Tony Curtis: 1925-2010

A year ago I wrote the following about Tony Curtis who died yesterday:

Tony Curtis: One of the last of the true Hollywood stars

Reading Tony Curtis’ new autobiography ‘American Prince’ last week made me realise that his output was pretty poor considering he was in movies from the late 1940s through to the ‘80s. Curtis admits his career took a nosedive towards the end of the ‘60s to the point where if he didn’t work outside the United States he didn’t work. There are several explanations put forward for this from anti-Semitism to a reaction against his perceived poor treatment of Janet Leigh during their marriage but the most likely, I feel, is that when Tony Curtis needed another strong presence on the screen to help his star to shine brightly. Anything he made before 1957 has pretty much been forgotten with the exception of ‘Winchester ‘73’ (1950) in which he had a very small role and the entertaining but overlong ‘Trapeze’ (1956). Likewise, his output post-1960 was almost uniformly poor – ‘The Boston Strangler’ (1968) providing a rare gem. However, Curtis is one of those stars who has managed to cement a place in the list of Hollywood greats by virtue of a handful of excellent movies made in a short space of time. Between 1957 and 1960, Curtis starred in ‘The Sweet Smell of Success’, ‘The Defiant Ones’, ‘The Vikings’, ‘Some Like it Hot’ and ‘Spartacus’ which, by anyone standards, are five top-drawer movies. Perhaps we can learn from this that Tony Curtis was at his best when playing opposite another strong male lead (Burt Lancaster in ‘Sweet Smell...’, Sidney Poitier in ‘Defiant Ones’, Kirk Douglas in ‘Vikings’, Jack Lemmon in ‘Some Like it Hot’ and Douglas again, along with Laurence Olivier in ‘Spartacus') and when, after the success of these roles, he was expected to carry a film all by himself, his limitations as an actor were exposed and his star power is what carried him through to be remembered with such affection.

I love Tony Curtis. I think he is a great star and when he made a good movie, they were great and he was great in them, but rather like his good friend Frank Sinatra he couldn’t quite get along without someone of equal stature to play off. He needed someone to challenge him for his best to brought out and we can be thankful that for four short years he was regularly challenged as he always rose to the occasion.

Vatican II: This time it's personal.

'The Agony and the Ecstasy' (1965) ****

'The Shoes of the Fisherman' (1968) **

'The Pope Must Die' (1991) *

'Angels and Demons' (2009) ***

'Foul Play' (1978) ****

'Sister Act' (1992) ***

Pope Benedict XVI: A big Farrelly Brothers fan

Pope Benedict XVI visits Britain this week with much controversy surrounding his trip. Not only has there been widespread incredulity over the reported £12 million cost to British tax-payers for the visit, there is also expected to be a number of protests relating to the child sex abuse scandal that the Catholic Church is engulfed in. The current Pope’s reputation has always suffered in comparison to his charismatic predecessor, John Paul II who, though no more progressive on ethical issues relating to contraception, abortion and homosexuality, tried to foster good relationships with other faiths and had what might be called the common touch which he user to great effect on his extensive travels across the world. Benedict seems rather stuffy and awkward in comparison. He seems to have a dreadful habit of saying the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time and tends to fan the flames of dissent when trying to defend and promote Catholicism, which, lest we forget, is the primary responsibility of his role. His handling of the many child sex abuse scandals has been particularly poor with reluctance to fully condemn the actions not only of those responsible for the abuses but also those who helped cover them up, who had knowledge of the crimes but didn’t act and particularly those in high office who merely re-deployed those guilty into different jobs, some even taking roles that had direct contact with children.

This blog is primarily about films – watching them, criticising them, discussing, thinking, reading and talking about them, and most importantly loving them – and it is also supposed to be fun. However, when an organisation that has so much to say about morality fails to deal swiftly and satisfactorily with heinous abuses carried out by the representatives of their church, it stirs even the most laid back of us into some sort of action, even if it’s protest as mild as this one. You will all doubtless be sick of reading about these subjects in by now so all I will say is that the Catholic Church needs to wake up from the slumber it has been in for so long. An organisation run by old men with old ideas who promote doctrine and dogma above the core beliefs the religion was founded on and preach hypocrisy can only fall into an irreversible decline. It may already have entered that state.

