THE MOONLIGHTER: a 3D disaster - dreadful, dreary and demoralising

I can't recall the last time I watched a film that so poorly served its stars.
I can only imagine that Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray went home every evening, locked the door, pulled the shades and bawled their eyes out over THE MOONLIGHTER. It's a truly demoralising viewing experience so I can only imagine how terrible it must have been to actually work on it.

Writer Niven Busch has given them practically every cliche in the Western genre to mouth, and he's so intent in cramming in every last hoary phrase that he doesn't even bother to ensure that it at least makes sense. In too many scenes Stanwyck and MacMurray appear to be talking across one another, reciting lines that have very little to do with what the other just said to them.
This 1953 film is a tragic comedown for two stars who had set the screen alight 9 years earlier with their unforgettable portrayals of a weak willed insurance salesman and a murderously cold-blooded femme fatale in 'Double Indemnity.'  If they'd never done anything else that film would assure them of a place in movie history, and after scaling those heights it can be difficult to understand why they would willingly plumb the depths with this sub-standard turkey.
The answer, I'm guessing, is money and the need to earn a paycheck. In the early 1950s westerns were often the last stop before the despised medium of television for film stars on the slide (even Claudette Colbert made a western!). Neither Stanwyck nor MacMurray were box office hits anymore and I imagine they were grateful to accept the script when it was offered to them.
One senses they both went into the project with the best intentions but neither of them sounds remotely convincing regurgitating the abysmal dialogue and there's absolutely no sense of the smoldering passion supposedly burning between them. MacMurray speaks mostly in a high pitch monotone while Stanwyck operates on autopilot. Given that this is the great Barbara Stanwyck it's high quality autopilot - better than many other actors on their best day - but still far beneath what's she's capable of.
This black and white movie was originally released in 3D but it's hard to tell (I watched it in 2D) just how much use director Roy Rowland made of the special effect. Nothing comes flying out of the screen and there's few shots that would have benefited from the extra depth that 3D offers. My best guess, based on the slightly unusual lighting in some medium close up scenes of the two stars in a clinch, is that they would have appeared to be in front of the screen with the background further behind them than it actually was. If I'm right, it's really not worth the price of a pair of 3D specs.
Unconvincing, implausible, boring, cliched, embarrassing, demoralising and just downright bad, THE MOONLIGHTER is truly terrible in every regard and a stain on the reputation of its illustrious stars. The only saving grace is that it is almost completely forgotten today. I only wish I could erase it from my memory.

AVATAR: not quite the end of cinema as we know it

So I finally gave in and went to see what all the hoopla's about.
I was prepared to be bored rigid by AVATAR but I was pleasantly surprised. I guess that's the big plus point about low expectations.

The film is undeniably a visual treat. The 3-D takes a little while to get used to but by the film's midpoint it felt entirely natural. Director James Cameron has obviously made a conscious decision not to treat 3D as a gimmick by using it solely to throw things into the audience. The technique serves the story rather than the other way around, so while stuff does appear to come out of the screen and into the auditorium it does so organically. 
But while the film deserves praise for it's cutting edge use of computer technology to create a plausible alien world on the planet Pandora, it's also true that without the hi-tec visuals AVATAR would be an overlong sci-fi epic with far more limited appeal. It's the visuals which breathe new life into the rather familiar story of conflict between technologically superior, arrogant humans, and a community of peace-loving primitive aliens living at one with nature. 
Cameron, who also wrote, produced and edited the movie, has his cake and eats it too, using AVATAR to condemn man's use of technology in pursuit of financial reward at the expense of those who value the natural order, while using advanced technology to make the telling of the story possible.
Granted he's not destroying civilisations and massacring hundreds in the process but - if some of the film's loudest supporters are to be believed - the release of AVATAR marks a seismic change in the way that films are made. The film's impact on cinema is the 21st century equivalent, they claim, of the introduction of sound to films in 1927.
I think that's overstating it's significance. Cinema has been making increasing use of computer generated imagery in the last 15 years (remember your initial reaction to seeing 'real' dinosaurs in 'Jurassic Park'?) but cgi has not replaced traditional methods of film making. AVATAR does mark a big step forward in this process but I'm not convinced it will sweep away all that came before it in the same way that sound destroyed practically all the techniques and practices involved in making silent movies.

Cameron's brand of hi-tec 3D works for action/fantasy stories but is much less relevant to other genres. Comedies and dramas for example, have little need for such effects. It's difficult to figure out how 3D would enhance the storytelling process there. 
The other factor limiting 3D's take-over of existing film-making processes is on the customer end. I saw AVATAR at a typical American multiplex - the kind of place where most people go to see films - and the screen wasn't big enough to do full justice to the technology. 3D emphasised the relative smallness of the screen by highlighting it's edges, which cut off the picture everytime it came out of the screen. Similarly the 3D glasses with their solid black frames constrained my field of vision.
I'm glad I went to see it. It was my first experience of a real 3D movie and I liked what I saw. AVATAR is an impressive achievement and there's much to admire. However I'll still be rooting for "Up in the Air" on Oscar night.