3D Movies.

Well here we go with another end of another year but this time it is the end of the 'naughties' – as they say on the BBC World Service – the naughts, the zeros or whatever else people are calling it; I'm sorry I only found out recently that they were calling the decade the naughties as I like it.

And at the end of this year the number one movie at the box office is a 3D film called Avator; this film up to today has taken $242 million at the box office in America alone.

Now this is an avalanche, a stampede and people feel obliged to go and see it as they feel a need to have the experience and it sounds to me that it relies on computer graphics and style over substance.

It will probably bamboozle itself to the best picture of the year in the academy awards in March but I have to ask – is it the best film?

Would it be fit to even tie the bootlaces of The Searchers, for example? I don't think so.

In fact I don't even think it is the best film of this year - but what has that ever had to do with choosing the best film?

The thing is it's a 3D film with loads of new technology and I have friends who are saying that all films in future should be in 3D – I hope not!

A film, to me, has to rely on the acting and the story – I'd also like to be able to see it and hear it and not have to strain my eyes and ears because of bad sound or picture.

Let me interject here to say I haven't seen Avator yet and I'm not going to review it as I'm not a reviewer – I'm an actor.

So back to Avator and 3D; when 3D was tried in the fifties loads of movies were released with people falling towards the screen, thrusting their swords at the camera and generally doing extra things just for the 3D effect.

There is a good old pot boiler called The House of Wax starring Vincent Price, I seem to remember, and if you look at that movie you will notice that for no reason, outside the wax museum, a man chants a song to the camera – early rap?? - whilst holding a table tennis bat with the ball attached by a rubber band; as he chants he hits the ball at the camera in rhythm with his song; there is a bouncing musical backing and I have seen the film a few times just for this sequence.

What am I getting at I hear you asking yourself????

Bear with me – when sync sound was invented the producers flooded the market with musicals and when colour TV came on the scene we were inundated with rainbow sets and multicoloured dream coats in more TV shows than I care to remember.

I think this is going to happen again now that we have 3D – loads of 3D movies will be at the multiplexes, with performers doing the equivalent to the man in The House of Wax, and the movies I like will be elbowed out by this new piece of technology.

I loved a little movie this year called Hurt Locker which would have been a great film in any technology. It didn't need 3D to be great; it has a great cast and if the studios had forced that movie to be in 3D the audience would probably have been subjected to bits of bodies flying into the audience and real life explosions.

I will probably see Avator but I will try and see Up in the Air, A Serious Man, Crazy Heart and A Single Man first.

Avator is a film made for fourteen year old boys – the same people that camp outside the Chinese Theatre here if anybody even mentions that another indeterminable episode of Star Wars might be showing there in the distant future – and I want to see grown up films.

I want to see well acted, well scripted and well shot films that are under two hours long but will I get my wish?

Who knows?

Happy New Year!!!