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Anthonty Quinn as Pope Kiril, the fast-track pontiff.

So, back to movies and in keeping with the papal theme I’ve been looking at some Hollywood Popes. They are pretty rare in comparison to movies about priests but I guess the ratio of Popes to priests is always going to be low. From Spencer Tracy to Paul Bettany via Bing Crosby, Robert Donat and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, plenty of actors have donned a dog collar but very few have got the Ring of the Fisherman on their finger.

The most famous portrayal of a real Pontiff is probably Rex Harrison’s turn as Julius II in the 1965 epic ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy’. The film, which was a box-office disaster on release, tells the story of the painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Harrison’s irascible warrior-Pope locks horn’s with Charlton Heston’s Michelangelo who paints the ceiling only out of a sense of duty to God. In what is essentially a two-hander, both actors do a rather good job in making the film entertaining as neither character is particularly likeable and they spend much of the film arguing and being generally pig-headed before coming to realise that they are similar in many ways. In their weaker moments, the two men seem racked with self doubt and seem acutely aware of their personal failings whilst their public faces are arrogant, bullish and totally impervious to criticism. In the end we discover that both men are driven by their faith as they believe that their talents (as a leader and artist) are God-given. ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy’ is a very interesting and enjoyable movie. It is much shorter than most epics of the period and deserves a better reputation than as a flop that cast granite-jawed Charlton Heston as the effete dwarf Michelangelo. It was directed by the great Carol Reed, who spent half his time making peace between the warring co-stars, and it looks fabulous. Not quite as fabulous as the real Sistine Chapel but still pretty good.

We move next to a far from arrogant, far from bullish and very reluctant Pope – Kiril Lakota in ‘The Shoes of the Fisherman’ (1968). Like ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy’, ‘The Shoes of the Fisherman’ is adapted from a best selling book, is an expensively assembled picture designed to be a showpiece for the studio that produced it, and failed to pull in the crowds. This is one of my cinematic guilty pleasures. I know it’s slow and has an overblown sense of its own worthiness but there is something really fascinating about it, not least because it actually has some interesting things to say about the way the Catholic Church is run. Anthony Quinn is a Russian priest (Lakota) who is released from a Siberian prison camp just in time for Pope Pius XIII (John Gielgud is full ‘rent-a-Shakespearean-actor’ mode) to make him a cardinal. Lakota is reluctant enough at this juncture so imagine his surprise when the ham Pope dies and, after a lengthy conclave, he is chosen as the new Bishop of Rome. The rest of the film concerns itself with tackling three points: Church opposition to progressive theology (Kiril is friends with a radical priest and must censure him), the lack of interaction between the laymen and those high up in the Catholic hierarchy (Kiril is told that he cannot go out around Rome at night, but he goes anyway) and whether a wealthy religion can do more to help those in need (the new Pope uses his coronation to vow to use every penny he can raise to help the world’s hungry and poor). Anthony Quinn is probably better in roles that let him express his personality more than this. Here he wanders around with a permanent harrowed look on his face, which is perfectly understandable for a man who has gone from hard labour in the wilderness of Siberia to be head of the Catholic Church in a matter of weeks. However, it does make for a pretty miserable central character and in the hands of a worse actor the movie would have really stunk. Laurence Olivier appears as the Russian premier with an accent straight out of a Vodka advert. Olivier was in that period where he turned up in massive Hollywood productions, normally to play a foreigner, and basically took the piss out of the whole thing before running off to the bank with his enormous pay packet whilst the film’s producers slapped each other on the back for brining their movie some gravitas.

All of that sounds pretty negative but there are some good things about it too, not least the supporting turns from Leo McKern and Vittorio DeSica. The best thing about it is the way the film uses all the rituals, mystery and drama of the conclave as the major set-piece of the movie’s first half. I find all of that pretty exciting and Michael Anderson, the director, stages the whole process very well. Admittedly the final third of the movie seems very dated but it is worth remembering that the book was written at the height of the Cold War.

