Today's Column: Judgment Day approaches for the Jurassic Park fanboy

This month's column is up!

Dag des Oordeels voor de Jurassic Park fanaat

No real controversy this time, just a lot of nervous anticipation. The day me and many others have been waiting for for 14 years is close at hand. Should we be excited it has finally dawned, or will all of our hopes and dreams be shattered in two hours of Hollywood viciously demolising our cherished childhood memories? Looking at the trailers and everything they tell us about the story, it honestly can still go both ways. It may be the greatest movie experience in many years for the JP fans, or it may leave us with a major dinosaur sized hangover that will cause us headaches for years, as this is definitely not the end of something, but rather the beginning. The beginning of the Jurassic World franchise replacing the much beloved Jurassic Park franchise, or the continuation of the latter in the guise of the former? I dare not speculate. Where Jurassic is concerned, I'm currently a nervous wreck.

I want to immerse myself fully in the hype, believing it's gonna be the best thing ever, but past experiences with similar Hollywood hype have left a sour taste for the very term. No mindless swallowing and tirelessly rejoicing about every little bit of info released - in fact, aside from the trailers I try to avoid most additional promo footage - but keeping a watchful eye on the development of this soft reboot. It's not like the story offers so many major new directions compared to the original film. There's still a theme park of dinosaurs on a remote island and shit still happens despite humanity's typical overconfidence it won't. Enter new characters learning the same old lessons by being chased by new dinosaurs (and a few old ones). It's the way things are handled that makes for a different experience, for good or for bad. So soon we will know whether entrusting this giant blockbuster of a film to a fairly inexperienced director, who only ever made one movie prior to this (though at least it was pretty good), was a smart move. Soon we will learn whether the overwhelming sense of wonder and awe the first film instilled in so many of us is preserved in Jurassic World, or blatantly traded in for generic blockbuster action and dito oneliners. Soon the wait is over, and we will all know whether Jurassic Park still lives strongly in Jurassic World, or whether a highly derivative but feeble follow-up of the former is the promise for the next few years.

How will this end? Tune in next month for the answer!

And here's a little joke to keep things light.

Today's Column: Resurgence of the 'how do they do that' sensation

This month's column I wrote for MovieScene can now be read here as well:

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/151186/column_heropleving_van_het_hoe-doen-ze-dat_gevoel

Needless to say I am not fond of the overabundance of digital effects in the cinema these days. It has caused an 'effects saturated' visual market, as well as raised a spoiled audience that has seen it all. Of course, this does make the consumers more demanding in terms of plot, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Except that they're finding it at home on TV instead of at the movies, which slowly but surely degrades cinema as a medium. I'm not at all against good television of course (quite the opposite in fact!), but I would like to believe the possibility of quality television and quality movies co-existing is reachable. Of course there's still plenty of excellent movies made, but people are having an increasingly hard time catching them in theaters as they're often dropped from regular circulation swiftly or aren't awarded a decent cinematic release at all. Watching them on-demand at home is a solution, but nothing beats seeing them on the big screen as their makers intended (usually, at least). They're often only making money in the long run, as opposed to the big budget spectacles that get all the attention in theaters but are ever more often relying solely on visual sensations that make them ever more interchangeable, bland routines, despite the hype generated for them to lure audiences in. But every once in a while, a visually spectacular blockbuster sees a release and provides something new in terms of technology, transporting the audience to brave new worlds and sights as yet unseen. This year it's Gravity, definitely the most immersive viewing experience since Avatar (which was released four years ago). Alfonso Cuarón's thrilling tale of space peril continues to advance cinematic technology in a tradition of fantastic films over the course of the evolution of the medium that have truly amazed and inspired audiences like few other movies have done. It really makes you wonder how these amazing effects were accomplished, a question most modern audiences find themselves asking less and less. And that's where the angle of my column kicks in.

Another column done, now for next month's piece. Currently I have no clue as to what it will be about. But I'm sure I'll manage, as I've done so far.