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.

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My problem with 3-D, and a fantastic film opportunity in Macon

Just in case you thought there might be some end in sight to the 3-D wave of animation (and eventually, I fear, nearly everything else), there was an odd story this morning that shows just how much it's taken over just about the entire world.

It seems that even Frenchies like Patrice Leconte, director of one of my favorite froggy mind-benders in "The Man on the Train" and many other flicks, is getting into the 3-D animated game. Granted, he's making something called "Le Magasin des Suicides" (literally, "The Suicide Store"), a "dark comedy" about a family-owned shop that sells suicide tools to a depressed and suicidal world.

At least the story sounds interesting enough, but as much as I've tried, I just can't get into 3-D animation as anything more so far than a gimmick. I thought Pixar's "Up" would be the movie that finally gets me on board, but I think I can now officially count myself as someone who just doesn't believe the hype.

Now, there was one movie so far that I thought really made fantastic use of the technology, Henry Selick's "Coraline," but that's really it. Every other time I've seen a 3-D movie (and there's been at least "Up," "Monsters Vs. Aliens" and "Nightmare Before Christmas"), the supposed thrill just left me cold, and I think I've finally figured out (after discussing it with my fellow cubicle slave Randy Waters) why.

It's those glasses, which to me just make the whole screen muddy. A big part of the thrill in animated movies for me is to see the vibrant colors used to create something as beautiful as a painting. Think back to when Remy the rat first beheld the cityscape of Paris in "Ratatouille" or when Kiki was flying over Mediterranean Europe in Hayao Miyazaki's "Kiki's Delivery Service." I just can't imagine those unforgettable images would be as magical if they had been run through the 3-D machine.

And beyond the muddiness of the images, I just feel like it removes me from the experience by a level or two, putting this filter between me and the screen that just creates a remoteness that limits my engagement with the movie.

Now, even if I am an increasingly old curmudgeon about this and other things (I listened to the Black Eyed Peas' "Boom Boom Pow" the other day to see if I could get into it, but I can't ... I love hip-hop and always will [listening to Dead Prez right now], but I just can't stand that vodaphone crap, another gimmick that just distorts the beauty that is rap music), I am sane enough to realize there's really nothing I can do about it. I was tempted to go back and watch "Up" in 2-D to see if I would enjoy it more, but decided to save my money instead.

But before I go any further on in that longer-than-expected tangent, this was supposed to be a plug for the Macon Film Guild, which is showing what I expect to be a truly great flick this Sunday in "Sugar."

It's been forever since I've seen a great baseball flick in a movie theater, so I was hoping that this one from Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck would get a proper run, but it never materialized. I was bit underwhelmed by "Half Nelson," mostly because by the time I finally managed to see it the flick had been hyped so much that I was just expecting more, I guess.

With "Sugar," however, you can count me as thoroughly amped. The flick tells the story of Miguel "Sugar" Santos, a Dominican teenager who gets scouted as a pitcher and at 19 enters the U.S. minor league system with hopes of hitting it big.

The Macon Film Guild, which consistently shows quality flicks that should find more of an audience, is showing this one at 2, 4:30 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday at the Douglass Theatre in Macon, so if you're anywhere in the Middle Georgia area, come out and check it out, because it deserves a big crowd. If you're at the 2 p.m. show, I'll see you there.

And I'll leave you today with the first trailer I've seen for Martin Scorsese's next flick, "Shutter Island," which looks, thankfully, like it will be even crazier than I was hoping. Based on a Dennis Lehane novel, it of course stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a U.S. marshall who uncovers a nasty secret at a hospital for the criminally insane. It really looks like Scorsese making a B-movie, and almost a horror flick, and I can't possibly see anything wrong with that. Peace out.