Papal elections are central to the woeful Robbie Coltrane vehicle ‘The Pope Must Die’ (1991) which came off the back of the surprise international success of ‘Nuns on the Run’ (1988). I won’t dwell on this film too much as it’s very poor and extremely unfunny. The plot centres on a simple parish priest being elevated to the papacy by virtue of a mistake in announcing the name of the Mafia’s preferred candidate. Vatican conspiracies also feature heavily, of course, in the literature of Dan Brown and ‘Angels and Demons’ (2009) features the selection of a new Pope as background to the story of violence towards the favoured cardinals. ‘Angels and Demons’ is pretty good despite being totally nonsensical. It’s exciting and that is all you can ask from this type of movie.

On final point: Hollywood Popes all seem to be in danger. All of the films mentioned here involve the death, near-death or murder of a Pope so they are obviously seen as a disposable breed by film-makers. Even the finger-tapping, Gilbert-and-Sullivan-loving Pope visiting San Francisco in the wonderful comedy-thriller ‘Foul Play’ (1978) is the target of assassins, though he seems to enjoy himself as even more than his counter part in ‘Sister Act’ (1992) who was probably praying to the good Lord to end his life before the annoying, timid one let loose.

TMILN's 100 Favourites - 98

98. The Departed (2006)
Dir: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg

A policeman, working undercover in the Boston mafia, discovers there is a mafia mole within the police force and must work quickly to expose him before his own cover is blown.

Hollywood has been littered with remakes over the last decade with everything from TV shows to foreign horror movies to all-time classics getting the once over. The majority have been either forgettable or pointless but some have defied this trend, none more so that ‘The Departed’. Martin Scorsese, who finally won the long-deserved recognition of the Academy voters, moved the action of the Hong Kong action movie ‘Infernal Affairs’ (2002) to Boston and the result is tense, brutal and magnificent. Scorsese is back in the territory to which he is most associated – the crime thriller – and he displays all the assurance that made him the most revered director working in Hollywood today. Despite a running time of two and a half hours not a scene is wasted nor a plot twist unnecessary, and the tension is racked up with rare skill to each of the movies dramatic, often violent, climaxes. Scorsese is ably abetted by the cast with DiCaprio and Nicholson as assured in their performances as I’ve come to expect though it’s the supporting turns of Alec Baldwin and, in particular, Martin Sheen that stand out. Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg could easily have been lost amongst their more accomplished co-stars but both are impressive and hint at greater depths than they are usually employed to show on screen.

TMILN's 100 Favourites - 99

99. Cabaret (1972)
Dir: Bob Fosse
Starring: Liza Minnelli, Michael York, Joel Grey, Helmut Griem, Fritz Wepper

Berlin, 1931: With National Socialism on the rise an English academic starts an unlikely friendship with an American nightclub singer.

Like Holly Golightly, Sally Bowles must be one of Hollywood’s most recognisable female characters. It was the role that suggested that Liza Minnelli could go on to have a career comparable to her late mother Judy Garland. Minnelli won the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of the care-free, almost reckless Sally who spends her nights entertaining Berliners at the seedy Kit Kat Club and her performance is excellent, and not only when she’s belting out Kander and Ebb’s numerous show-stopping numbers. Michael York shows himself to be a fine actor as the bi-sexual Brian, surely the best role of his career. In fact neither York nor Minnelli were ever to make a movie to match ‘Cabaret’, but then so few films can touch upon a film so brilliantly atmospheric. This is due in no-small part to Joel Grey’s performance as the Kit Kat Club’s creepy, Nazi-baiting MC, a relatively minor role but one that allows Grey to steal the film from his talented co-stars. However, the real star of the show is the director Bob Fosse. A former Broadway dancer turned choreographer, ‘Cabaret’ is surprisingly light on dancing but the perfectly realised combination of sordid pleasure, hedonism, political unrest and fear shows that Fosse was a great talent in more fields than one.

Soooooo 2010

Inception (2010) ****
Up (2009) *****
Shutter Island (2010) ***

"BBC Three are showing 'Anchorman', you say?" Carl Fredicksen feels my pain

Last week, something very strange things happened to me. No, it’s not that after seven weeks away from the keyboard I settled down to type a new entry for the blog. The strange thing was that in the space of three nights I watched three movies, none of which are more than 18 months old. This might not sound unusual but for The Man in Lincoln’s Nose watching three recent releases in succession is akin to spotting Halley’s Comet. My movies in my DVD collection come almost exclusively from before I was born 28years ago and any regular readers will have come to the conclusion that my personal motto is ‘they don’t make ‘em like that anymore’.

