You hate 3-D. I get it. You find it to be the death of creativity. The nadir of cinema. Studios are just trying to jack up ticket prices and force you to see the movie in expensive settings because the 2-D showings are relegated to the shoddy smaller theater houses where the presentation is weaker. Yawn. Get a new position. Your own.
How much real evolution have we seen in multiplexes over the course of medium’s lifetime? We went from hand cranked to automated, black and white to color, and silent to sound. We’ve aspect ratios and apertures change. We’ve seen digital projection go from being an interloper to reducing the human error and creating a more reliable experience without sacrificing that comforting communal experience. 3-D has the potential to bring real evolution. To help make the experiences between the home and multiplex different. We’re often dragged kicking and screaming into new tech. Into new experiences.
While there’s still a nostalgic vinyl listenership (and deservedly so) it’s safe to say that CD’s weren’t the death knell for music. Many folks (myself included) felt that downloading was a horror show. We felt that the processed sound of digital music was dogshit. The death of the purity of music. As if purity has ever factored in either industry. Guess what? We all download music. It’s the preferred way of obtaining it.
3-D is a tool that has been used wantonly and frivolously by many. Studio executives who are motivated by fear have pulled the trigger on 3-D movies no one needed and we’ve all seen the side effects of bad judgment calls. Bad post conversion. Poor marriages of medium and material. Films that were 3-D in name alone.
That’s why the Coen Bros. need to make a 3-D movie. And they should start by releasing a painstaking version of The Big Lebowski in 3-D. If ever a film would benefit from the medium, it’d be The Big Lebowski. Or Moulin Rouge. Or Enter the Void. Or The Shining. People need to be schooled that not only is the tool a perfectly viable one but it’s also a way to get new facets from the familiar. The offer a new sort of revival experience. This isn’t the coloration of seminal B&W films and this isn’t the rape of art. It’s enhancing the experience.
We are a culture who will watch a blu-ray with a mode enabled that breaks the action and offers documentaries behind the scenes. We are a culture who watches movies while kids run past in the living room or on our portable device while being bounced on a train. Let’s not act like it’s still a pure experience. How many have witnessed the processed look some HD television sets showcase with their Trumotion or other software tweaks to “enhance” the experience? Tech moves. It’s alive. So is our favorite art medium.
The Big Lebowski in 3-D. Think about it. Think about seeing that at midnight on a Friday night in a state of the art theater with your favorite people. Think about seeing it in a cinema that sells food and liquor. White Russians and a great movie that has already transcended the medium to an extent. That rug’s patterns, those dream sequences, those human ash remains. The possibilities are limitless. The haters of 3-D are right when they say it’s not being used right. They’re right to hate it if they watch it in a theater with the wrong equipment.
But in the right environment with the right marriage of material and tech it could be legendary.
The Big Lebowski 3-D. It could be a serious catalyst for great things.
27 comments
I WILL KILL TRUMOTION IN ITS SLEEP.
I will help you hide the body
But honestly, I’d pay to see pretty much all the movies listed above with a quality 3D conversion, cause the thing that I love the most about good 3D isn’t the shit popping out of the screen, it’s the illusion of the greater depth. “Enter the Void” in 3D would be the best thing in the entire universe.
I don’t hate 3D. It’s not VERY 3D though, even when done well. It’s not 3D enough. Maybe this new frame-rate thing with kick it up to the right level and we’ll get a 3D Kubrick experience where it’s a profound sensation.
At it’s most basic, it needs to be so good they can pull off creepy visual illusions, like having a person or monster walk across the screen at “life size” and look like they could step down into the cinema. At it’s best – Cthulhu Space.
This article is a joke, right?
i’ve been secretly hoping for “The Shining: 3D” for awhile now.
NO! Its bloody carcass must be left out to rot for all to see! The message must stick!
3-D is horrific and I don’t care what you contrarians say. It dims the image, it makes gives me a headache and it doesn’t reflect reality. I have never once looked down a hallway and thought “wow, look at that depth!” The way I, and by extension, I assume most everyone else, perceive the world is as a 2-D plain. I don’t see how 3-D has any benefit beyond being a gimmick.
The Shining 3D would be fun. I’d also dig Barry Lyndon 3D and maybe the cat-lady scene from Clockwork.
Twilight 3-D
i kid
All the 3D films I’ve seen so far (including Avatar) were really like 2.5D. We’re not talking total “immersion” we’re talking pop-up book movies. I grew out of pop-up books when I was seven. Is it really truly enhancing my experience? Uh no. No sound to sound was a revolution. Black and white to color was a revolution. Tricking my brain there is a little depth up on screen where there is none is absolutely totally completely fuckinglutely NOT a revolution.
This is a wretched idea.
So just because someone before me hated 3D, the fact that I also can’t stand 3D isn’t my position?
Fuck that, pal. Shining in 3D? What, Shining isn’t working for you already? Those tracking shots don’t immerse you enough in the Overlook? Give me a fucking break.
