
PRESENT DAY 3-D
"This is not my father's 3-D - now we have glasses which have state of the art polarized lenses, dual projectors delivering pristine, bright, digital images that are in perfect sync and flicker free. No headaches and no nausea. Beginning this year every one of our films from the very first storyboard will be authored in 3-D." - Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation
My Bloody Valentine 3-D is just the first 3-D film in the 2009 slate. DreamWork's animated Monsters vs. Aliens is scheduled to be released this year and has started promoting their movie by presenting a 3-D trailer to appear during the Super Bowl with glasses available at 28,000 various locations. The next night, the glasses can be used to watch a special 3-D episode of the television show Chuck.
IMAX has helped usher in the current 3-D explosion. In 2003, James Cameron's Ghosts of the Abyss was released as the first full-length 3-D IMAX feature film with the Reality Camera System. This system uses HDTV video cameras instead of film and was built specifically for Cameron, per his specifications. In 2004, Robert Zemeckis released his performance captured live action/animated film The Polar Express, which was released both conventionally as well as in IMAX 3-D. The film was shown in 3,584 theaters in 2-D and only 66 IMAX locations. The 66 IMAX theaters earned 25% of the film's total profit and 14 times as much per screen than the conventional flat version.
Zemeckis' close friend and fellow director Steven Spielberg stated in 2005 he was involved in patenting a 3-D cinema system that does not need glasses, based on plasma screens. Whether this comes to be is still unknown, but Spielberg embraced the current technology with Monster House, which he produced in 2006 using XpanD, RealD and Dolby 3D systems. That same year, the Tim Burton produced Nightmare Before Christmas was also re-released into theaters using the same three systems.
Other movies looking at 3-D releases this year includes the Neil Gaiman adaption Coraline and the next Pixar film Up. Also slated are rereleases of more classic films, transferred to 3-D, including both of the Toy Story films. There is also a large number of horror films following in the footsteps of My Bloody Valentine 3-D, including Piranha 3D, Final Destination 4, Tim Burton's Frankenweenie, Horrorween 3D, and the classic Dawn of the Dead, converted to 3-D.
The Dawn of the Dead transfer was influenced by the re-released The Nightmare Before Christmas. That film has grossed $8.7 million since it was reissued in October 2006 into 168 theaters. New Amsterdam Entertainment chose In-Three to be the company to use its proprietary "dimensionalization" process to turn the 1978 movie into 3-D. There were slightly more than 1,000 3-D ready digital screens in the domestic market when they began to "dimensionalize" Dawn of the Dead, but that number was expected to grow.
The question is how fast the technology will grow in today's economic landscape. The movie industry doesn't have much to worry about, coming off a record year for profits. But the theaters are still struggling to make it, despite Hollywood's good year and not many can afford the expensive upgrades needed to house these 3-D movies. The New York Times recently had an article which compared Monsters vs. Aliens to last year's Kung Fu Panda. "Kung Fu Panda was released in 4,136 theaters at its widest," the article states, "and if Monsters vs. Aliens wanted to go all 3-D it will only have, at a minimum, about 1,300 theaters at its disposal."
DreamWorks will be releasing the movie in 2-D as well, but how will that help the new technology catch on? With over 40,000 movie screens in North America, to only have 1,300 of them able to show the 3-D film, plus another 250 IMAX screens, is it really something they need to be attacking right now? Since the process adds about $15 million to the budget of the movie, studios say they will be charging "premium prices" to the 3-D versions of the films, which means their new toys will be passing the buck on to the consumers.
This new format of 3-D is supposed to help build the movies from the "ground up," but people who remember the cheesy horror flicks from the 80s and the even older fans who remember the films from the 60s might be reluctant to embrace the technology as it returns yet again. The studios claim this time it is different because new technology proves they can build the movies from the "ground up" and have the film a more immersive and realistic visual experience, not one based on visual gimmicks. This weekend's release seems to be the exact opposite of that statement, as it is nothing more than a giant gimmick film.
However, Pixar is determined to release every movie from here out in 3-D, and DreamWorks is following suit, promising the next Shrek film will be 3-D as well. Ice Age has a new sequel coming out, also in 3-D. It is not the animated films that will determine the success of this one-hundred year old technique, which seems suddenly new and fresh once again, but the James Cameron epic Avatar. Cameron has been a champion of the format since his underwater exploring documentary and has staked an estimated $200 million on making his great 3-D space adventure a success.
"This is a long-term commitment and a long-term strategy," Jeffrey Katzenberg, the chief of DreamWorks, was quoted in the New York Times article. Part of the long term strategy includes developing 3-D options for televisions. RealD recently demonstrated their idea for a 3-D capable television and Michael Lewis, the chief executive of RealD, stated he expects Americans to own 10 million 3-D capable television sets within five years.
With many premium 3-D movie ticket prices reaching as high as $25, is this really something that will catch on in today's financial market? With ticket prices that high, how much will the televisions cost? These are all questions that remain to be answered. They surely won't be answered this weekend because My Bloody Valentine 3-D is simply another gimmicky horror film meant to make things jump out of the screen at you. But if 3-D does take hold in the next few years, you can track it back to this weekend when the first 3-D movie of 2009 was released. Will 2009 be the year 3-D was reborn? Only time will tell..
Watch the following trailer for MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3-D and then click on the posters below it to learn more about the DVDs of the movies discussed in this column.
