the times | Monday January 3 2022 3
News
Movies of the future could come in two
forms, a leading director predicts.
Viewers could enjoy a six-hour version
or go to a cinema for a two-hour “roller-
coaster”.
James Cameron, the Oscar-winning
director behind Titanic and Avatar, said
he enjoyed the “chaos” that streaming
companies such as Netflix had caused.
He said that the traditional Holly-
wood studios, who usually put their
films into cinemas before allowing
them on to small screens, should be
able to thrive alongside the disruptors.
The 67-year-old Canadian director
told the magazine Variety that he ex-
stared at the screen for longer — signs
that they did not believe their eyes.
“You have regularities in your envi-
ronment connected to physics and then
something happens that doesn’t fit,”
Christoph Völter of the University of
Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, who led
the study, told New Scientist magazine.
“And you try to see what’s going on.”
The team added: “This provides the
first evidence that dogs are sensitive to
the principle of contact causality
underlying such launching events.”
The study was published by the Royal
Society, in its journal Biology Letters.Clever boy! Dogs can spot
when physics is barking
Rhys BlakelyStar director plans six-hour movies
pected to see an “expanded form of cin-
ema” in the years ahead.
“I want to do a movie that’s six hours
long and two and a half hours long at
the same time,” he said. “Same movie...
you can stream it for six hours or you
can go and have a more condensed,
rollercoaster, immersive version of that
experience in a movie theatre.
“One’s the novel and one’s the movie.
Why not? Let’s just use these platforms
in ways that haven’t been done before.”
His comments come amid a period of
great uncertainty for film studios.
The enforced closure of cinemas dur-
ing the pandemic has pushed back the
release dates of scores of big-budget
films, disrupted schedules and given anincentive to the streaming companies
such as Netflix and Amazon Prime.
Cameron insisted that as a “child of
the Sixties” he looked forward to the
future. He has embarked on a series of
sequels to Avatar, trying to shoot four
big-budget 3D films in sequence. “I’m
not afraid,” he said. “I like change... I
like it when things are chaotic.”
Fox, a traditional Hollywood studio,
is financing the four sequels. Cameron
has said previously that if the first two
are financial failures, the following two
will probably not be made.
The original Avatar film, released in
2009, became the highest-grossing film
of all time surpassing Cameron’s previ-
ous record-holder, Titanic.David Sanderson Arts Correspondent
Dogs are surprised when an object ap-
pears to defy Newton’s First Law of Mo-
tion, says a study that would seem to
confirm them as clever boys and girls.
The Law states that if a body is at rest
or moving at a constant speed in a
straight line, it will stay at rest or keep
moving in a straight line at constant
speed unless it meets an outside force.
The research involved 14 dogs who
were shown videos that depicted ob-
jects that appeared to break this princi-
ple. The dogs widened their pupils andthe world, at least I was free to go into
the forest,” he said.
He has never used professional
guides, instead asking paid amateurs. “I
have just found people in villages to
walk with me for a few weeks or maybe
even months. They have been a vital
part of the expedition. I doubt I’d still be
alive now otherwise.”
Casey’s reception from the locals has
not always been friendly. He has passed
through areas known for both cocaine
production and illegal mining. The de-
fault reaction from many of those who
see a bedraggled Englishman walking
into town has been suspicion. “They
just assume that I am doing something
they don’t want me to do,” he said.
Last month he said that he was sub-
ject to an alarming confrontation with
men from the Ashaninka indigenous
community. “Two young guys from the
village we were approaching pointed
shotguns straight at us. Fortunately, my
guide spoke Ashaninka so that event-
ually defused things.”
The destruction of the forest he has
seen, mainly by logging, has saddened
him. “This has shown me that the Ama-
zon is a web of life, we really need to do
all we can to stop its destruction.”
Deforestation in the Brazilian part ofthe Amazon recently hit a 15-year high.
One consequence of tree-felling was
that, counterintuitively, it made
progress through the forest far harder.
“Secondary growth is horrendous to
penetrate,” he said. “Original rainforest
is way easier to walk through, as long as
it’s not flooded.”
