Is 3-D finally dying? The signs increasingly say yes

Change never comes easy.

And, I suppose, there are certainly more pressing issues today than the soul-sapping power of 3-D in movies, but if you're a fan of them (like me, of course), it's at least a real problem, especially during the height of the movie summer.

For movie fans, though, this summer's developments may actually be key in bringing about the insidious gimmick's demise, and for that Hollywood would have no one to blame but itself.

Quick, think, when was the last time that the addition of 3-D to a movie really dazzled, much less even mattered? For me, you have to go all the way back to Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland," and there have been a whole lot of 3-D movies released since then (for which many I refused to put on those silly glasses on top of the ones I need simply to see what's in front of me.)

And beyond the sheer glut of 3-D movies (16 of them between May and September of this year, with two big, upcoming titles being "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" and "Transformers: Dark of the Moon"), there's the fact that (for me at least) it just adds nothing to the movie-watching experience, instead just draining the screen of color and often energy, too.

The problem is particularly galling with animated movies, which are now almost universally released in 3-D. In this, if I can exaggerate what I really think is only slightly, movie studios reveal themselves to be little more than pusher men, getting kids hooked on this shiny trick before they can figure out just how little they really get out of it. Luckily, however, unlike drug addicts who are truly too far gone, moviegoers do still have a choice, and the signs, according to numbers from the New York Times (and pointed out to me by always-welcome reader Jeremy Jirik), are finally starting to point to us just saying no to unnecessary 3-D.

One 3-D flop this summer was "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," which made just 47 percent of its domestic box office take from 3-D ticket sales in week one (as a rule, successful 3-D blockbusters are expected to make about 60 percent of their first-week take from 3-D sales). Add to that last week's debut of "Kung Fu Panda 2," which made only 43 percent of its long Memorial Day weekend, $53 million take from 3-D ticket sales, and got absolutely trounced by "The Hangover: Part II," which pulled in about $118 million from Thursday-Monday.

But nothing this well entrenched will die easily, and the 3-D pushers have to take heart in its overseas performance, where fans flocked to the latest "Pirates" movie in 3-D in huge numbers. Is it, to be blunt, because they're simply dumber than we are? Of course not. It's just because 3-D hasn't been around as long or been as prevalent in some parts of the world as it has here, so there's still the thrill of the new. Eventually (I hope), everyone will see this emperor's clothing of movie gimmicks for exactly what it is.

Do I want movies to die? Certainly not. I just want them to stop leaning on this crutch which has by now much more than worn out its welcome. But what can we do aid in its demise? Well, when they're good, go see genuine, old-fashioned 2-D movies, be they big (like this week's "X-Men: First Class") or small (if you're here in Macon, check out the simply sublime "Of Gods and Men" with the Macon Film Guild on June 12.)

And in the meantime, just keep hope alive that 3-D will soon be something we can look back on with disgust. Peace out.

Only you can stop the virus that is 3-D

In the race to discover the most despicable use of 3-D technology yet, James Cameron's plans for a 3-D Black Eyed Peas concert movie (if that is still on) have now been surpassed by an even more ridiculous idea.

Now, before I spew any venom, let me say that I'm a very middle-aged dude, so far from the target audience for anything about Justin Bieber (though I really did enjoy that German TV clip in which when, asked to say something in German, he replied, "What is German?")

However, even a few of his most devoted teen and tween fans might scoff at this: A 3-D biopic about the 15-year-old singer's life, to be released next February and somehow be directed by Davis Guggenheim, who made "An Inconvenient Truth." Yes, really. Now, I suppose it's possible that his 15 years have been filled with enough drama and suffering to make a feature length movie work, but I somehow have my doubts.

As regards 3-D overall, and in case you couldn't tell already, I pretty much thoroughly hate it, The Wrap had an interesting set of numbers this morning about the gimmick's failing arc at the box office. Now, this isn't entirely fair, since I don't think anyone expected the "Cats & Dogs" sequel to make a ton of money, but the chart below is still very telling. Enjoy.



