Clash of the Titans, or not

I was going to watch Clash of the Titans today but I decided not to because almost everyone on the planet seems to think it's a heap of crap. While I'm a firm believer in working out my own opinion about stuff, I also believe in succumbing to peer pressure when the only (half) dissenting voice left is Roger Ebert, whom I have never forgiven for the nasty things he and Gene Siskel said about David Lynch's Dune.

The BBC's Mark Kermode, on the other hand, was not remotely impressed.

If you've seen the trailer, you're pretty much seen the film, but without the headache-inducing thunderousness of watching the film itself. So: the script is terrible, the acting is completely wooden, the romantic element is boring and uninteresting, and the interaction between the human characters is totally without merit.

It also provoked a five-minute rant against the retro-fitting of blockbusters to the new trend of 3D, one of Kermode's special hates, which ended thus:

So what you're left with is the headache-inducing spectacle of watching something made in 2D, converted into 3D, badly written, ploddingly played, with some big monsters, which, incidentally, through the miracle of 3D are made to look smaller, because that's what happens when you watching 3D, going "Oh, for Heaven's sake - can we STOP THIS NOW."

I'm not big on the 3D thing either. I once saw a reissue of The Creature from the Black Lagoon in 3D which didn't work because my eyes appear to be broken, so I what I actually saw was The Creature from the Out of Focus, Bluey-Greeny Lagoon. And I saw Avatar in 3D, but I felt it only worked in certain kinds of shots, such as when the camera was in a cockpit and you were looking out over the jungles of Pandora. Most of the time, like Kermode says, especially with very tight or very wide shots, 3D simply ruins the sense of proportion, making stuff either too big or too small.

And I'm also happy to boycott the new Titans because the 1981 original is one my favourite childhood films, as a well-worn VHS tape at home will testify. I always preferred it even to Jason and the Argonauts, which opinion I understand is a minor heresy among Ray Harryhausen fans.

Apart from not going to see a film, I have little else to report. I'm writing an article about Anglo-Saxons which is becoming more and more racist. Specifically, I think Dorchester-on-Thames was ethnically cleansed in the fifth century. Not that I'm saying this was a good thing.