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We all know and accept that movie marketing is based around coining phrases, pretending all ideas are original, that the film is great and, of course, sending bloggers free stuff to review (our email address is in the column on the right). Even so, the latest marketing for Spy Kids: All the Time in the World has tipped me over the edge. They are presenting the film in “4D Aromascope”. So that means that the fourth dimension is… smell!

You don’t need a physics degree to know that smell is a sense and not a dimension. But seeing as I do have a physics degree (ahem) let’s see what the fourth dimension is with the help of Wikipedia.

As you can see from the diagram above the first three dimensions are essentially the three directions within which an object can move. On a flat 2D plane you can only move in two dimensions, moving out of the plane makes a third. In cinema everything is technically 2D but those silly glasses sometimes give the effect of the image coming out of the screen, hence 3D. Lovely. We may not be a fan of 3D but the name makes sense.

The fourth dimension is time. The only direction a 3D plane can move in is time itself, or I suppose in the case of a cinema you could have the screen moving around. So a 4D film is simply a 3D image progressing through time, or a regular 3D film playing. Project a 3D film onto the side of a van and drive around town and you will get a 5D film!*

What is definitely not a fourth dimension is a scratch and sniff card! The last time I scratched and sniffed I was at the panto and was scared of girls. How little has changed.

Harvey Weinstein, we await your humble apology.

*That stuff about 5D is in no way accurate.

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We’re back to Blockbuster Wednesdays as this week’s big release comes out those vital two days early. It’s a summer tent-pole movie (whatever that means) so of course this is VERY EXCITING!

Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Bear with me a moment… A bunch of robots find out that a second type of robot is hiding on the moon and race to reach it before a third type of robots can. Meanwhile Shia LaBeouf and an underwear model run around getting in the way. Yes, the second film was terrible but LaBeouf and director Michael Bay have owned up to that so it’s all OK. “Sorry my last film was so terrible, I have made a similar film to make up for it.” Film4 has the last word; “a very long mess that’s embarrassingly devoid of gut level thrills.”

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After yesterday all I have energy for today is a new trailer, and a teaser trailer at that. But what a teaser it is. Pixar’s film for 2012, Brave looks gorgeous. It’s made all the better for not being Cars 2, the worst reviewed Pixar film ever.

Also, an Animated American film set in Scotland using Scottish actors? It’s the end of an era for Shrek’s faux Scottish heritage.

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Congratulations go to T Lathwell and Richard Whale for each winning themselves a copy of Miracle at St Anna on DVD.

I’m happy to say that our first ever competition was a success (people entered it) so we’ll be doing more in the future as soon as we get a good enough prize.

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What follows is the result of sleep deprivation, a Thermos of coffee and a pile of scrawled notes.

EDIT: Updated versions of the charts below can be found in our new retrospective posts on the seven films and the young actors.

On Saturday night Mild Concern returned to the BFI IMAX to finish the Harry Potter All-Nighter marathon. To keep ourselves stimulated and, at a more basic level, awake, we discussed each film in between, scoring various aspects, making notes and even counting one specific phrase. In this post we’ll have a look at some of what we noted down, what this says about the franchise’s progression and what it can tell us about the final film. Once that final film is out we will review it alone and then all eight as a whole, as our final word on the franchise we grew up with.

But first, let’s talk about the IMAX. Our two recent trips have been great, the image is crisp and clear and so wide my peripheral vision was fully taken up with the world of Potter. Films were made to be seen on the big screen and this is the biggest screen in the UK, what more can we say?

Still, there were two drawbacks. The minor one was some distracting disco lights at the bottom of the screen during Order of the Phoenix. The second, more important, factor was a sequence in 3D in two of the films. The 3D worked in a few shots but for the majority of the time it gave us both double vision, caused one of us headaches and made the action scenes extremely hard to follow. Thankfully most of the films are made entirely in 2D, but the upcoming Deathly Hallows Part 2 is another matter.

Presentation quibbles out of the way, onto the charts! Read more »

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