Michael Bay Shows Restraint

There's a great article running over at Deadline Hollywood today about how studios are getting all hot and bothered over converting their big movies into 3D at the last minute. Personally, I've never seen a movie in 3D because A) I'm too cheap to pay extra for the gimmick, B) I've never seen a movie that gave me a burning desire to see it in 3D and C) in a post-Avatar world, 3D has stopped being about quality and is now just about studios desperately raking in as many spare dollars as they can.

James Cameron himself says it best in the article when he notes how after Toy Story theaters were flooded with sub par 3D animated films as if someone got it in their head that the success of that movie was in seeing cute things brought to life by computer animation and not say because of quality, originality, characters, story, etc. Now it seems that every movie is being converted into 3D at the last minute in order to capitalize on the success of Avatar, as if Avatar wasn't a big success because of quality, originality, characters...you see what I mean? It especially struck me that Warner Bros. made the announcement that all of their big tentpole releases will go through the 3D conversion process, especially considering when theaters didn't even care if they boycotted Alice in Wonderland a few weeks before its release because, as Mad Hatter mentioned in my comments section once, there are so many 3D movies lined up that exhibitors are sweating just trying to find enough 3D enhanced screens to get them onto.

And then Michael Bay weighs in on the pressure he is feeling on converting his Transformers 3 into 3D. Bay says that he tried to shoot the film using a real 3D camera so that the technique would feel authentic and have an air of professionalism about it, but it was too bulky to work with his complex, high speed style of action filmmaking. He proceeds to discuss, with a large degree of truth, that, despite what you may think of his movies, he always delivers a technically sophisticated product and he's not going to jeopardize that by giving it up to a technically unproven gimmick that he isn't sold on. Good for him. Like him or not, it's up to director's like Bay, who have clout within the studio, to ensure that the quality of their pictures don't suffer under the narrow-sightedness of a studio that thinks people will flock to anything just because it's 3D. And plus, if Transformers 3 is anything like Transformers 2, adding 3D into the mix will only result in leading to faster, more severe migraines.

In an age where studio tentpole pictures are getting worse and worse (Marmaduke? Yogi Bear? Battleship? Come on now) Hollywood is now trying to cut corners once again by not taking the time and effort that Cameron did to make Avatar's 3D process such a success, instead resorting to after-the-fact rush jobs. When will studios ever learn that fads become so because they possess a large degree of specificity and when you saturate the marketplace they will simply die off because audiences are bored with them? Personally, I can wait to see Warner Bros. shooting itself in the foot once 3D films start to bomb at the box office and to be honest, I see that happening sooner then later (Piranha 3D anyone?).

Check out the full article here.

Word on the Street

Last Friday I stole an idea from Mad Hatter where, instead of writing something original on Friday I just posted links to other people's interesting stuff. But then I didn't do it just quite right and Hatter scolded me for linking to too much news and not enough original blog posts. So this week I thought I'd give it another go and include more blogs this time.

Everyone is blogging about the Oscars. So much so that I've stopped reading all the full posts and just skim the ones that have some degree of appeal. Regardless, Nathaniel R at The Film Experience seems to be providing the most frequent coverage.

Speaking of The Film Experience, Robert has sparked a comments debate about whether or not Christopher Nolan's Memento is a masterpiece or not. (I weigh in on that debate somewhere in there).

The Mad Hatter gives his own tribute to Roger Ebert after the Esquire profile on Ebert earlier this week. To reply to something in his comments section: a large majority of the Siskel and Ebert back issues can be found on the At The Movies website. Be warned though, once you start watching one, you're going to want to watch them all.

Tom Clift puts in his two cents regarding the new Nightmare on Elm Street reboot trailer.

Kid in the Front Row started his own Facebook fan page.

Andrew at Encore's World of Film and TV continued counting down his favourite performances of the decade. Can't say I agree with his number 13 choice, but hey, he's still got 12 more to name.

Everyone is doing podcasts. Here I am, the new kid on the block, who is so technologically incompetent that I can barely even get pictures on my site properly and everyone is putting these things on theirs. Consider me jealous. Piper of Lazy Eye Apocalypse is doing one about the Oscars, Mad Hatter did one where he named his top five Martin Scorsese's movies, among other things, and Big Mike did his first one about the Oscars as well over at Big Mike's Movie Blog.

One more Oscar post from Sebastian from Detailed Criticisms who is none too pleased that Zac Efron and Taylor Lautner are going to be presenters.

/Film is saying that Michael Bay will start shooting big action sequences for Tranformers 3 in Chicago and Moscow. It is still to be revealed where the other 10 minutes of the film will be shot. (Sorry, I couldn't help it).

There's pictures of Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis from John Landis' Buck and Hare. I've read it. It's funny and also not funny, but in a good way.

To anyone else, if you thought you wrote something great and I missed it, drop me a line or scold me in the comments section and maybe I'll catch you the next time around. It was nothing personal. Really.

Transformers 3 News

Quite frankly, after the giant mess that was Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, I have next to no expectations for Transformers 3, nor do I look forward to it in the least.

However, according to shaky source Perez Hilton, Michael Bay, although vague, has gone on record and said that the third film will feature less robots and less explosions. This is strange news coming from the man who didn't even want to do the third film for fear that his talents were being marginalized by the franchise and because the studio was pushing him too quickly into production when all he wanted was a break.

This could be construed as good news seeing as that second film was nothing more than a hollow, brain-dead, incomprehensible cartoon with live faces popping up every once in a while. Although really, the franchise, at this point, has become so stupid that I don't even know how Bay or anyone else could condense the material into a meaningful story, especially considering what an arbitrary role the human characters play in the films.

Of course, at this point the franchise has made so much money that the studio doesn't even care if Bay turns in a good film or not. Just look at how many glaring, lazy mistakes were visible in the second film.

So, I don't know, is this good news? Will it renew interest in the series after Revenge of the Fallen alienated as many people as it amused? Has the studio finally heard the outcry that more is not more? Will Bay renege on his word and make another, loud, obnoxious hunk of crap? I know Bay has made good action movies in the past and know he will make good ones again in the future, but I'm not so sure he can control himself on this project unless his budget is significantly slashed.

I'm indifferent.