Culture Shock 12.08.11: These 'Dreams' old but not forgotten

The one thing that strikes me as off about Werner Herzog's documentary "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" is the title.

As we see, these dreams have not been forgotten. They've lived on, surfacing at other times and in other places, long after the cave vanished beneath a rock slide some 20,000 years ago, to be rediscovered only in 1994.

Maybe "Dreams of the Forgotten Cave" is the more accurate title, even if it sounds a bit too much like an Indiana Jones movie crossed with an H.P. Lovecraft story.

The cave is Chauvet Cave, located in southern France and site of the earliest known cave paintings, some of which are between 30,000 and 33,000 years old. As Herzog tells us, that makes them twice as old as any other known prehistoric paintings.

The cave of Altamira in northern Spain — subject of an admiring Steely Dan song, "The Caves of Altamira" — contains paintings generally thought to be about 15,000 years old, although some researchers argue for some of them being as old as the oldest Chauvet paintings.

That, however, is an archaeological dispute for another day, and one that probably doesn't interest Herzog in the slightest.

Given special permission to film in Chauvet — under severe restrictions — Herzog descended with a small crew and advanced 3-D cameras. Confined to a narrow walkway and limited to just four hours a day during six shooting days, Herzog and company nevertheless emerged with remarkable footage that Herzog has fashioned into an equally remarkable film, enhanced by Ernst Reijseger's melancholy score.

The paintings are astonishing for their age. These prehistoric artists capture horses, bison, lions, bears, mammoths and woolly rhinos in unmistakable detail. They simulate the movement of fleeing beasts by giving them extra legs.

More remarkable still, they use the irregularities and contours of the cave walls as part of their paintings. In the torchlight, Herzog notes, these creatures must have seemed to come to life.

For once, the 3-D is worth it. Viewing "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" in the standard two dimensions, you miss the three-dimensional tricks that play out over Chauvet's walls, and which Herzog recreates. Leave it to a 3-D skeptic such as Herzog to finally put the technology to good use. I wouldn't suggest purchasing a 3-D TV and Blu-ray player just for this film, but if you have them already, this is a film you must own, if for no other reason than to show off your home theater.

Perhaps the cavemen who left these paintings were showing off, too.

There is no evidence anyone ever inhabited Chauvet, so its purpose was likely ceremonial. Maybe it was the world's first art gallery, or maybe it was just the world's first graffiti.

In evolutionary psychology, there's a hypothesis that art, like the peacock's tail, is something used to attract a mate. Maybe we're looking at the works of prehistoric Don Juans trying to impress a girl.

The normally fatalistic Herzog (see his "Encounters at the End of the World") seems drawn to these artists as kindred spirits. They, too, document the world around them and seek meaning in symbols. The closest thing we find to a depiction of a human among the horses and rhinos is symbolic — part-woman/part-bison. It's the earliest blending of human and beast, starting a tradition that goes through Egyptian hieroglyphs and continues today in the pages of Batman and Spider-Man comic books.

Who were these Ice Age people who left behind only their art and their hand prints? What were their hopes and fears? In the end, they seem very much like us, and their dreams are our dreams.

In his career-long search for what he calls "ecstatic truth," a truth deeper than mere facts, Herzog has never come closer.

Thankfully, he takes us along for the ride.

Culture Shock 09.02.10: James Cameron takes a bite out of 'Piranha 3D'

While some may think it's just a gimmick, and film critic Roger Ebert deems it mostly a headache-inducing annoyance, James Cameron is definitely serious about this whole 3-D thing.

He's so serious about it, he has appointed himself arbiter of what is and what isn't proper 3-D. And he has an unambiguous message for the producers of "Piranha 3D."

That message: You're doing it wrong.

In an interview last week in Vanity Fair magazine, Cameron didn't hold back.

"I tend almost never to throw other films under the bus, but that ('Piranha 3D') is exactly an example of what we should not be doing in 3-D. Because it just cheapens the medium and reminds you of the bad 3-D horror films from the '70s and '80s, like 'Friday the 13th 3-D.' "

In other words, 3-D should be reserved for true works of cinematic genius, like a remake of "Dances With Wolves" set in space with furry blue cat people standing in for the American Indians. It demeans 3-D to use it the way it has almost always been used in the past — as a gimmick to add a few thrills and chills to B-grade horror movies.

