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“GRABBERS” | director, Joe Wright

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Monday, January 23, 11:45 pm –Library Center Theatre, Park City]

Grabbers is a monster movie, first and foremost, and so much of the experience is visceral, for your eyes and ears… Whether it’s a monster roar vibrating your innards or the orchestra rising to mark a poignant look from our leading lady. You simply couldn’t have that experience reading a book, or watching a play. It isn’t possible.

There’s something about the combination of pictures, and sound, plus time, that is utterly absorbing and compelling – when it’s done well. I enjoy a story told in a great film more than I enjoy a great book, or a play. Particularly when I see it in the cinema.

For me it’s the leading art form, for stories, and it encompasses so many other disciplines, whether it’s painting or photography, music or literature…

One day I imagine there will be a moment where video games and virtual reality mesh to create a new storytelling art form that supersedes cinema. But it feels to me like it’s a decade or two away, at least, so let’s enjoy this cinematic heyday while it lasts!

We talked a lot about shooting Grabbers in 3D and opted for 2D in the end, for a variety of technical and financial reasons… I wonder whether we’re at the end of the 2D era for cinema, and if 3D will become the norm. My generation grew up dismissing black and white movies as “old fashioned” – we see in colour, after all – and I wonder if there’s a new generation who will dismiss 2D movies as “flat” and “unrealistic” – we see in depth, with two eyes, don’t we?

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