Wednesday December 16th 2009
Last week, we went to London’s glamourous Hammersmith for a trip to Disney HQ. We were going to see The Princess and The Frog, Disney’s long-awaited return to hand-drawn animation, at an exclusive ‘Blogger’s Screening‘.
It was awful.
Don’t get me wrong: the film was pretty good. It’s short and sweet and avoids most of the things that have made Disney’s last ten year’s worth of output so shit. Saying that, simply reverting to old techniques when new ones fail seems like a bit of a cop out, and they’re still light years behind Pixar.
But what was really unbelievable was the bloggers. I thought it would be great, a big screening full of young people seemed like the perfect antidote to months and months of sitting next to professional reviewers with their perpetual cynicism and insistence on audibly announcing their dislike of movies. I could not have been more wrong.
They were like five year olds: oohing and awwing at every fucking moment, chit-chatting away through half the movie and even (I’M NOT FUCKING KIDDING) screaming a catchphrase from the film in unison in the foyer afterwards. Fuck. Off.
I promise I will never complain about professional film critics again.
ON THE PLUS SIDE:
The movie was preceded by a message from John Lasseter addressed specifically to ‘all you bloggers over there in London’. Considering there were only about five or six different groups there, I am taking this as categorical evidence that the director of Toy Story is a massive fan of Ultra Culture.
Tuesday December 15th 2009
August 21st – We saw 16 minutes of footage at Avatar Day.
December 10th – The premiere happens and people go a bit mad for it (92% on RT).
December 13th – We start to worry that the Top 10 Movies list in our Review of the Year is going to be invalid by December 17th.
December 15th – We attend the first 3-D IMAX screening in the UK.
Here are our findings:
Avatar is rubbish. Sorry.
You probably already know the plot: evil human government-types attempt to capture land from a group of indigenous aliens on a strange tropical planet by adopting alien bodies, or avatars. In practice, this means that about half of the film is a weird CGI nature documentary, while the other half is a boring political allegory. So basically it’s BBC4: The Movie.
It still looks brilliant. The 3D is the best I’ve ever seen and even the cartoony Na’vi people are believable when rendered so beautifully. The planet itself is a masterpiece, and if this was a 90 minute wildlife documentary set on Pandora I’d give it two thumbs up.
But it’s not. It’s a bloated 3-hour message movie full of broad characters, predictable outcomes and completely ludicrous dialogue.
Bad one Cameron. Bad one.
Monday December 14th 2009
It may be a bad day for fans of Olly Murs, but it’s a pretty exciting one for fans of irreverent movie rambling.
And that’s because Ultra Culture has released a 40-page Review of the Year zine, available now from our dedicated minisite at http://www.ultraculture.co.uk/2009 and from the BFI Southbank, London.
It only costs £1 and it’s full of brilliant crap that you can’t get anywhere else (including our Top 10 Movies of 2009) so if you’ve been reading Ultra Culture for free for the last year and a half, you’re pretty much obligated to buy a copy.
DON’T FORGET THAT MINISITE:
http://www.ultraculture.co.uk/2009
http://www.ultraculture.co.uk/2009
http://www.ultraculture.co.uk/2009
http://www.ultraculture.co.uk/2009
http://www.ultraculture.co.uk/2009
P.S. We really shouldn’t have published our Review of the Year on the same day that we’re going to see Avatar.
Sunday December 13th 2009
As you may or may not have noticed, our Best of 2009 page is currently empty. There is a perfectly good explanation for this, which we will give you tomorrow (put it in the diary, srs). In the meantime, why not check out Tescos Haymarket‘s Best Films of 2009, including:
- Iron Man (2008)
- Inkheart (2008)
- Nim’s Island (2008)
- Evan Almighty (2007)
- Kung Fu Panda (2008)
- A tub of ice cream
And of course…
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001)