Well, Mark Canton, one of the producers of "Piranha 3D," wasn't going to just sit back and let Cameron have one of his now familiar "I'm the king of the world" ego trips without comment. He fired off an e-mail to — apparently — every entertainment reporter in the business.

His missive starts off with a low blow, noting that Cameron's directorial debut was a little B-movie called "Piranha 2: The Spawning," the sequel to the film of which "Piranha 3D" is a remake. He then mentions that Cameron didn't actually finish directing "Piranha 2" because he got fired.

The rest of the e-mail goes downhill from there. To tell the truth, I only skimmed the rest. It's a bit long and rambling. I believe the phrase these days is, "TL;DR" — translated: "too long; didn't read." Let's just say the word "dictator" comes up.

Improbably, Cameron does still seem to be smarting from his "Piranha 2" experience nearly 30 years ago. As he tells Vanity Fair, "I worked on 'Piranha 2' for a few days and got fired off of it; I don't put it on my official filmography. So there's no sort of fond connection for me whatsoever."

I could understand if Cameron's point were that "Piranha 3D" is bad because it isn't really filmed in 3-D. Rather, like most of the other 3-D films released this year, it was converted into 3-D in post production. That sort of "fake 3-D" doesn't look nearly as convincing as the true 3-D Cameron used for "Avatar" or that Disney is using for its upcoming "Tron: Legacy." But what Cameron seems to be saying is Piranha 3D's subject matter is unworthy of the 3-D format.

Again, this from the man who gave us giant cat Smurfs.

In its long history, involving various technologies, 3-D has mostly been used in films just like "Piranha 3D." Whether it was "Creature from the Black Lagoon" or "The Stewardesses," 3-D has had a long association with dangerous aquatic monsters and topless females, both of which "Piranha 3D" provides in abundance.

If I have to pay double the normal ticket price to see a movie in 3-D, I know what I'd rather see, and it's not giant cat Smurfs.

Now the Cameron/Canton debate is raging across the Internet, with partisans taking sides. Meanwhile, I can't believe this is an argument at all, but at least it gives me a chance to dust off my "Avatar" jokes.

Clearly, Cameron has ambitions of revolutionizing the movies, not unlike when Orson Welles invented modern film-making with "Citizen Kane" in 1941. And he's frustrated that 3-D still seems like a cheap gimmick because, well, it's a cheap gimmick.

Except for the cheap part, because ticket prices for 3-D movies are outrageous.

Culture Shock 01.21.10: 'Avatar' mania opens a window of opportunity

I must be the only person on Earth who hasn't seen "Avatar," and I blame the movie's fans.

When even people who like James Cameron's latest opus admit the story is Disney's "Pocahontas" meets "Thundercats," no 3-D special effects — no matter how "game changing" — are enough to lure me to the theater.

If I want to watch a 3-D movie, I have a DVD of "The Stewardesses" at home. Personally, I think topless stewardesses are a better use of 3-D technology than a planet populated by blue-skinned cat people. But maybe that's just me.

No matter how much money "Avatar" makes or how many awards it wins, it's hard to take a film seriously when half the Internet calls it "Dances with Smurfs."

Still, I'm trying to look on the bright side. With people saying "Avatar" will change the way Hollywood movies are made just like "Star Wars" did, we just might be in for a few years of movies that really are risky and experimental.

After "Star Wars" revolutionized filmmaking in 1977, every studio in Hollywood tried to replicate George Lucas' success. Studio executives threw money at almost every sci-fi project they saw. If you were an aspiring filmmaker with a pitch that involved spaceships or robots or lasers, it was your moment.

Just think: In the wake of "Star Wars," a major Hollywood studio was willing to let David Lynch — the king of weird movies — direct a film version of Frank Herbert's classic science-fiction novel "Dune." No one in his right mind would have done that without visions of Death Star-sized profits dancing in his head.

Disney financed the sci-fi thriller "The Black Hole" and Steven Lisberger's visually groundbreaking "Tron."

Then, in 1984, Universal Studios released "The Last Starfighter," the first film to use computer-generated imagery to create semi-realistic space battles. And that same year, "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension" — a movie I'm still amazed was ever greenlit — hit theaters across the nation.