An $80 million opening for "Alice in Wonderland" (which, unlike a lot of people, I quite liked, IN 2-D) down to the dismal bow of "Cats & Dogs"? Now, that's a progression that has me hopeful, but The Wrap's article quickly doused those hopes with a big dose of reality. Here's an excerpt:

“I think the overall message isn't that 3D is a fad or that it’s going away, but I’m not sure we’re moving to a point where 50 percent of the box office is derived by 3D ticket sales as some of the bulls currently believe,” BTIG Research analyst Richard Greenfield told TheWrap.

With, as the New York Times noted Tuesday, nearly 60 3D releases queued up for the next two years, the “bulls” can still be found in herds back in Hollywood. In fact, the flurry will continue this weekend, when Disney releases “Step Up 3D.”

Now, I'm perfectly able to simply skip "Step Up 3D," and with "The Kids Are All Right" somehow opening at my local multiplex this week, I can even see a good movie, but 60 3-D movies in the next two years? Sheesh. All I can say is keep hope alive, because only you can stamp out the scourge that is 3-D, and it all starts with simply saying no.

OK, that was a lot of bile for a Wednesday morning, so why not some actual good news about a movie I really want to see instead? Edgar Wright's "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World" finally drops next week, and I'm totally amped for it.

As part of the appropriately aggressive marketing push, Cartoon Network's [adult swim] will air a short animated film titled "Scott Pilgrim vs. The Animation" in two installments between midnight and 12:30 a.m. Aug. 12. The short will cover Scott's relationship with Sex Bob-omb drummer Kim Pine, and will feature the voices of Michael Cera and Alison Pill from the movie. And for those of you who, like me, are rarely up at that trouble-making hour on a school night, it will re-air on Friday the 13th (yes, again), the day the movie comes out, on both Adultswim.com and its facebook page. Nothing but groovy there.

And since I have a bit more time, there are some other TV tidbits out there today that are pretty juicy.

As "The Office" embarks on its final season with Steve Carell's Michael Scott as the boss of Dunder Mifflin, it seems he'll tangle with Timothy Oliphant, star of the great F/X Western of sorts "Justified" and just one of my favorite actors.

According to TV Guide, he'll have at least a two-episode run as a rival paper salesman who angers Michael and Dwight by stealing away their customers. In my mind, that's already funny.

And speaking of Westerns, they certainly seem to be getting new life on TV these days, and that's welcome news in my little corner of the world. AMC is now developing a period drama called "Hell on Wheels," which follows the story of a former Confederate soldier who ends up working on the transcontinental railroad in the Nebraska prairie as he hunts down the Union soldiers who killed his wife. Juicy. And in the latest casting news, Reel Fanatic favorite Colm Meaney has signed on for the role of Thomas “Doc” Durant, a businessman determined to make his fortune building the railroad.

The final bit of good TV news today is that FX has, somewhat surprisingly, picked up a second 13-episode season of "Louie," starring the comedian Louis CK. I'm only really surprised because, while I like it quite a bit, it certainly is a dark and bitterly funny brew, so not exactly designed to appeal to a broad audience.

And I'll leave you with this nugget from the latest Ebert Club newsletter, an enjoyable read every time it pops up in my e-mail box. It seems that BBC1 is either airing or has aired a series of three 90-minute episodes of "Sherlock," a take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories set in modern-day England (and hopefully more than a bit better than that mess with Robert Downey Jr. last year, and I have to assume, next year too.) In the best news of all, the series, which stars Benedict Cumberbatch (great name there) as Sherlock and Martin Freeman (of the original "The Office" - see, synergy) as Holmes, will be aired on PBS as part of its Masterpiece series early next year. Enjoy this short clip from the series, and have a perfectly bearable Wednesday. Peace out.

Does the anti-3-D movement finally have a champion in Zack Snyder?

I certainly hope so, because when you hear news as crazy as this, it really just drives home how much we need one.

And I suppose that when you're James Cameron, you've certainly earned the right to a little crazy, but really, can't he find anything better to with all his pull than a 3-D Black Eyed Peas concert movie? Apparently not.

