To 3-D or not to 3-D, that is the question

I recently managed to crawl out of my hovel to take in a feature film at the local theatre (The Rio – love the Rio, my favorite movie house in town!). Thor in 3-D was the night’s offering. I must say that the 3-D was less than impressive. (The film wasn’t very good either) It was blurry and really didn’t enhance the viewing experience at all. I ended up taking my glasses off for chunks of the movie. I can honestly say that I’m not at all impressed with this new technology. I know that the film wasn’t shot in the 3-D but converted afterwards. It was dark, and washed out looking. And when the 3-D made itself noticeable, everything looked small and fake – like models from a 50’s sci-fi film. I’ve seen a few films shot in 3-D, Avatar comes to mind, and while impressive looking, I felt the same thing, the 3-D made it look unreal. I saw Avatar on a pretty big screen – The Park theatre and all I could think of was that it needed to be bigger as the 3-D rendered it smallish and freaky. I hope that 3-D is just a passing fad. When I was younger – in my teens in the 80’s –  there was a slight resurgence in the 3-D films. I was excited for that way back then as I thought it great fun to get really high and watch Friday the 13th in 3-D. Nowadays I just find it gives me a headache.

Here’s an interesting article from Roger Ebert (he hates the 3-D) about the problems with 3-D and with regular 2-D films shown in theatres equipped with the new 3-D projection systems. http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2011/05/the_dying_of_the_light.html