It’s here at last. After months of work and whole minutes of preparation, Empire Presents…Big Screen kicked off this morning at The O2 in London. Our own Chris Hewitt was there to present the event in style, or at least his own inimitable style, and the very first studio to present footage was 20th Century Fox.
Fox’ Chris Green was there to present the panel. He started with the just-released Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, wherein we saw a featurette on the groundbreaking apes effects of the film and a quick look at the barnstorming last act.
Then it was the turn of In Time, the Justin Timberlake / Amanda Seyfried sci-fi thriller. That was the same long-form trailer we’ve seen before, but it looked great on the big screen. Then it was the turn of Russian-set sci-fi thriller The Darkest Hour (in 3D) and a bit of a change of pace with the much-praised indie Martha Marcy May Marlene.
We had an introduction from some of the world’s best directors – including James Cameron, Ridley Scott, Tim Burton, Matthew Vaughn, Timur Bekmambetov, Cameron Crowe and George Lucas – talking about their love of cinema and (unsurprisingly given the hosts) working with Fox, which was nevertheless rather cool. Well, they're all very smart and entertaining men.
We finished with a look at the remastered 3D version of Titanic, which will be released next year for the 100th anniversary of the disaster, with a specially-recorded intro from producer Jon Landau.
The scenes we saw spanned most of the movie, from Rose’s arrival at the ship, Jack’s appearance in his borrowed tuxedo, the dancing below decks, the “I’m flying!” scene, the ship’s first sight of the iceberg, the “Nearer My God To Thee” montage (yup, it’s still a tear-jerker in stereoscope) and the unforgettable sight of the ship up-ending and sinking towards the waves.
As you might expect with Cameron himself overseeing the conversion, it was pretty flawless in the footage we saw, adding a little dimension to events (in particular the sight of the engine room pistons slowing and reversing speed) but without proving too much of a distraction. Roll on April 2012, frankly.