J's blog

Avatar Review Part 1 – 3D, CGI and IMAX

jamiebiddle — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 02:08:10 +0000

So I finally got round to watching Avatar on new years day in IMAX form at a 22:30 showing (yes I know but we can come to that another time). There were many parts and issues about this movie that my review is split into 2 parts. In this first part I’m gonna talk about the 3D and the tech used.

There has been alot of hype about this movie with statements coming out like. This is going to change the face of movie making and it will finally bring 3D movies into the mainstream. The 3D issue has been long debated on Simon mayo’s film reviews with Mark Kermode regularly over the past year as more and more films come out in 3D and weather there is a place for it in cinemas. They have talked about it costing more which the cinemas claim is because of the glasses that are given away, but when people bring them back they are still being charged the premium which isn’t fair. There has been the theory of Mark Kermode who believes that it is a gimick and is only a ploy from the movie industry to reduce movie piracy as he has yet to see a 3D movie that enhances the experiance having watching both 3D and 2D versions of some of the movies. My own experiance of 3D is resonably limited due to me being more than a little naughty when it comes to watching movies but the only other 3D movie I had seen before this was a IMAX Space documentry narrated by Tom Cruise which I felt was quite impressive as going around the international space station with things floating around the place really added to the experiance but the motion was quite slow but static so I felt if this was used in real movies it may not transfer as well as things are so much more high paced and there is not as much oppertunity to enhance the experiance and with the movies that have come out in 3D there hasn’t been anything worth taking alook at till now. So did I think that this was the movie to blast 3D properly into the mainstream? Unfortunatly not! I’m not saying there was nothing that enhanced the experiance but the parts that did were limited to the training with the natives in the forest of pandora which considering how much was spent on the movie and the amount of detail that was used you will not get many movies around that will do that and then will only do it justice for 10-15 mins in a near 3 hour movie. It’s a little hard to prove because I have only seen the 3D version of the movie but a believe a 2D high def version will be more than good enough because there is alot to marval at in this movie but it’s not the 3D.

The CGI and what I’m assuming is motion capture technology is exceptional. The previous bar to measure on this is what was used in the Lord of the Rings trilogy with Gollum and to be honest Avatar moves this into the next level. The amount of detail is staggering. I’m not sure if there have been great advances in CGI technology or just the clear and precise vision of both the director and the artistic team is getting the most out of the technology but whatever it is they have done they have again taken it to the next level.

My biggest dissapiontment was that this movie was not properly shot in IMAX. I’ve seen both the dark night where 5 scenes where shot for IMAX and Watchman which was all shot for IMAX and there is going to be a next level in cinema real IMAX shot movies have to be the future because watching big blockbusters on a screen the size of 2 double decker buses on top of each other greatly enhances the experiance for me and will happily travel a good distance even for a late time to catch a showing rather than get my hands on it in more dodgy ways. Hollywood really does need to stand up and rake notice otherwise they will fall into the same trap that the music industry is now. It’s now up to them to step up, but will they. I guess only time will tell!

Wanna be Kanye?

jamiebiddle — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 13:39:57 +0000

Ever wanted to become Kanye West. Well now you can, all it takes is a pill according to this poster I found on the new york subway. Just ring the number on the poster and the pills are yours. So who’s first!

The attraction of A&F!

jamiebiddle — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 17:57:58 +0000

Going back to my holiday during the summer in the US and A I was introduced to the world of Abercrombie and Fitch. I’ve got to admit I’ve never seen a shop like it. First of all there is always a queue to get in at anytime of the day. Once you get in the door you have a male and female poster models posing just inside the door for anyone who wants to take pictures. You then walk inside and it is very dark with loud funky British music playing all the time. All of the workers look like models and most of the time are slowly dancing to the music with a smile on their face behind a quite roman décor on the walls. With the fact that they sold some quite different stuff I was suckered in and spent more there than anywhere else and was suckered in again by my couson on the last day and ended up spending even more. It is amazing seeing that a good few people are wearing it here since I got back to the uk but the items are not quite as nice as what I found in New York. However they do now have a store in London which I visited recently which was close to the New York store but be ready to pay for it. The prices I saw in dollars in New York were the same number in pounds over here which is nearly double the price. Guess they don’t call us rip off britain for nothing!

Hello again and let the catchup begin

jamiebiddle — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 22:12:12 +0000

Well hello again, I first of all like to apologize for being away so long. I seem to have dissapeared up my own ass the last 4 months or so since I got back off my holiday but now I’m back and here to stay. For starters I’m gonna catch up with some of the weird and random stuff I’ve seen around on my travels with new material daily untill I run out and then post when I come across something.

So first up I found this van driving around walking around central park in New York. Looks like Wayne and Garf from Wayne’s World have settled down and are now in the removal business. So much for PARTY TIME, EXCELLENT!

