Battle Of The Ex's.

I had to redraft my Cameron's Balding, Golden Army article as the Editor wanted it to solely focus upon the Oscars as an Avatar centric article had already been published this month. So I decided to focus upon the rather humourous topic of debate that has been riffled up due to the Oscar nominations this year. (Not that I find Divorce funny or anything...)

Battle Of The Ex's

Everyone knows how awkward break-ups are; deciding whose CDs are whose, who gets to keep the Lost dvd box-sets, and of course, who gets to win Best Picture at the Oscars. We’ve all clearly been there.

As they always say, men are from Mars and women are from Venus, but with this variation on the same old formula we have the man fighting from a computer generated and cinema revolutionising world entitled Pandora, and the woman growling from a realistic, gritty Iraq desert with her bomb disposal crew.

I am of course referring to the 2010 Oscar nominations and the issues these nominations have thrown-up.

James Cameron’s Avatar took cinematic technology to the next level and has been praised for being a game changer in the world of Hollywood, but this evolution it has brought isn’t necessarily a good thing. Could the fast moving development and progression of cinema into a 3D digital narrative platform be damaging cinema just as much as it is apparently improving it? Is the fast moving technology of cinema making the carefully constructed narrative threads of films such as Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker defunct?

It is something that has struck up an entertaining Battle of the Ex’s between Cameron’s Avatar and Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, the two Directors tying the knot in 1989, then shortly filing for divorce in 1991 and now both battling it out at the Oscars.

So far we’ve had two rounds, The Golden Globes and The Baftas. Avatar swept the earlier Golden Globe awards ceremony with all of James Cameron’s usual “I’m The King Of The World” swagger. Someone please buy the man a crown already and nail the bloody thing to his head just to appease his ego. Luckily us Brits being phenomenal as always awarded The Hurt Locker over Avatar. I just hope we don’t have a rerun of The Golden Globes at the Oscars.

No matter how entertaining Avatar was, you cannot deny how trivial the narrative was when compared to Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, and if Avatar had not been filmed for the IMAX theatre would it have really received as many nominations? Maybe it’s that the 3D element manages to immerse the viewer within the cinematic experience far more physically than it ever could before as dragons-like creatures dive bomb in front of your face just as effectively as the careers of every member of Hearsay have.

Many more social cinema goers may prefer this fantastical immersion compared to a more cognitive and character building plot but I’ll take a sprawling intelligent plot over technical wizardry any day.

With the Oscars beckoning (7th March) I can’t help but fret that Bigelow’s talents are doomed to be overlooked as James Cameron comes marching up the stairs to receive a small army of balding golden men as his nailed on crown glints patronisingly in the spotlight.

Maybe I’m being a tad melodramatic, 3D films can co-exist with the rest of the usual produce of cinema, but I just hope in the future, 3D doesn’t begin to completely over shadow everything else including clever narratives that don’t accommodate the usual Hollywood fare.

For this particular battle, I’m with Venus; you can throw as many scantily clad blue creatures whipping past my head as you like, but I’m with Bigelow’s bomb squad on this occasion.



And there you have it! The much shorter and more focused published article. Hope you enjoyed, and as stated in the last post, here are the films I have riddled my eyeballs with this week:

Hannah and her Sisters
Dead Ringers
Hills Have Eyes 2
Hellraiser
Badlands
A Prophet
Hills Have Eyes remake
Serial Mom

Next week I shall be analysing just how good a Persian Prince Jake Gyllenhaal really can make...you will shocked, appauled, offended and most importantly disgusted. I will see you then.