According to will.i.am (and I have no idea nor care if I'm writing that right), the now-confirmed-as-evil genius is indeed using his 3-D magic for a big-screen concert flick that will follow the band around the globe. Here's what he had to say to Vibe:

“We have the biggest director because we are the biggest group on the planet. The Peas are filming it in South America. People will be able to see us in the theater with the 3-D glasses and everything. There will be a storyline that [Cameron] came up with, which will be dope.It’s a full-length film and it's based around our tour activities. We’ve toured from America and Europe, to the Middle East, South America, Asia and Africa."

Oh, there will be a storyline? Thanks for clearing that up. Sheesh.

But what is the real remedy to all this madness? It will have to be movies that make tons of money without ever touching the gimmick, and that starts, I suppose, with "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" having possibly already made a billion bucks. Not my cup of blood, but bully.

It also needs directors who, when asked to ruin their films with the simply wretched "3-D conversion," have the nards to just say no, and Zack Snyder is hopefully the man to do it.

I've always liked Snyder's movies. "300" was just a big ball of fun, and unlike most "Watchmen" fans, I had no problem at all with what he did with that funnybook masterpiece. He has a 3-D animated owl (yes, owl) flick, "Legends of the Guardians" (at least I think that's what it's called), coming out Sept. 24. But it's what come next that should be really fun.

After making two adaptations, "Sucker Punch" will be his first original live-action flick, and it will star Vanessa Hudgens as a young lady who must escape from a mental hospital to which she's been sent by her evil stepfather. And just in case that's not enough to get you hooked, this will also star Reel Fanatic fave Carla Gugino, Mad man Jon Hamm and even "Black Dynamite" himself, Michael Jai White (if you haven't seen that comic gem, take it as my rental recommendation for the day.)

And that's where his hopefully firm 3-D stance comes in. Having shot the entire movie in glorious 2-D, he's apparently under studio pressure to now "convert" it to 3-D, but as you can see from this MTV clip, he's rightly hesitant. After a little hemming and hawing about time, it's his wife and professional partner, Deb, who gives the real reason: It's just so unnecessary. Amen to that. Enjoy the clip and expect to see "Sucker Punch," hopefully only in 2-D, on March 25, 2011. Peace out.

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

Christopher Nolan, uncaped crusader against 3-D? Not so much

Actually, if you like the funny, there's nowhere else to start today than with the fact that the extremely funny Louie CK is coming to F/X tonight with his new sitcom, appropriately enough titled simply "Louie."

The show, which will blend his standup with sitcom set pieces, has gotten nothing but positive write ups from what I've seen so far, so you can count me as thoroughly psyched for this, even if, since it's on at 11 p.m. on a school night, this kid will be in bed already and will watch it in DVRed form Wednesday night. Here's a fairly funny promo clip. Enjoy.



OK, now on to the main event. I'm still entirely convinced that Christopher Nolan's "Inception" is going to do nothing but rock when it comes out July 16, but any notion that he was some kind of uncaped crusader against the virus that is 3-D (which, admittedly, really only existed in my own mind) has now been shattered.

It seems that, rather than standing up to the tide and making his blockbuster without Hollywood's latest gimmick, Nolan and his crew simply ran out of time to complete the 3-D conversion process. Sheesh. Here's what he had to say about it:

"When we edited the film, we looked at the post-conversion process and did some very good tests, but when I really looked at the time period we had and where my attention needed to be in finishing the film, I decided I didn't have enough time to do it to the standard I would have liked."

In the very next quote, however, he goes on to make the exact case against 3-D, post-conversion or otherwise, that holds the most sway with me.

"It's perfectly possible to post-convert a film very well. I like not having glasses on when I see a movie and I like seeing a bright immersive image. So, I think at the end of the day I am extremely happy to be putting the film out with 35 mil film prints. Very brightly projected with the highest possible image quality. That's really what excited me."

Amen brother, Now, just remember that when and if you ever get around to making a "Batman 3"!

In other superhero news about a flick that's so far coming together very well, it seems that Matthew Vaughn has hired his Emma Frost for "X-Men: First Class." Having already made solid choices for the leads of young Professor X and Magneto, respectively James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender, it's only natural in comic-book progression that they'd find, and forgive me for saying it, a sublimely hot actress to play the White Queen. And in Alice Eve, pictured, of course, here, they certainly have.

