Twelve for 2012

Hello 2012!  What a year you promise to be:

February 6: the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.
June 5: The extra bank holiday for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.
July/August: The Olympics.
December 21: the end-date of a 5,125-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar.

I just can't decide what I'm most excited about.  Well no, obviously I'm most excited about the extra bank holiday.  But the Mesoamerican calendar thing runs a fairly close second.

But as well as featuring enormous sports days with a distinct lack of the egg and spoon race and the possible end of the world, 2012 also promises to be a year of big films.  Here's a look at twelve general trends and much hyped films to come in 2012.  (you can listen to this while you read if you like, to temper the enthusiasm).

1. The Avengers - April
A load of superheroes who have films already get together and fight a supervillain.  Super!

2. The Dark Knight Rises - July

Emotional Michael Caine!  Tom Hardy as a muzzled, sheepskin coat wearing terrorist!  If the trailer's anything to go by this is going to be just as spectacular as The Dark Knight.

3. The Amazing Spider-Man - July

2012 appears to be the year of the superhero (though saying that, every year recently has appeared to be the year of the superhero).  It is ten years (argh) since Tobey Maguire first donned the red and blue lycra suit, and  now it is the marvellous Andrew Garfield's turn.  According to the poster this is 'The Untold Story', and I for one am looking forward to hearing it.

4. The year of the reboot
As well as reboots of characters a la Spidey, 2012 also brings us reboots of universes.  Why give up on a good franchise just because the story's finished?  June brings us the highly anticipated Prometheus as Ridley Scott revisits the Alien universe, and August brings The Bourne Legacy.  Without Bourne, because Matt Damon is gone.  But still called Bourne.  Though the new CIA man is called Aaron Cross.  I am reserving judgement until I find out whether or not he can kill a baddy with the contents of a pencil case (not including a compass, as they are quite stabby anyway so that would be cheating).

5. The year of the weird remake
#1: Ray Winstone and Plan B take the John Thaw and Dennis Waterman roles in the film version of 70s cop show The Sweeney in September.  If it's a success maybe we can expect Professor Green in Bergerac: The Movie in 2013.

#2: Colin Farrell steps into Schwarzenegger's huge shoes in the remake of Total Recall in August.  Well they do look remarkably similar...

6. The year of reunion
Anna Karenina reunites Keira Knightley and director Joe Wright from Atonement and Pride & Prejudice, Dark Shadows reunites Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Burton from Sweeney Todd amongst other things, and the one you've all been waiting for, American Reunion, reuniting all (or so it looks from the trailer) the people from the original American Pie, and not the 237 horrible sequels.

7. Skyfall - October
James Bond is back to fight his new nemeses, Chicken Licken and Turkey Lurkey

8. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 - November
Robert Pattinson has cut his hair.  It's all over.

9. The year of fairy tales
Kristen Stewart is armour-clad action Snow White in Snow White and the Huntsman, Julia Roberts is strange-accented Evil Queen in fluffy looking Mirror Mirror, and Nicholas Hoult is Jack in Bryan Singer's quite hilariously dramatic looking Jack The Giant Killer.

10. Django Unchained - December
Tarantino's back!

11. The Hobbit - December
Gandalf's back!

12. The year of 3D re-releases
Star Wars the Phantom Menace 3D!  Titanic 3D!  Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D!  All terrifying, each one in its own special way.

Happy New Year.  Yes I know it's mid-January now.  Shh.

The Lion King 3D *****/*

The Lion King was one of the first films I saw at the cinema.  I loved it then, and I still love it now.  The Lion King 3D was to be the first 3D film I saw at the cinema.  I thought this lent the experience a pleasing unity (only if it had been Hook, my actual first film at the cinema, could it have been more perfect).  I hadn't really heard anything positive about 3D, which is why I hadn't been before, but you can't write something off without trying it first, can you?

So, along I skipped to the cinema.  I got my 3D glasses.  The oracle of the internet, yahoo!answers, had told me that it was fine to wear them over normal glasses.  This was not true - I had to hold them on so they didn't fall off my nose - but I could cope with that for the sake of an exciting enhanced Lion King experience.

But I did not get an exciting enhanced Lion King experience.  As the film opened on the scenes of the Serenghetti, accompanied by the glorious strains of Circle of Life, as the small children around me gasped with delight, I could only look around in confusion, peer over my multiple glasses to see the blurry screen, and realise with crushing disappointment that I am one of the 2-12% of the population who can't see 3D.

Algernon Charles Swinburne wrote:

If the golden-crested wren
Were a nightingale---why, then,
Something seen and heard of men
Might be half as sweet as when
Laughs a child of seven. 


Well Algernon that is all well and good, but when the child of seven is laughing and you can't see what they're pleased about it's not sweet.  It's just depressing, to be honest.  Stupid children.

I had to keep the ridiculous glasses on because otherwise I was just watching a blurry screen half the time.  So basically I watching a film in the dark whilst wearing sunglasses.  Only for a film as wonderful as The Lion King could I have stayed for the whole thing.

So I don't think I'll be going to see any more 3D films.  And I'll just have to hope that 3D isn't the future, and that it instead goes the way of those magic eye pictures that were so popular in the 90s that I couldn't see either.  What do you mean, look through the image?  Stupid magic eye seers.

I still love The Lion King though, and it was rather special to see it on the big screen again.  And yes I did still cry when Mufasa's big liony face appeared in the sky, even though his nose wasn't sticking out at me and I had too many pairs of glasses on.  Hakuna matata.