Fantastic Beasts And Thra To Find Them [Review: Dark Crystal episode 1]

The world of Thra is changing. The Skeksis, alien vulture-like creatures who have ruled over the native Gelflings for hundreds of years, have plundered the power of the Crystal to sustain themselves, and this is beginning to influence Thraian lifeforms in sinister ways. Most of the Gelflings are extremely gullible and view the obviously evil Skeksis as benevolent lords, but one or two are beginning to smell a rat. Junior guards Rian (Taron Egerton and Neil Sterenberg) and Mira (Alicia Vikander and Helena Smee) are searching the Skeksis castle for an escaped Spitter when they have an unfortunate encounter with the Skeksis chief scientist; meanwhile Gelfling princess Brea (Anya Taylor-Joy and Alice Dinnean) becomes suspicious of the tributes offered to the Skeksis lords during the annual tithing ceremony, and underground-dwelling Deet (Nathalie Emmanuel and Beccy Henderson) discovers that her favourite baby nurloc has become a little irritable. Something isn't quite right.

Set before the events of the 1982 movie, The Dark Crystal is a new TV series produced by the Jim Henson company and available on Netflix. Like the movie, it's an ambitious attempt to tell an epic science fiction story through puppetry - the cast, and the many forms of wildlife on Thra, are all portrayed by puppets. However this is not an anti-CGI campaign but a pairing of visual and special effects, with live-action puppetry transported to a computer generated landscape.

Thra is a planet rich in fantastic beasts, and they have been created with imagination and humour - this is one of the most enjoyable aspects of the episode. Imagine Avatar re-created by the Muppets. In fact there are plenty of similarities between Pandora and Thra. Both ecosystems have been imagined in great detail, and there does seem to be a lot of bioluminescence about on both planets.

The first episode has to introduce the planet's backstory through a brief history lesson, introduce the many Gelfling factions, and begin the stories of the Gelflings and Skeksis central to the plot - as a result the action switches from region to region rather like an episode of Game of Thrones. And without providing too many spoilers, as with Game of Thrones maybe you shouldn't get too fond of any particular characters.

Speaking of characters, each major role in Dark Crystal is credited to two people - a voice actor and a puppeteer. The voice cast is stellar - see examples above, but the list also includes Mark Hamill, Simon Pegg, Sigourney Weaver, Helena Bonham-Carter, Killjoys' Hannah John-Kamen and a few Game of Throners for good measure. Look at the full cast list on IMDb here and weep. I haven't heard of any of the puppeteer cast but I now wish I had - they are incredibly talented.

Conclusion: a strong first episode that provides exposition, starts off several plots, introduces characters and gives some idea of just how epic this series could be. The rest of the series has much to live up to.

The City Of Gold And Lead

This week sci-fi has literally been oozing out of the ground all over London. First of all the Tree of Souls sprouted in Hyde Park:
Rumours of the discovery of massive deposits of unobtainium beneath the Serpentine lake remain unconfirmed and I am assured that the excavation works all over London are pure coincidence.

Over in Piccadilly Sci-Fi London is in full swing. Accompanied by my two leading ladies I came to the screening of the 48 Hour Film Challenge entries, just as the All-Nighter survivors were leaving. I say "leaving", but what I really mean is "falling asleep all over the foyer." Brave souls, I will join you in your cryogenic suspension pods next year.

Our non-shortlisted film, Half A Million, received a few giggles and some applause - you're a polite lot, Sci-Fi London! More about this in my last post. It was shown alongside some really good entries made by some very nice people, so I'll round up the links and publish my favourites in another post.

Starcraft II was on display. This is news. Look!

The amazing Science Fiction cupcakes by Chocoloty (pictured) - which tasted as glam as they look. I'm guessing Chocoloty is a fan of Barbarella, Flash Gordon or old-series BSG rather than, say, new-series BSG.

Pandora's (Slightly Smaller) Box Of Oscars

Clearly the Academy Judges agreed with me: there was indeed no argument that Avatar deserved nominations for Art Direction, Cinematography and Visual Effects as these were the three wins. A great achievement, but "only" a good film. In some ways the situation is similar to Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956) which was nominated for seven Oscars but only won Best Effects for some impressive envelope-pushing by John P. Fulton.