They certainly never used to make films quite like Christopher Nolan’s current blockbuster ‘Inception’ (2010), which opened in UK cinemas a couple of weeks ago and has, so far, been the smash hit of a summer dominated by remakes and sequels. If you happen to have been living in some sort of cocoon recently, the plot is about a team of people who can ‘invade’ the dreams of others with a view to finding out the best kept secrets of the victim. They are challenged to carry out the much harder task of planting an idea into the brain of a young businessman whose cold, tyrannical father has died, leaving his son a wildly successful string of businesses. Most say it can’t be done, but troubled Leonardo DiCaprio says it’s definitely possible, especially as he stands to end his exile from his children (he’s on the run as his wife died in suspicious circumstances) if the task is carried out successfully. That is about as much as I can give you without spoiling the many plot elements and twists of this fine thriller. In fact parts of the story are so confusing that you may have to surrender a couple of week s in the immediate aftermath of seeing it to have the sort of internal dialogue that even Raymond Babbitt would have given up on. Nolan was working on the script for over eight years and whilst all that toil still couldn’t deliver a movie without any holes in its plot, we would do well to remember that this is a science fiction movie and it makes enough sense to let us bend our minds in Nolan’s favour.

Where ‘Inception’ really sets itself apart from the rest of the summer’s output is its cast. Every one of the major roles is occupied by actors of real ability as opposed to just a star name. DiCaprio’s boyish good looks are going. He’s only 35 but he’s already starting to look a bit rough around the edges so that in mind it’s a good job he can not only act but also seems impervious to bad decisions when it comes to picking projects. Here he is ably supported by indie flick favourites Ellen Page and Joseph Gordon Levitt, the cast’s standout performer. Brit Tom Hardy looks set to be the next big export to Hollywood whilst Cillian Murphy and Ken Watanabe are as perfectly believable as one can be playing men whose dreams are being manipulated. Even Marion Cotillard, in a small role, makes the most of what screen time she is afforded. Producers of movies such as ‘The Expendables’ (2010) would do well to remember that it’s very easy to make a summer blockbuster populated by familiar faces, but if none of them can act then you film will be forgotten before it even makes it to DVD. ‘Inception’ will last a lot longer in the mind and given the quality of the entertainment it’s almost a pity that sequels to the movie itself will be cluttering up our screens in the coming summers.

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Another movie that producers who care about quality as well as financial success should learn from is the Disney-Pixar phenomenon ‘Up’ (2009). ‘Up’ is about a widowed curmudgeon who attempts to fulfil a life-long dream aided, and sometimes hindered, by a stowaway boy scout, a talking dog, a temperamental, giant bird and thousands of helium balloons. It says something pretty sad about the movie industry that, these days, the majority of characters who make you care about them and evoke genuine emotion within you aren’t played by actors but are computer generated. I don’t think I have spoken to many people, men, women or children, who haven’t admitted to shedding a few tears whilst watching ‘Up’. It’s certainly tugs on your heart strings with quite an old fashioned sense of love, loss and the emptiness that results... and that’s all in the first ten minutes! Maybe this is the problem. Maybe today’s audiences will only allow a film to come with a large slice of sentimentality if it’s animated. They can always pass it off as being ‘aimed at children with a few jokes for the parents thrown in’. That way the old-world, tear-jerking elements can be accepted. This begs the question what is wrong with a bit of sentimentality now and again? Young adults now are encouraged to be cynical of anything that wants to make you get a lump in your throat and that is sad. Cinema shouldn’t just be chewing gum for the eyes. Now and again it should drag you in, strip you down and leave you feeling heartbroken, heart warmed or, as in ‘Up’s case, both together.

Anyway, one mustn’t digress. Suffice to say that anyone from the age of 5 to 105 should check this brilliant movie out at the earliest opportunity. It is an admirable fusion of old and modern Hollywood and, what’s more, it has something very pertinent to say about the danger of hero worship, a lesson well headed on a weekend when one of the nation’s most popular radio stations spoke about nothing but Will Ferrell, a man whose career I am all to happy to see has crashed and burned.

