Gasometer
1 Jul 2009, 16:18
Saw Ice Age 3D today, my first 3D experience since seeing Jaws 3D which is the worst movie of all time IMO.
Thought the technology had improved but...clear, clean print, totally awesome picture quality, but the movie was weaker than IA 1 and IA 2.
There were 3 shorts beforehand for 3D movies coming up and Toy Story 3 is in 3D as well.
Is it still a gimmick at the expense of a good movie?
Gaso
NitroFan
1 Jul 2009, 16:37
Is it still a gimmick at the expense of a good movie?
Not necessarily. The new Pixar movie Up is apparently one of the best Pixar movies yet (haven't seen it myself), and it's in 3D.
gothecrows
2 Jul 2009, 15:39
Tends to be a bit gimmicky (i.e. probably not a great movie) if the movie is "<insert title> 3D", or is promoted solely on 3D aspect.
As was mentioned though, Up could be seen in 2D or 3D, and was a very good film (happened to see it in 3D while in the US a week or 2 ago).
If they are still gimmicky I don't think they will stay that way for long.
I think they are just getting in first and preparing everyone for James Cameron's Avatar to blow our minds in December. (I hope anyway :p)
There was an interesting article by Time magazine about the current 3d movies, and the future of 3d.
Here's the link...
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1886541-1,00.html
an excerpt from that article, with a bit about Avatar
The Future of 3-D
Cameron's Avatar, due in December, could be the thing that forces theaters to convert to digital. Spielberg predicts it will be the biggest 3-D live-action film ever. More than a thousand people have worked on it, at a cost in excess of $200 million, and it represents digital filmmaking's bleeding edge. Cameron wrote the treatment for it in 1995 as a way to push his digital-production company to its limits. ("We can't do this," he recalled his crew saying. "We'll die.") He worked for years to build the tools he needed to realize his vision. The movie pioneers two unrelated technologies--e-motion capture, which uses images from tiny cameras rigged to actors' heads to replicate their expressions, and digital 3-D.
Avatar is filmed in the old "Spruce Goose" hangar, the 16,000-sq.-ft. space where Howard Hughes built his wooden airplane. The film is set in the future, and most of the action takes place on a mythical planet, Pandora. The actors work in an empty studio; Pandora's lush jungle-aquatic environment is computer-generated in New Zealand by Peter Jackson's special-effects company, Weta Digital, and added later.
I couldn't tell what was real and what was animated--even knowing that the 9-ft.-tall blue, dappled dude couldn't possibly be real. The scenes were so startling and absorbing that the following morning, I had the peculiar sensation of wanting to return there, as if Pandora were real.
Cameron wasn't surprised. One theory, he says, is that 3-D viewing "is so close to a real experience that it actually triggers memory creation in a way that 2-D viewing doesn't." His own theory is that stereoscopic viewing uses more neurons. That's possible. After watching all that 3-D, I was a bit wiped out. I was also totally entertained.
here's also an interesting comment from Steven Soderbergh about Avatar (from another website)...
“Yeah, I went to the set,” said Steven Soderbergh, when Total Film quizzed him recently. “I can tell you that shit was mindblowing. The shit I saw was crazy. Like, craaaazy. I think it’s gonna be gigantic. It’s gonna be another one of those benchmarks. There’s gonna be Before that movie and After.”