A look back at 2010, part 1

So 2010 has come to a close, and it's time to look forward to 2011. Among the many new year's resolutions, it's time to actually update this blog a little more regularly. As one of my favorite bands from my teens, Rage against the machine, says: "who controls the past, controls the future". So after a pretty awful year for me, the economy, society, I think it's worth looking back on some of the shit that's gone done over the past year, hoping we might be able to move on. I've been told my posts are too long, so instead of going through the painstaking process of making them shorter, since it's my blog and I can do whatever the hell I want, I guess I'll just cut them up, and it starts right now with my little retrospective best and worst of 2010, starting with movies.

Let's start with the latest Hollywood craze: 2010 is the year that Avatar made Hollywood turn 3D. Agreed the movie came out in 2009 (December 16th in France), but it's in early 2010 that we were flooded with a deluge of marketing messaging announcing that 3D was the bomb, that James Cameron is a genius, the highest grossing movie in history and all that shit. Well, maybe I'm already an old man at 26, but I just don't get it. I mean, admittedly the movie looks pretty good, but give someone a shitload of money and technology and you'll get a good-looking movie. The problem for me with Avatar is that it's just not good, the script is derivative, the actors are awful, it's filled with bullshit clichés about the nature of humanity and just takes itself more seriously than it should. And while 3D certainly has potential and we probably will see pretty soon some really immersive 3D that takes moviemaking to "a whole new dimension", Avatar ain't it, and I'm sure the technology is up to what it should be to make 3D really stand out and justify 3-4euros extra on your movie ticket.

I've seen a few films in 3D so far, and I still think it's lacking, yes you have added depth and shit pops out at you, but the depth of field isn't really there, with everything I've seen in 3D, I feel like I'm looking at one of those children's pop-up books not like I'm in a 3D world. 3D still feels to me like it's a yet another marketing-driven technology designed to sell new TV screens and pretend like it justifies going to the movie theater instead of watching a DVD at home.

On the other hand, 2010 is also the year that Chris Nolan, after The Dark Knight, showed again with Inception that you can make challenging, smart, innovative, blockbuster movies. It didn't have any 3D, but still looked amazing, fucked your head up, immersed you into this world of dreams and deception, and just kicked ass, serving as a perfect counterpoint to James Cameron's masterpiece of pretension.

Happy new year at the movies!