Hollywood Unoriginality Ratio: My Bloody Valentine 3D

January 18th, 2009

Geoff and I went to Century 12 Downtown in San Mateo last night to check out My Bloody Valentine, a horror movie where a miner kills people with a pickaxe. I’m not normally one to drop hard-earned cash on cheesy slasher flicks in the theater (Netflix is a wonderful way to get my fix while holding back on the simoleons), but I was particularly drawn to the experience because the movie was presented in glorious 3D!!! That’s right, no longer were we bound to the tyranny of mere height and width; this time, depth came along for the ride!

Sure, 3D is a gimmick Hollywood’s been trying to use on us for the last 50 years to put asses in seats, and generally isn’t used to any real artistic effect, but every once in awhile it can be a fun experience. Prior to this gem, I’d only previously seen two 3D movies in theaters (Spy Kids 3D: Game Over and The Nightmare Before Christmas; guess which one was actually good?), and this, well… was the third. Beyond the money shots of gruesome murders committed with pickaxe, most of the movie was so slow and uneventful it made severely poor usage of the technology. We counted three instances of a character slowly rotating a gun toward the camera. Okay guys, we get it, the movie’s IN 3D. It’s a fairly standard whodunnit storyline with a twist that I must confess I found somewhat disappointing (I don’t feel the clues were laid out very well, and the revelation leaves a lot of holes). But of course, you don’t see slasher films for the deep plots and shocking developments. If you see only one movie about a mass murderer offing people with a pickaxe this year… eh, wait and see, maybe the new Street Fighter movie will have something to offer.

I was a little surprised by the trailer fare, in that I was expecting the normal array of multiple films I don’t really care about seeing in the coming months, but instead, there was only one trailer! Real D, the company that provided the glasses and single-projector stereoscopy technology for My Bloody Valentine 3D apparently got to decide on the trailers or something, because that film was another 3D flick using the same projector system. Well hey, makes my job easier, and it got us into the movie quicker than I can ever recall, so hooray Real D!

Coraline 3D
Whoa ho! The only trailer they played and it’s something I actually want to see! Based on Neil Gaiman’s story of the same name (sans 3D) and therefore an ADAPTATION, Coraline is the first stop-motion animated movie filmed stereoscopically. What this basically amounts to is that the movie will look much better than the average 3D film because it was actually filmed in 3D! The video looked incredible. The effect was at its best not when things popped out of the screen, but when objects receded into the distance (especially one shot where Coraline opens the secret door and watches a tunnel extend backward into darkness). On top of that, I’ve already been pumped about this for some time, and now I will almost certainly seek out a 3D screening come release! Sadly, since your average computer does not have built-in stereoscopic video output capability, I can’t put up the 3D trailer, so go watch My Bloody Valentine 3D to check it out (I kid, of course).

TOTAL: 100% (1/1)

As of a January 18th screening of My Bloody Valentine 3D at Century 12 Downtown in San Mateo, CA, Hollywood has slated itself for a record 100% unoriginality! … But since there was only one trailer, I don’t feel that’s a fair assessment, and we’ll let them slide today.

Almost forgot to mention: the 3D glasses we got were amazingly dorky! Observe Geoff and myself, seeing the world through new eyes!

[discuss]

2 Responses to “Hollywood Unoriginality Ratio: My Bloody Valentine 3D”

  1. […] this movie continued My Bloody Valentine’s pesky habit of being light on the trailers, with only a single entry! Worse, it was one I […]

  2. […] local San Mateo theater last night for a screening of Coraline, presented in three dimensions! As mentioned in the previous HUR, I had been looking forward to this particular film for some time now, and it was a wonderful […]