I have yet to see The Hurt Locker, this year's success story. I missed it the first time around as I'm not all that keen on straight war movies (I prefer films like Lord Of War or Wag The Dog) but I'm now extremely keen to see it. The Academy can be a little proud this year but should still be ashamed of it's failure to recognize female directors: no previous wins in this category and only three previous nominations (Lina Wertmuller - Seven Beauties 1976, Jane Campion - The Piano 1993, Sofia Coppola - Lost in Translation 2003) plus two female director winners of the Best Foreign Language Film award. Jane Campion and Sofia Coppola did win Best Screenplay Oscars. [source: wikianswers.com]

Pandora's Box Of Oscars: Part II

Further thoughts on Avatar's multi-Oscar nominations: for all the criticism, Avatar hasn't been nominated for a single Golden Raspberry this year. It's fair to say that the public, who vote for the Razzie nominations, haven't carried a knife for this film - they've either been highly enthusiastic or indifferent rather than especially critical, and seem to have reserved their real hatred for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Twilight.

However this also reflects the categories of Raspberry which are still too broad and too traditional. There really aren't any grounds for Avatar being nominated for Worst Picture, or Worst Supporting Actress etc. However if there were a Raspberry for Worst Name Of A Mineral In A Sci-Fi Movie, for example, or perhaps Most Badly Disguised Political Message, then Avatar would win hands down.

Pandora's Box Of Oscars

Team Avatar in the news again - with nine Oscar nominations. I enjoyed this film, but on reviewing the nomination list I had some mixed feelings.

Art Direction: Rick Carter and Robert Stromberg, with Kim Sinclair for set decoration
Cinematography: Mauro Fiore
Visual Effects: Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham and Andrew R. Jones
No argument on these three: quality of physically constructed sets and props and of CGI elements is pretty high, as is the overall standard of photography. The depth of simulation of Pandoran geography and culture is a factor here as it really comes across well in the film.

Editing: Stephen Rivkin, John Refoua and James Cameron
Has Avatar been edited in an unusually brilliant way? Not so sure, although editing is one of the most important creative processes in film; also as I've previously said, editing a 3D film is different from 2D and there may have been numerous achievements and envelope-pushes along the way. Agreed (after extra time).

Original Score: James Horner
Not the most memorable film score ever but beautifully understated, and deserves some kind of award for not going down the March of the Stormtroopers route. OK, you can have that one on me.

Best Picture: James Cameron and Jon Landau, Producers
In a year that Moon didn't even get a mention I'm going to be overcritical of the Best Picture category. Avatar is a very enjoyable film (if you're not a full time critic) and that should count for something, but is it in the Best Picture overall category? Sorry, it's no turkey but it doesn't quite make the grade.

Sound Editing: Christopher Boyes and Gwendolyn Yates Whittle
Sound Mixing: Christopher Boyes, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson and Tony Johnson
I should know more about this technically, but I actually don't think the sound was of such stand-out quality to deserve Oscar nominations in the same way as the visual elements.

Direction: James Cameron
For: Cameron is well known as a hands on director, and has pushed every aspect of this movie from start to finish. So you can't separate his input from any other aspect of the movie - if you're giving out any gongs at all you have to include him.
Against: once upon a time, a director's job included coaxing great performances out of actors. Remember? Avatar has nine nominations - none of which are for acting - and I don't believe the cast are to blame for this as they included seasoned professionals like Weaver and highly talented newcomers like Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana.
Conclusion: you can keep the nomination but only after a slap on the wrist. Understood?

March of the Na'avi

I have a vague memory of noticing and enjoying the music of Avatar - but when I try to remember it I have great difficulty. There's certainly no March of the Stormtroopers or any John Williams theme running round my brain and keeping me awake. I also noticed that Avatar has received huge media coverage but very little of this is about the score or other elements of the soundtrack - again, there's nothing wrong with the sound but no sense of a world-defining soundscape as featured in, say, Wall-E.

Let's forget about the red and green specs era for a second. 3D Cinema actually began when Dolby Digital Stereo or similar formats became projection standards - this was the point where a soundtrack alone could transport you or leave you dizzy in your seat. The set-up mimics real perception - forward vision and surround sound. And if the soundtrack can give you orientation, the score adds depth: those Imperial cruisers in the opening scene of A New Hope would only have been about a third as long without the music.