So, who's Alice Eve? Well, I've only ever seen her in the surprisingly satisfying "She's Out of My League" with Jay Baruchel. Before that movie collapses into a pool of rom-com formula for the finish, it's remarkably funny, especially co-star Krysten Ritter. If you haven't seen this one, you could certainly do far worse with a rental.

OK, as we go into the videos, where else to start than with this this touching tribute to O Rei Pele, executive produced by Fernando Meirelles of "City of God" fame. It imagines a parallel end to the great one's playing career, and if you like soccer (and please, if you don't, keep it to yourself), this is certainly worth about five minutes of your time, and may even jerk a tear or two out of you. Enjoy.



Where do you go from there? Why not to a kung fu movie directed by RZA of the Wu Tang Clan? Yes, really, and this two-minute trailer (with, I apologize in advance, just horrendously bad music) promises that "Wu Tang Vs. the Golden Phoenix" will be bad in the most delightfully fun kind of way. Enjoy.



And finally, how better to end than with the first trailer for "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," which they've rather wisely stashed in front of "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" beginning at midnight tonight (or tomorrow morning, or whatever.) You can argue with making it into two movies, but the final chapter of Harry's saga is an epic tome, so I really have no beef with it. What you can see from this is that they really got it done just in time, because the kids really can't get any older for this to work at all, but I'm confident director David Yates will come up with winners for these two flicks, the first of which is coming in November. Enjoy, and have a perfectly passable Tuesday. Peace out.

Reger Ebert's dead right: 3-D just sucks (insert your own funny noun here)

In case anyone's wondering, I'm well aware that there really is nothing that Roger Ebert - and much, much less me - can do to stop the extremely profitable plague that is 3-D, but the world is still just a little better place because he keeps trying.

In what I have to assume is the most recent issue of Newsweek, the estimable film critic for the Chicago Sun Times outlines extremely rational and convincing reasons why 3-D just sucks so hard (though he doesn't put it quite that way, of course.) It's very well worth reading his entire piece, which you can do here, but I've taken the liberty of reprinting his lead, which just about nails things very economically:

3-D is a waste of a perfectly good dimension. Hollywood's current crazy stampede toward it is suicidal. It adds nothing essential to the moviegoing experience. For some, it is an annoying distraction. For others, it creates nausea and headaches. It is driven largely to sell expensive projection equipment and add a $5 to $7.50 surcharge on already expensive movie tickets. Its image is noticeably darker than standard 2-D. It is unsuitable for grown-up films of any seriousness. It limits the freedom of directors to make films as they choose. For moviegoers in the PG-13 and R ranges, it only rarely provides an experience worth paying a premium for.

He pretty much states his entire case there, but it's still worth reading his full explanation. I'd just like to mention the two aspects of 3-D that just drive me batty, even more than the fact that it arbitrarily costs more (and more, just wait.)

The main point, which Ebert elaborates on, is that 3-D is indeed just an imagination slaughterer. Movies are meant to take you away, if only for a little while, from whatever is upsetting in your actual life. You, or at least I, can dive completely into the world unveiled in front of you, and further create it in your mind as a fully fleshed-out universe. Given that, why in the world would you want a computer to artificially do this for you? It just robs you of much of the moviegoing experience, so in my mind, it should cost less, not more, to watch. 'Nuff said.

A second point that Ebert addresses and I agree with wholeheartedly is that 3-D movies are indeed more than a bit "dim," especially the animated ones. The perfect case in point is "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs," just about the very last animated movie I'll ever see in 3-D for this reason. I watched it in 3-D first, and while it was very funny and still entertaining, it appeared to be filled with giant scoops of gray ice cream and beige pizza. Who wants that? Fully aware that it makes the first viewing a waste of money, I went back a week later and watched the movie in glorious 2-D, and the colors really just exploded off the screen. It was just a much more enjoyable experience. For that reason, I'm through with 3-D animation from anyone working now except for Henry Selick, who proved with "Coraline" that he knows how to use it to genuinely enhance the experience.

Ebert offered a technical reason for this a**-awful phenomenon:

Lenny Lipton is known as the father of the electronic stereoscopic-display industry. He knows how films made with his systems should look. Current digital projectors, he writes, are "intrinsically inefficient. Half the light goes to one eye and half to the other, which immediately results in a 50 percent reduction in illumination."