Casey revealed that his relatives in
Britain had not been entirely suppor-
tive of the plan. “They think I’ve thrown
my life down the toilet, to be honest.
And lots of friends have just stopped
contacting me.”
He believes that his background in a
profession whose most prominent
figures include the Old Etonians Sir
Ranulph Fiennes and Bear Grylls had
made it near-impossible to raise
sponsorship money. “Explorers tend to
be upper class. I grew up on a council
estate,” he said. “This is a really hard
industry to make contacts in. That’s
why I went it alone.”
He is not making predictions any
more, but by April he hopes to reach
what is widely accepted as the source of
the Amazon: a small glacial stream that
emerges from Mismi, a 5,597-metre
(18,363ft) mountain in the Andes.
Voyage should be celebrated for its sheer
derring-do, leading article, page 25was when he was fording waist deep
through flooded forest above the
Amazonian city of Manaus in Brazil.
The river level was rising unexpectedly
and before long he found himself splut-
tering for breath.
“It was terrifying,” the explorer said.
He survived by reaching a tiny sand
island in the river, where he camped the
night in his sodden clothes.
By the end of that stage of the jour-
ney, Casey had “two broken teeth, twomachete wounds, and a mass of sores,
spine punctures, cuts and insect bites”.
He had lost 15kg (2st 5lb) in weight.
More than two years later, in April
2019, he finally crossed the Brazilian
border near Iquitos, Peru. By 2020 he
had made it to the River Tapiche. But
then a coronavirus lockdown forced
him to stop in his tracks again. He
stayed alone in a remote farmhouse for
seven months. There, he felt relatively
fortunate. “Unlike many people aroundDec 4,
May 8, 2020^2015Dec 22,
2017StartFinishPERUBOLIVIABRAZILNov 27,
2016
ManausJan 1, 2022
LimatamboApr 18,
2019300 milesGlory beckons for Amazon explorer
When Pete Casey set off to become the
first person to walk the length of the
Amazon from sea to source he thought
he would be back home within a couple
of years.
That was in 2015. Now, just over six
years later, having almost drowned,
been threatened by villagers wielding
shotguns, disowned by most of his
family and friends, and blown his life’s
savings, he is still trying to complete his
journey. He is getting close, with about
300 miles to go.
“I’m just resting my legs up for a
week,” he told The Times during an in-
termittent internet phone call from the
Apurimac region in Peru.
The challenge he set himself is ex-
treme: walking, swimming and if neces-
sary crawling the entire 4,300 miles of
the Amazon and its source rivers from
east to west, completely unsupported.
While there have been successful expe-
ditions kayaking the river from source
to sea, going in the other direction, on
foot, is a massive undertaking.
“This, I must admit, has gone on a lot
longer than I expected,” the former
builder said.
Finding local guides prepared to
join him on a trek in which
he is often wading against
the current — he insists on
not using boats or major
roads — has been one chal-
lenge. Another has been the
Covid-19 lockdown, which
he said had set him back at
least a year.
His expedition began in
December 2015, on a beach
on Marajó island in Brazil,
where the Amazon spills out
into the Atlantic. Casey said
he sold “everything I owned”,
including a flat in Crawley,
West Sussex, to attempt the
personal challenge of the first
“reverse ascent” of the river.
Within weeks he conceded
that the task was greater than he had
imagined. First there was the terrain,
“months and months in jungle”, he said.
Then there were the constant struggles
to get the necessary permissions from
bureaucrats and local chiefs and to
cross areas and communities off all
tourist trails.
He was also delayed by stomach bugs
and tortured by what he described as
“thousands upon thousands of mosqui-
to bites”. his closest shave with death
In 2015 Pete Casey set
out to walk the river
from sea to source. Now
the end is in sight,
Stephen Gibbs writes
Pete Casey has walked, swum and sometimes crawled through thousands of miles of rainforest, almost drowning along the way and being threatened with shotgunsGETTY IMAGESwaswhenhe f dPEJ
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