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Last, and I’m afraid least, from last week’s viewing was Martin Scorsese’s ‘Shutter Island’ (2010). This is a well made but predictable psychological thriller that marks something of a departure from the director’s usual output. This isn’t a problem as Scorsese has made departures before and come up trumps (‘Raging Bull’ (1980), ‘After Hours’ (1985), 'The Age of innocence' (1993)). Leonardo DiCaprio is again the star but this is more on a level with the disappointing, meandering ‘Gangs of New York’ (2002) then his excellent Scorsese projects ‘The Aviator’ (2004) and ‘The Departed’ (2006). The problem with ‘Shutter Island’ is that it’s been done before, not necessarily better, but definitely often. It also suffers from being more implausible than a movie like ‘Inception’ which isn’t even set in our version of the universe.

It’s very difficult to criticise Scorsese as his films always have something to recommend them. ‘Shutter Island’ is no different in fact it’s perfectly watchable. The problem is more one of reputation. Scorsese, for me and for many others, exists in the absolute top echelon of movie makers. He is probably the only person in that group still living so his less successful efforts are more apparent to me than someone like Hitchcock or Lang whose weaker efforts are ignored by the revivalists. In that respect I have no doubt that in fifty years time the Scorsese revivals will be free of ‘Shutter Island’.

TMILN's 100 Favourites - 100

100. Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)
Dir: Blake Edwards
Starring: Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard, Buddy Ebsen, Patricia Neal, Martin Balsam

A struggling writer and a free-spirited call-girl start an affair but reality seems destined to get in the way.

As iconic roles go there are few to rival Audrey Hepburn’s turn as Holly Golightly in ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’. The film would have been a very different experience had Marilyn Monroe been cast as originally planned. Truman Capote, on whose story the movie is based, wanted Monroe but surely she would have been too overt, too ‘Marilyn’ for the film to work in this era of Hollywood. Most of the more salacious aspects of the book were toned down or removed but what remains is an excellent picture with two distinct halves. The first is fairly care free and light as the romance between neighbours begins and we see into Holly’s lifestyle of parties, late nights and the most famous ‘walk of shame’ ever. However, as the story progresses both characters have to face up to the aspects of their lives that they would like to ignore or they thought had been consigned to history’s dustbin. With the regrettable exception of Mickey Rooney as a Japanese pervert, everyone is on good form here, particularly Hepburn who moves from free-spirited to haunted without losing the basic core of the character.

Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Re-Imagined Detective

Sherlock Holmes (2009) *

Chaplin (1992) *****

Robert Downey, Jr. using his BlackBerry to keep up to date with 'The Man in Lincoln's Nose'... possibly.

I don’t know about you but when I go on holiday the holiday begins as soon as I get to the airport. The sitting around trying not to drink too much, trying aftershaves that I will never buy and getting frisked by a large woman in slacks are all part of the excitement. My joy really increases when I board the plane and we take off as I love flying almost as much as I enjoy long train journeys. However on my recent flight to Istanbul (great city, loved it, go if you get the chance) the soothing ointment of the flight had a rather nasty, irritating, mockney fly in it – Guy Ritchie’s ‘Sherlock Holmes’.