With Avatar, vision has caught up again - and I think that sound has been kept deliberately low-key. This BBC Music review of the score makes the point well. James Horner, a skillful and experienced cinema composer, (Titanic, Apollo 13, Wrath of Khan) has written a subtle and effective score for an epic sci-fi blockbuster - this is itself a daring and innovative move.

Flight of the Na'avigator [Review: Avatar]

Welcome to the second age of 3D Cinema. My verdict: Avatar succeeds as an enjoyable film - not just a technically impressive one.

The film is set in 2154 on the hostile world of Pandora where a Terran outpost seeks to mine a rare mineral resource with a silly name - but must first persuade an intelligent native race to abandon their homes above the deposit. They send agents in amongst the Na'avi in specially grown Na'avi bodies - avatars - both to persuade the natives to cooperate and to gather intelligence.

Avatar as a narrative takes in several somewhat familiar plots: conflict over resources or territory; double agents with divided loyalty; the outsider leading the tribe against his own side; Romeo and Juliet's love affair. The plot is simplistic, it doesn't really surprise or twist much, but it doesn't collapse or lose momentum either. The messages are pretty basic - pro-conservation, strongly evoking the plight of the rainforests, and anti-war. There is one point where the anti-war message is hammered home using contemporary references such as "shock and awe" in the dialogue but this is the exception.

It's fair to say then that Avatar draws heavily and openly on other films and books, for example re-using the iconic Apocalypse Now shot of helicopters taking off in front of a giant sun. Other influences include everything Anne McCaffrey ever wrote, as well as Dances with Wolves, Lawrence of Arabia, Braveheart, Pocahontas, Dune and so on.

Avatar as a performance: Sam Worthington as Jake Sully and Zoe Saldana as Neytiri are faultless in motion capture, and Worthington's live portrayal of a paraplegic soldier is also great. In support, it's nice to see Sigourney back in a sci-fi role and she is as captivating to watch as ever; Michelle Rodriguez is amazing too - would someone please cast her in the lead soon? She seems to be making a career of fine support work but is capable of much more.

Avatar as a spectacle: on a few occasions the 3D shots don't quite capture the viewer - but when they do work they are simply breathtaking. The ten years of world building has paid off and Avatar really is worth seeing for the spectacle alone.

Avatar and the language of 3D

Continuity editing, the dominant style of narrative cinema and TV, is about how much you can get away with: two actors can film on opposite sides of the Earth, ten years apart, yet the viewer can be made to believe they are looking into each other's eyes and sharing an intimate conversation. It's also about what maintains this illusion and what disrupts it. An example is the infamous 180 degree rule: the camera should remain on the same side of two characters so they do not reverse their left-right onscreen positions.

Note that these are not rules punishable by death. You can "cross the line" using a moving transition shot; or the sense of disorientation caused by breaking this rule may actually be of dramatic use or might suit a more edgy style of direction.

Which brings me to Avatar which is a huge experiment in 3D cinema: a feature-length film combining live action and CGI, with characters, a (simple) narrative, and a great deal of action. For me it succeeded in it's own right as a film: not just impressive but enjoyable.

However, whether Avatar succeeds or fails for other viewers, it is also a huge seam of material to be studied. 3D is not just a better version of 2D. Some initial thoughts on the new language of 3D:

• Speed is important. Get it right and the viewer is twisted or thrown around with the action; move the camera too fast or too jerkily and she becomes detached from the action.


• 3D can be used to flesh out foreground or background but rarely both - if there's a lot of foreground depth then the panoramic background will still look like a painted scene.


• Focus pulls are just plain wrong in 3D. So, predictably, are any other shots that make use of a forced depth of field effect. The viewer can switch their own focus from background to foreground in a 3D projection - if you artificially defocus part of the field then what exactly are you doing? Damn.


• The 180 degree rule stands. If anything 3D is less forgiving of this.

I can imagine that one day the majority of films might be made in 3D, from high concept sci-fi to low-budget gritty-reality indie drama. When this happens, we will need a new version of continuity editing and we will learn our new rules about what works by going through Avatar frame by frame.

Sigourney Weaver - still cool in any number of dimensions.