Saving Private Ryan

Cinema

‘Swish’ Cottage ODEON

IMAX ODEON, Swiss Cottage

Tuesday

1/1/13

12.15 pm

Profile

5 screens (one IMAX)

Film

The Hobbit ‘An Unexpected Journey’ (12a) in HFR (48 fps) 3D IMAX

Tickets

Adults from £8.50 (regular films off peak) +£4.50 for IMAX 3D

25% Discount for Tuesday screening

Foyer

ODEON Swiss Cottage has a broad open foyer area and is brightly coloured and well lit. Tickets can be purchased from the counter immediately opposite you and a bank of automated machines at the side of the foyer offer the same facility. Many ODEON cinemas incorporate a Costa coffee shop and the Swiss Cottage outlet is located just next door. It also has its own (convenient) ticket collection machine. Front of house was very clean and inviting, as were toilets and corridors as this is clearly a flagship site for the group.

Refreshments

As with most multiplexes, a great deal of over-priced snacks and drinks are on offer and a selection of alcohol is available. In addition to the basic popcorn and sweets options, I noticed ODEON have now begun to stock a limited range of ‘deluxe’ snacks in small plastic pots such as chocolate raspberries – very similar to ranges found at Picture House Cinemas.

Auditorium

Screen 1

307 seats

IMAX

Allocated seats

A New Year’s Day crowd of around 150

Ushers direct you to your (large and comfortable) seats. I chose this cinema as according to my research it was the only cinema within 100 miles to be showing this film in the HFR (48fps) 3D IMAX version.

Review

Having suffered the horror that was ‘Tinkerbell and the Secret of the Wings’ just before Christmas, I was desperate to get my movie viewing back on track by kicking off 2013 with a good watch. All I can say is thank goodness I saw ‘Life of Pi’ prior to this to round off 2012 otherwise tiny Tink might just have edged out Peter Jackson’s diminutive hobbits and dwarves as the best film I had seen in the cinema in the last month (oh – except Sightseers, which was also excellent!)

Even Tinkerbell’s magic cannot save this HFR disaster

I am of course being enormously harsh on The Hobbit Part 1 which is nowhere near as awful as the abysmal and shamefully commercial Tinkerbell, but it is the level of disappointment one experiences on seeing a big release when your expectations are so high. I expected very little of TATSOTW and it delivered exactly that. Whilst I was certainly sceptical Jackson’s idea to turn a short children’s novel into 3 films (which seemed adequate for the much more epic ‘Lord of The Rings’ trilogy) I certainly expected much better than it delivered and there is certainly one major culprit that was the catalyst for all this (Mount) doom and gloom.

48 Frames per second is rubbish! From my central England location, I was given the choice of only London or Manchester as my closest opportunity to see the first instalment of Jackson’s new franchise in IMAX 3D projected in HFR (48 fps) – the big kahuna – surely the true form the director intended. I am no fan of 3D, but have always enjoyed my previous IMAX experiences – but it was HFR that really piqued my interest here – and whilst it is foolish to judge the merits of the format on the basis of one showing of one film – I am going to do that anyway. First impressions count!

Though I had read a few articles about HFR and listened to Peter Jackson talk about the ‘look’ of it on screen, I still couldn’t quite picture it. It seemed to me that this was something other than High Definition. I remember seeing my first HD TV and my first Blu-Ray and almost finding the image too sharp at first. It was the difference between cassette and CD (or MP3) and is now the accepted standard. Following the ads, trailers and opening credits we are once more transported to Hobbiton, Middle Earth to experience another Hobbit adventure.

YUK! It looked awful. It looked real…but not real in a good way…real like you were almost there…but not immersive…like you were actually there on set…because that is what it looked like. A set. You could see it was a set. And costumes. And make-up. In his documentary ‘The Story of Film: An Odyssey’, Mark Cousins comments that in filming the amazing opening scene to ‘Saving Private Ryan’, Stephen Spielberg has created “a lie to tell the truth.” 48 Frames per second seems to have exposed that lie. This is not the ‘true’ story of a hobbit and a wizard and a dozen dwarves. It is actors in costumes on a set pretending to be those things. HFR has taken away the sheen of cinema that allows us to believe what we are seeing is real. Now we can clearly see it is not. Let me elaborate so you can visualise for yourself.

Pick one of your favourite films of the last 10 years – one you inevitably own the DVD or Blu Ray of; ‘Lord of the Rings’ perhaps. In the ‘extras’ section, watch some of the behind the scenes footage, the making of; where you can see camera operators and the edges of sets and lighting rigs. Perhaps you will see an actual scene being filmed as the main characters rush down an alleyway or through a door to a building. That is what HFR looked like to me. It looks like the behind the scenes footage. HFR has destroyed the production value of the film. It now looks like TV – and cheap TV at that. Hobbiton’s rolling green hills resembles Telly Tubby land. Christopher Lee’s beard looks like something he picked up at Party Mania on the way to the shoot. It is as if Elijah Wood (as Frodo) is appearing in a low budget BBC children’s drama on a Sunday afternoon, not a $250 million blockbuster. Go back to your DVD extras. After the scene of the actors running down the alleyway, they may now show the actual scene from the film – looks better doesn’t it? Not in 48 frames per second it doesn’t. It looks the same. It looks like sets and props and costumes. It looks rubbish.

As HFR was one of my main motivations for seeing the film at Swiss Cottage and it was so overt in the opening scenes of the film – it has somewhat marred by review. As you can probably tell – it made me quite cross. It has been claimed that HFR will solve some of the problems with motion blur in 3D films and to some extent, this appeared to be true. Additionally, wide angle shots from distance showing the beautiful New Zealand landscape did not suffer from the noticeable flaws in the close-up scenes. The heavy use of CGI during some set-pieces did not help however, as when the real bits look ‘too real’ the boundaries between sound stage and green screen become all the more obvious. On that note, the CG ‘White Orc’ seems to have been lifted directly from the opening sequence of a computer game. The prosthetic make-up used for orcs in TLOTR trilogy made them appear grotesque and menacing – conversely, the white orc would have been better placed in the forthcoming Wreck it Ralph as nemesis to Mario or Sonic.

What of the rest of the film? It is a good story – but isn’t that a given as it is based on a book? True fans may have problems with the extra sections imported from the Lord of The Rings appendices and Tolkien’s Silmarillion, but they at least begin to justify the running time. Personally, I did not find the film too long and the opening act in Hobbiton at least went some way to familiarising the audience with a host of new characters. I found the same problem with the book on first reading with too many homogenous dwarf characters. Jackson manages to give about half of them recognisable traits and characters.

Martin Freeman is exceptionally well cast and the eventual appearance of Gollum precedes a wonderful exchange of riddles between the two (three?) of them.

How 48 fps might look

Unfortunately for me, the film was blighted from the off and I shall ensure that this time next year I endeavour to see a 24 fps 2D performance instead. It is likely I will enjoy it a whole lot more.

Code of Conduct: Transgressions

Talking

Rustling

Mobile Phone Use

Irresponsible Parenting

COC Score 6/10