Why in the world would you pay MORE for that? OK, enough about that. Definitely take the time to read Ebert's essay, and I'll leave you with a very funny mashup of "Seinfeld" that reimagines George's life as a seriously dramatic Hollywood movie. Just about perfect. Peace out.

Enter the enchanting world of "Coraline"

Before seeing Henry Selick's rather amazing "Coraline," I was convinced that 3-D, be it in movies or television, was simply a gimmick to catch our extremely short attention spans for a few seconds. Now, however, at least when it comes to animation, you can count me as a true believer.

Actually, I was caught up in the magic of it even before the movie started, when for the first time I got to see the trailer for Pixar's next flick, "Up," for the first time in 3-D. It looks amazing, and I'm betting it will easily be one of this summer's best movies.

As for "Coraline" itself, this was only the second time I had bothered to don those goofy glasses (the first, oddly enough, being for another flick associated with Selick, the re-release of "The Nightmare Before Christmas"), and this was the first time that the 3-D effect felt perfectly organic to the story and only added to the world it was painstakingly used to create.

But as amazing as the stop motion animation/puppetry was, it all would have felt more than a little empty if it weren't for the strength of the story, adapted by Selick from the children's novella by Neil Gaiman with healthy doses of "Alice's Adventures In Wonderland," "The Wizard of Oz" and "Pan's Labyrinth" thrown in as inspiration.

Like Ophelia in Guillermo Del Toro's flick, our heroine Coraline constructs an elaborate fantasy world to escape the reality of her surroundings, here simply an old house in the middle of nowhere rather than the Spanish Civil War. In exploring her new abode, Coraline discovers a small door that's been painted over and, once opened, reveals in reality only another layer of bricks.

It's once she drifts off to sleep, however, that magical mice lead her through the door to an alternate universe in which she encounters an "other mother" and "other father" who, as opposed to her benign but somewhat neglectful real folks, offer her all the thrills that her own mind can conjure, plus some creepy creations that make this about as close as you can come to a horror movie for children (and not-yet-grown-up adults like me.)

I don't want to reveal any more than that about the story, but it's in this alternative universe that Selick's stable of animators/puppeteers get to really shine, most magically in Mr. Bobinsky's (voiced by Ian McShane) circus of bouncing mice (which you have to see to believe), but also in a pack of Scottie dogs who turn into bats at Coraline's command. Perhaps the most inane thing I've read in the past year was a debate at Aint It Cool News over whether these rather amazing mice were a feat of animation or simply CGI gimmickry; if you can't simply sit back and behold the visual feast that unfolds in front of you, I have to wonder why you go to the movies in the first place.

Selick/Gaiman's tale starts to unravel a bit as Coraline's dream world becomes more of a nightmare, but even here it's kept afloat as the vision of our young heroine, voiced with surprising spirit by Dakota Fanning (who, frankly, until she becomes a young adult instead of a kid trying desperately to be one, is better heard but not seen in my book, hence I won't be going to see her play an alcoholic in "Push" this weekend.) I loved watching her use the everyday objects around her to construct her elaborate fantasy world and the fact that as impudent as young Coraline can often be, the single thing that appears to irk her the most is that people in the real world too often address her as "Caroline."

In case you can't tell by now, I rather unconditionally loved this flick, and it was only after taking off those goofy glasses and returning to my own reality that I began to wonder just who this movie was intended for. Enchanting enough for kids but perhaps a tad too scary, it's probably aimed mostly at grown-up geeks like me, and I'm not sure that's enough of an audience to make this anything approaching a box-office winner.

In fact, a quick visit to Box Office Mojo revealed that on Friday it took in a respectable-but-not-great haul of about $4.5 million, far behind the $10.5 million or so of "He's Just Not That Into You" but thankfully a full million ahead of Steve Martin's latest attempt to crap all over the career of Peter Sellers.

My advice is simply that if you like going to the movies to escape for a little while and be thoroughly enchanted by a movie that's as visually stunning as it is simply entertaining, go see "Coraline," and if you can, certainly see it in 3-D. Peace out.