Film
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THE CONSUMPTION OF MASS CULTURE MAKES PEOPLE DOCILE Hitlist THE BEST FILM & DVD RELEASES*
Popcorn and dissent Fourteen years in the making, James Cameron’s Avatar is finally released this week. Will it be any good? Who cares, asks Paul Dale, it’s all just a media hoodwink
T here’s nothing like the drawn out hype for a new James Cameron film (event, happening) to fuel a natural sense of anarcho-primitivism. ‘This film integrates my life’s achievements,’ the Titanic director said in a recent interview. ‘It’s the most complicated stuff anyone’s ever done.’ ‘This film’ is Avatar, the science fiction fantasy Cameron has been working on for over a decade at an alleged cost of over $300 million. The basic plot revolves around a wheelchair bound ex-marine who is selected to take part in the avatar program which will allow him to walk using the bodies of psychically controlled alien hybrids. These ‘avatars’ are used to explore and invade the extra-terrestrial satellite Pandora to search for valuable minerals. Blah blah, yeah whatever. We all know what Avatar is really about: it’s about the crazy Canadian’s penchant for playing God with new technology.
Frustrated by the clunkiness and limitations of existing 3D cameras Cameron has spent much of the last ten years trying to cajole the engineers at Sony’s high definition division in Tokyo to develop a portable 3D camera. Cameron then went scuba diving and knobbing about on fighter planes to put the prototype through its paces. Eventually Cameron announced that he did have every intention of making Avatar and it would be in digital 3D and that it would herald the next big revolution in cinema. The trouble for Cameron was that cinema chains were not adopting the expensive new 3D projection technology fast enough, so he let others test the new kit. The first was Robert Roderiguez who shot Spy Kids 3D using
the new camera, the film took a cool $200 million at the US box office despite being projected on antiquated 3D projectors (viewed using the old fashioned red and blue glasses). The success of Roderiguez’s film and Cameron’s subsequent anguished urges to delegates at the Showest convention in Las Vegas that the world was ‘entering a new age of cinema’ helped goad an exhibitor sea change. All of which is mildly interesting and will no doubt emerge in more mythological terms in Cameron’s authorised biography, but what is actually going on here? Well, like Marshall McLuhan, for Cameron the medium is the message. He is, in essence, helping enable cinemas to show and make money from a format that is currently exemplified by pumped up versions of horror and fantasy films. But to what end? Surely this connects to Frankfurt School Marxist sociologists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s belief that mass culture creates false needs? That consumption of popular culture makes people docile and content, no matter how terrible their economic circumstances. Even back in 1947 Adorno and Horkheimer identified the fact that it appeared that moviegoers were less enthralled with the content of blockbusters of the era, than by the air-conditioned comfort of the theatres – an observation reflected in an old cinema business adage that one found a good place to sell popcorn and built a theatre around it.
Avatar is on general release from Thu 17 Dec. See review, page 55.
✽✽ Departures Joyous Oscar winning Japanese comedy of death and redundancy. See review, page 56. GFT, Glasgow from Fri 18–Wed 23 Dec. ✽✽ I’m Gonna Explode Playful teenagers on the run romance from Mexico. See profile, index and review, page 57. Cameo, Edinburgh and selected release from Fri 1 Jan. ✽✽ Tokyo Story Japanese masterpiece goes back in to cinemas on digital restoration. See Also Released, page 58. Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 1 Jan. ✽✽ The Queen of Spades Recently rediscovered 1949 British chiller by director Thorold Dickinson gets brief cinema outing before coming out on DVD in January. See Also Released, page 58 and interview, page 68. Filmhouse, Edinburgh, from Sat 26 Dec. ✽✽ Post Grad Pleasingly bittersweet tale of girl angst from the producer of Juno. See review, page 57. General release from Fri 1 Jan. ✽✽ The Red Shoes Moira Shearer dances again in digital. Filmhouse, Edinburgh until Thu 24 Dec. GFT, Glasgow ✽✽ Disgrace Intelligent and faithful adaptation of JM Coetzee’s Booker winning 1999 novel. Out now, selected release. ✽✽ It’s a Wonderful Life Yes it’s Christmas and it’s back at the cinema. GFT, Glasgow until Thu 24 Dec. Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Fri 18–Thu 24 Dec. ✽✽ Scrooge The only decent version of Dickens’ Christmas fable on the big screen. Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Fri 18–Sun 20 Dec. ✽✽ The Gold Diggers Sally Orlando Potter’s 1984 feminist drama on DVD for the first time. Out Mon 28 Dec (BFI). 17 Dec 2009–7 Jan 2010 THE LIST 55