Released towards the end of last year, the film has been a roaring success. It will doubtless spawn several sequels which will make large amounts at the box office, Ritchie’s stock in America is at an all-time high and it won Robert Downey, Jr. a Golden Globe. However, the film follows what could be called the ‘Virgin’ model. You have a product that you think is pretty good but to ensure that it gets more publicity and a better chance of selling well you pay to use an established brand name. Companies do it with Richard Branson; Ritchie has done it with his film about a bare-knuckle-boxing, all action detective who happens to live in Victorian London. The character bares very little resemblance to Sherlock Holmes as most people know him (via the books, Basil Rathbone’s film series or the television incarnation with Jeremy Brett) but with the Holmes name attached the film was always likely to have a large following. There are Sherlock Holmes fans that went to see what was done to their beloved sleuth, action movie fans who liked the massive set pieces and blood-letting, and sadistic types who were hoping to see an old favourite roughed up by cinema’s Jamie Oliver. What the film amounts to is an eye-catching but ultimately silly, confusing and wearisome picture that, mercifully, will not linger too long in the memory. The plot is so difficult to follow and so full of Guy Ritchie’s usual, unfathomable London-accented tripe that it feels like you are watching and adaptation of Stephen Hawking’s ‘A Brief History of Time’ written by the Mitchell brothers. Defenders of the movie will say that it is a ‘re-imagining’ in the style of how Tim Burton handled ‘Planet of the Apes’ (2001) and ‘Alice in Wonderland’ (2009) but Burton at least kept the essence of the originals in his work. Ritchie plainly knew that after a few duds at the box-office he needed a sure fire hit to ensure he would be in a position to continue to make feature films as a career. He hit the jackpot by pretty much doing the opposite of what has been done in the Daniel Craig era James Bond movies – take a serious, somewhat dour series of stories and make them fast-paced and ridiculous. Call me an old fart but I like my Sherlock Victorian, not from the Queen Vic.

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Speaking of Tim Burton, Robert Downey, Jr. appears to have aligned his career with Burton’s most famous and frequent collaborator Johnny Depp. Both were considered prodigal talents who were occasionally overshadowed by their dark good looks. They both tried to combat this in their early film careers by not picking obvious heartthrob roles and scored big successes critically doing so in the early 1990s (Depp as ‘Edward Scissorhands’ (1990), Downey, Jr. in ‘Chaplin’ (1992)). They both had a fairly timid period in the mid-90s, Downey, Jr. due to his drug use and Depp in an attempt to become a more mainstream proposition. Now the two of them seem to alternate between the big summer blockbusters and more interesting, smaller roles. Neither could be considered as more than a supporting player in ‘Tropic Thunder’ (2008) (Downey, Jr.) or ‘Alice in Wonderland’ (Depp) for instance. Neither of them has won the big one yet either but they seem to be there or thereabouts nominations season these days so they can’t be far off a classic ‘it’s their turn’ gesture from the Academy.

For what it’s worth, I think that Downey, Jr. should have won an Oscar for ‘Chaplin’ but he was beaten by just such a sentimental gesture towards Al Pacino. He was a fairly controversial choice to play Britain’s most famous export to Hollywood but his performance was exceptional. Anyone who has read Chaplin’s autobiography will know that he was a man keenly aware of his genius but who worked harder and more obsessively than would be considered normal. Downey, Jr. puts that on the screen. The work ethic, the flickers of self-doubt and the relentless desire for recognition are played perfectly alongside the arrogance, the superficial bragging and political naivety of the real man. For once it was a good thing to be called a proper Charlie.

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Don't forget that you can follow me on Twitter @lincolnsnose or twitter.com/lincolnsnose. I will be posting some of my mini-reviews on the blog soon but if you can't wait then from tomorrow use the search #TMILN to find them. Happy tweeting!

More Mini-Reviews on Twitter

Escape to Victory is one of this weeks mini-reviews on twitter.com/lincolnsnose

There are more mini-reviews on The Man in Lincoln's Nose's Twitter feed including:

The Arsenal Stadium Mystery (1939)

Destry Rides Again (1939)

Die Hard (1988)

Escape to Victory (1981)

Foul Play (1978)

The Heartbreak Kid (2007)

The Hustler (1961)

Straw Dogs (1971)

The Ups and Downs of a Handy Man (1975)

Mini-Reviews for Twitter

This week I started to write some mini-reviews of movies for Twitter. If you use Twitter please click the 'Follow Me' link in the top right-hand corner of my blog. If you don't, I will re-print them here next week.

Easy Rider (1969): One of this week's reviews on twitter.com/lincolnsnose

This week's reviewed movies include:

Avatar (2009)
District 9 (2009)
Easy Rider (1969)
Garfield (2004)
The Holiday (2006)
Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
The Producers (1968)
Remains of the Day (1993)
Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Sommarlek (Summer Interlude) (1950)
South Pacific (1958)

Avatar: the new 'Star Wars' or the new 'Titanic'?