There was just one small problem: Most of those movies were either box-office disappointments or outright bombs. And when it became obvious that nobody was going to make the next "Star Wars" trilogy, the money dried up, unless your name was James Cameron. Then you got to make "Aliens" and the "Terminator" movies.

But most of those also-rans eventually gained respectable cult followings. That's why Disney is working on a remake of "The Black Hole" and has its "Tron" sequel, "Tron Legacy," set to debut in IMAX 3-D late this year.

I don't know what hopes Disney's executives have for "The Black Hole," but I imagine they're praying "Tron Legacy" is the next "Avatar" — minus the Thundersmurfs.

This will probably be a narrow window of opportunity. Right now, everyone wants to unleash the next "Avatar," complete with all of the fancy and expensive 3-D effects. Studios will gamble hundreds of millions of dollars to do it. But when the next "Avatar" fails to materialize, the money will disappear again.

So, who wants to hear the pitch for my groundbreaking 3-D movie, "Kung-Fu Biker Zombies vs. the Vampire Strippers from Hell in 3-D"?

I figure I've got all of Hollywood's latest fads covered.

An old Hollywood gimmick makes a comeback — in 3-D!

A 1950s movie theater gimmick is making a comeback.

The latest cinematic adaptation of Jules Verne’s “Journey to the Center of the Earth” opens in theaters Friday. And apart from a new leading man in the form of Brendan Fraser (“The Mummy”), this version sports a new look. Moviegoers will see Verne’s prehistoric world at the center of the Earth as never before — in 3-D.

“Journey” is the first live-action, action/adventure movie to open in the Real D Cinema format. Theaters screened last year’s CGI “Beowulf” in both 3-D and 2-D. The recent Hannah Montana and U2 concert films also used Real D Cinema.

You still must wear special glasses to get the 3-D effect, but the new glasses are a far cry from the red-and-blue filters of years past. They use polarized lenses that allow each eye to see only one of two projected images, creating the illusion of three dimensions.

Special effects wizards love new toys, so it was a given that 3-D would make a comeback in a more user-friendly format. But declining movie attendance is probably even more responsible for the new generation of 3-D movies. You have to give the audience something it can’t get at home.

That, of course, is exactly how 3-D movies began.

In the ’50s, theaters faced their first real competition, a newfangled entertainment device called a “television,” or “TV” for short.

The prospect of families staying home to watch the black-and-white flicker of Jackie Gleason and Ed Sullivan terrified theater owners. Theaters needed something new to lure people to the big screen.
Hollywood experimented with various 3-D formats, but the best remembered is actually one of the least used — anaglyph 3-D, which required audiences to wear headache-inducing cardboard glasses with colored filters, usually one red and one cyan.

Anaglyph 3-D turned up mostly on B movies and short subjects. Despite its disadvantages, anaglyph 3-D was easier to use given the technology of the day. Other ’50s 3-D formats, which relied on two projectors and polarized glasses similar to those now in use, were hard to maintain. But Anaglyph 3-D was perfect for low-budget movies.

Hollywood produced anaglyph 3-D movies into the early 1960s, and, ironically, some of these films eventually made their way to television, the medium they were produced to combat.

By the 1980s, 3-D was all but dead in theaters, with rare exceptions like “Amityville 3-D,” “Jaws 3-D” and “Friday the 13th Part III.” Still, that was enough to trigger a boomlet in old 3-D movies airing on TV.

That was when I had my first 3-D experience, when a local TV station aired the 1961 horror movie “The Mask.”

“The Mask” was mostly in 2-D but featured 3-D dream sequences. Whenever the main character donned a demonic mask, he hallucinated being in a spooky, 3-D landscape. Viewers knew it was time to put on their 3-D glasses when a voice intoned, “Put the mask on now!”

As a bonus, the TV station also aired a 3-D “Three Stooges” short.

This was a big deal for me and my friends. We all had our parents drive us to the convenience stores where we could pick up our 3-D glasses. Then we waited impatiently for Saturday night to finally arrive, so we could all experience the magic of 3-D.

Yes, it was cool. But I can’t say I enjoyed the eye strain that came with those glasses.

Still, 3-D had come full circle. What started as a gimmick for theaters had become a gimmick for TV stations. And, yes, I still have the pair of 3-D glasses I got to watch “The Mask.”

So, the question is, has technology come far enough to make 3-D mainstream, or is this another gimmick in the making?