I don’t have a problem with 3-D in general. I do have a problem with 3-D when it is only used to have stuff fly at or out of the screen that really has no business doing so. If the 3-D adds to the depth of the screen, like in Avatar, and lends to a more immersive experience, then more power to them and I will pay up to see that.
The net result of 3D for my family is that it added an additional step to our fandango process: “Step 3 – ensure that you didn’t accidentally buy tickets to the 3D version.”
It’s gotta be, though it’s pretty dry if it is. But no one who actually cares about/loves films would ever petition to see them converted to a format that they were never created for. It’s like saying “This 16:9 movie would be so much better in full-screen pan-&-scan!”
My Dinner With Andre: 3D…. “Tell, me more.”
As soon as I can watch 3D without the glasses, I’m on the bandwagon.
Color is color. Sound is sound. “3-D” is NOT three dimensional. A real 3-D presentation would provide a different perspective to each member of the audience. The person sitting on house right would see aspects of the image that the person sitting on house left would not see and vice-versa.
Current 3-D is the equivalent of D.W. Griffith hand tinting sequences of a black & white film and marketing it as “color!”
It doesn’t dim the image if the image is projected right, plain and simple. That argument is tired.
I’m not for altering films of the past. I’m for 3D for the future. I think it slightly returns the spectacle of the movie theater that it makes it a different experience. Although with home theater on the rise, benefits need to out weigh the cons. Filmmakers need to know how to film it properly though, along with theaters needing to up the brightness.
Ultimately, it’s the story that matters, and 3D doesn’t add depth to characters.
“The goggles do NOTHING!”
~ Rainier Wolfcastle
3D notwithstanding, color and sound in virtually every film you’ve ever seen are in no way reflective of how things actually look, or how sounds actually works. Color correction and sound design are as far-removed from reality as any other proposed cinematic gimmick.
I really dislike that second to last paragraph. As if to say “We’ve already taken what’s good about experiencing films and fucked it all up… so let’s keep fucking it up even more!” I really don’t understand Nick’s need to defend 3D so vehemently. It’s an option — people can experience the novelty, or they can experience proper color and brightness. Y’know, the way the filmmakers intended. As long as they maintain releasing every 3D movie in 2D as well, then who the fuck cares? It’s not like it’ll ever be one or the other.
Converting THE SHINING into “3D” will in no way make it more “immersive” – only more gimmicky, for the simple and obvious reason that depth perception doesn’t happen in the eye, it takes place in the brain.
Perhaps this is why the author of the article needs 3D glasses?
The reader is told to agree with the piece or else become a sheep. Then we are told that watching 3D movies at the multiplex is “different” than watching them – with the same glasses – on giant 3D screens at home . . . why yes! It is different: it’s the same difference as watching a 2D silent B&W movie at the cinema versus at home. Not exactly penetrating insights, that.
Further showing his ignorance, the author goes on to equate “digital” with “downloadable” as if he expect his reader to never have noticed the DDD logo on the back of a music CD. Note that no mention is made of, say, the .flac format, which makes a larger but still easily shared and almost perfect dupe of a master . . . all of which were recorded on digital media and mixed digitally for nigh on 30 years now.
As for “facets from the familiar” (whatever that means; probably nothing) and the “new sort of revival experience” (reviving gimmicks? Fads? Salesmanship?) and “enhancing the experience” I can only ask how, exactly, will the Viewmaster effect make BETTER FILMS? Why isn’t anyone interested in better cinema? Better stories. More interesting characters. I’ll say this: for non-narrative film, I can see this 3D being an interesting avenue. (Praise Herzog!)
Finally, the author seems to want to convince me (us) that we should embrace this idiotic trend because EVERYBODY ELSE IS DOING THINGS THAT ARE EQUALLY STUPID. Hum, no. I can see how this would be a compelling argument – it has worked on the author, evidently – but I see no great honour or benefit in joining the herd on the sole promise that we’ll all behave with equal retardation.
Idiocracy indeed.
3D is pure “car keys”: a shiny object that tinkles pleasantly. Thing is, my 16 month-old niece is already past that stage.
I will however render unto Cesar and all that: ENTER THE VOID would be immensely improved by the use of – especially – the most unnatural, cartoony 3D post-conversion. A turgid bowel movement of such insufferably egomanical wankery can only profit by being slathered, smeared in additional layers of meretricious crassness. That or some good weed. (But how I do love the image of an entire audience of 3D fans being cum-shot right in their stupid glasses!)
I cannot ignore the irony of an article calling for the conversion of a movie by a director not only known to have been a true visionary but also one who purposefully released films in “outdated” technology and formats. Where are the next Kubrick, Truffault, Ozu? Have we – all of us are guilty to varying degrees – so thoroughly denigrated the art that the best we can wish for, the only vision we can conjure is a future of geeky tech? Film as a pizza ordering phone app.
The revolution will be stupid. Three dimensions of stupid.
Wow. Good job. You’ve really shown “the author” what a jerk he is for having an opinion. Bravo!
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