Avatar (2009) ***

Titanic (1997) ***

Star Wars (1977) *****

Earlier this month, James Cameron’s ecological epic ‘Avatar’ (2009) got its home cinema release and, predictably for the most hyped movie of the last ten years, the DVD and Blu-Ray sales have been the fastest in history, going against the sharp decline in physical disc sales that has accompanied the age of the download. Whilst this boost will be a temporary one, the more lasting consequence will be how ‘Avatar’s widely publicised ‘immersive experience’ will translate into people’s living rooms. Some movies were made for the big screen and their shortcomings become very obvious on a smaller screen without surround sound. Others can be downsized with their entertainment value and reputation intact. Is ‘Avatar’ another ‘Star Wars’ (1977) or another ‘Titanic’ (1997)?

James Cameron gets to work on the script for the Avatar sequel.

The presence in the queues outside the DVD stores of blue-painted people would appear to hint that science-fiction fans have room in their locker for fanaticism over another movie (and by 2014 its sequel). The almost religious fervour that surrounds 'Star Trek' in all its incarnations, ‘Star Wars’ and fantasy movies such as The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003) is a thing of ridicule for most of us but it is also the reason these films make so much money and hang around forever in the multiplexes. There is a famous story that George Lucas knew he would at the very least break even with ‘Star Wars’ as the title alone would attract every sci-fi fan in America into the cinemas. Will ‘Avatar’ inspire the same lasting devotion as Lucas’ movies? Unfortunately for James Cameron even with HD technology and bigger TV screens, ‘Avatar’s multiple messages (treatment of the planet, western powers invading countries with no idea of their indigenous culture, the plight of the native American) are so sober, almost po-faced, that it doesn’t have the same sense of fun as ‘Star Wars’ and its deficiencies in not being rip-roaring entertainment are exposed on the small screen where the films technical brilliance is diminished.

Remember ‘Titanic’? It was huge. It was everywhere. It made money by the boat load and had people queuing around the block for repeat viewings when it hit cinemas back in 1997. The sheer scale of the movie had to be admired as a brilliant technical achievement – the sort of spectacle made for a giant cinema screen. If you missed it at the multiplex then you missed the experience of seeing the film as it was intended to be viewed. The effects weren’t as impressive when seen on a television and by dulling the film’s big impact moments you noticed that the script wasn’t very impressive and some of the performances were dreadful – Billy Zane in particular was bad without being bad enough to be funny. ‘Avatar’ looks certain to follow the same pattern. I would watch it again if it was re-released in the cinema in, say five years time, but I would find it difficult to whip up any enthusiasm for a small screen repeat.

‘Titanic’ obviously wasn’t the first film made with a view to big-screen spectacle. Since D.W. Griffith got his hands on a camera numerous film-makers have undertaken projects that were specifically designed to use the grand scale of a cinema screen. Where Cameron went wrong with both ‘Titanic’ and ‘Avatar’ is that you get the feeling that he believed on both occasions that he was making the greatest movie ever made when he should have been happy to make first class, escapist entertainment, like ‘The Terminator’ (1984) or ‘Aliens’ (1986), that he made his name with in the 1980s. The effects were impressive but they weren’t too big for the home video market whilst the nature of the plot and the movie allowed any script issues to go almost unnoticed. When you went to see ‘Terminator 2: Judgement Day’ (1991) you knew it had nothing to say about the world and it was happy to be a first rate action/ sci-fi movie. ‘True Lies’ (1994) had its tongue firmly in its cheek just like the Bond movies it was clearly influenced by, and was all the better for it in the same way that the humourless Daniel Craig Bond movies seem incredibly dull in comparison to Connery’s or Moore’s. ‘Titanic’ and ‘Avatar’ both follow on from many of the huge historical epics of the 1950s and 60s – huge production, superb technical achievements, perfect for the big screen but when you watch them on television the dull stretches become much more apparent. How many of us have sat through the perennial Easter showing of ‘Ben Hur’ (1959) more than once? How about ‘The Ten Commandments’ (1956) or ‘The English Patient’ (1996)? What Cameron needs to remember is that big doesn’t necessarily mean great. For every ‘Gone with the Wind’ (1939) there is a ‘Heaven’s Gate’ (1980) and for every Lord of the Rings there is a ‘Hawaii’ (1966).

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