Mexico

jamiebiddle — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:11:47 +0000

So to be honest not alot happened in Mexico kinda. A majority of the time was spent either by the pool, eating or walking. After the pace of life before or during our holiday so far we were knakered and just felt like doing more than that. I was pretty much the same except the bad luck that had begun on vegas had followed me to Mexico. First off I made the schoolboy error of not applying enough suntan lotion on my back regularly enough on the first day coming out as you see in the pictures more than a little red which reduced the amount of time in the sun. Then after a night in the Mexican buffet resturaunt I picked up a stomach bug which after a day or so I thought I had shrugged off but I was wrong and after a heavy last night of drinking but feeling ok the next morning suddenly took a turn for the worse on the transfer to the airport where I was sick in the van taking us. Again not the best way to leave Mexico. On the whole I did enjoy my time there, just a little dissapointed that I was not able to maximize my time there. But still I had New York to come and could’t wait to get there

From Hell to Heaven

jamiebiddle — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 06:51:57 +0000

So after all the waiting to get through customs we got outside the airport to the circus of bus drivers waiting to collect their customers for transfers to their hotel. We found our driver for the hour drive to our complex. The drive over was abit strange as it was a long dusty kind of road as you can see in the pictures and then all these plush complex comes up to our left which was’t just one whole complex but many seperate complex’s in one big fenched off complex. As we drove around the complex I really began to feel I’d arrived and was looking forward to the next 6 days of rest and relaxation. We got to our complex and booked in and was given our wriststraps for the all-inclusive treatment we would be given. We were then given our room numbers and we went to find our rooms to find some quite plush rooms. The bathrooms were quite spacious with a aquabath, the tv was a flatscreen and we had a balcony with a view of the jungle beyond the complex. It was then time to eat at the dinner buffet which was quite wide ranging in the types of foods available. I left the buffet heading to bed feeling that I had come from hell to heaven. I was just pissed off I lost a day there

Leaving Dallas (Part 3)

jamiebiddle — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:25:09 +0000

After a few hours of waiting we finally were able to board another plane. The mood in the plane as I walked in was very strangely upbeat considering half the passengers had cancelled their flight. Everyone who stuck around was willing this plane would actually leave the ground and the possitivity coming from everone was amazing, even the cabin crew who by this time had completely lost the plot were getting into the spirit laughing and joking with everyone. So we all sat down hoping that this time we would leave the ground, the plane moved towards the runway and finally we took off. The cheer that went up from when we finally left the ground was like a release after the nightmare 24 hours we had faced. The next couple of hours of flight went to plan with no complications and as we touched down the feelgood factor on the plane was amazing, the nightmare was finally over. As I left the plane I shuck hands with most of the cabin staff as they had been in the middle of all this which none of them could do anything about. They actually looked the most relieved of all of us. But as I left the plane there was just one more bite in the tail to live through. A very long customs line which took a good hour and a half to get through

What do you do when you are stuck in dallas international airport

jamiebiddle — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 22:45:55 +0000

So what do you do when you are holed up in Dallas international airport. Well you shop! and this airport is a place to do it with many different types of shops on offer. I definatly took advantage of this purchasing my third fossil watch and some movie watching specs. But after taking a deeper look around found something even more amazing. A Sony self service vending machine where you could by things like speakers, headphones and even a psp like you were buying a can of coke. Only in America!

Leaving Dallas (Part 2)

jamiebiddle — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:57:48 +0000

So after all the problems getting to the motel we were set with more problems. We had to be at the airport for 6am but the motel did shuttles from 5 but only once every hour so there was nowhere near enough to get everyone back so we had to order a taxi to the airport which then moaned that there were to many people in there but by then we were having none of it and ignored him until we were on the way back to the airport. Once we got in and yet again past security we grabbed ourselves a mcdonalds breakfast and waited for 7am and our flight out. It took till 7:30 before we were aloud to board the plane. So we sat down very happy to be leaving as we began to move towards the runway when another annoncement comes from the pilot. There was a problem found with an indicator and we would be turning back towards the terminal for maintenance to take a look. You could feel the dissapointment in the plane as we turned back. The cabin crew by now had given up trying to calm anyone down and hid at the back of the plane. Then after a little while of waiting the uneveatable happened. The flight was cancelled and we had to leave the plane again. As we left the plane we were met by the airport police, I later found out that this was because fights had already broken out between other passengers. I then heard some of the sob storys that were on the plane from my auntie and uncle that were in another part of the plane. There was a couple that the boyfriend was going to propose to his girlfriend in cancun but then had to do it in a crappy motel in Dallas. There was a couple who were supposed to get married that day in cancun and also an American who had never left the country and feared that he was never ever going to leave after all this. We then found out that we had to wait on another plane coming in from Tulsa and we would try again on that plane once it arrived which ment another couple of hours waiting around in Dallas international airport!

How not to deal with stranded passengers!

jamiebiddle — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 22:54:28 +0000

So we left the plane from the back to find that most of the Americans were complaining their heads off to the staff who really couldn’t do anything to please them apart from hand out the hotel vouchers. We bipassed this and thankfully claimed 8 vouchers for the same hotel called the baymont motel. We were then directed outside where we would be picked up, after a little finding we came to the place and it was mayhem. Strangely there was no representative from American airlines to help us out, so it was pretty much a free for all. We also found out that we could only be transported by the shuttles of our own hotel and ours were very small, not very many and very infrequent. Where were waiting was underneath an underpass for the main gate and it was a very warm night made even warmer by the amount of buses passing by, some would stop but once they realized why we were there they were not interested in helping us. Finally the shuttle for our motel came and over 30 people went for a 6 and 8 seater car. We didn’t even bother trying as about 13/14 people dived into the 8 seater car. Luckily the 80year olds in our party were able to squeeze into the 6 seater with my cousin and his wife leaving 4 of the party left and we waited for another 45 mins until the shuttles returned and again about 12 of us pile our way into an 8 seater car. A tight squeeze but I was so very happy to get away and have a ned for the night