Will Airbender (mercifully) kill the 3-D fad?

I can't quite pin down what 3D does to me. If it makes me feel like the movie world springs off the screen and into my world(literally) or if it pulls me into the movie's world by eliminating the flat screen.

I find Nolan's Batman Begins to be an astounding film. And the impression it always gives me is that it's a "convex" movie where its world bulges off the screen into mine. While most movies, like Dark Knight, I consider "concave" movies where their world only exists inside the screen, as if they were in a fish tank. It has a lot to do with Batman Begins having a very seemingly plausible story. But I have a feeling it's Nolan's filmic decisions that always makes me feel like the film springs into my world instead of the other way around.

So far, I've seen exactly three films with good 3D: The Polar Express, Avatar, and Coraline. I think that 3D is like any genre, gimmick, or anything else in cinema: we have to wade through a ton of crap to get to the gems.

For me, 3D is the end of cinema. AFter enduring Avatar, I have vowed never to see another 3D film again. It gave me a headache and made me very nauseous. If all theatrical films were to be made in 3D, I would happily never enter another cinema ever again. And don't get me started on 3D television! Geez!!!!

Which do you find more immersive -- a novel or a pop-up book?

I've read some terrible novels, and I've seen some beautifully constructed pop-up books.

Off topic: But I'm glad to see Kermode again here. If only we could have someone like Mark Kermode doing At The Movies here in America, I'd watch every episode.

Too bad that American producers are going after amateurish guys like Ben Lyons or Cody Gifford (an actual film student!).

He's witty, he's smart, he gives the best rants and he balances pretentiousness and simplicity perfectly.

I can't get tired from watching this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHeQeHstrsc

Roger Ebert is 100% right about 3-D. Also Ebert is great and is inspirational. He can't speak anymore but he is a strong soul.

'Meanwhile, 3-D is the same as it ever was. Like all the most effective effects, it only works when you don't notice it's an effect.'

What an apt conclusion!

Truly the opposite of the socalled 'immersiveness' of 3D.

The effect is ofcourse... follow the money.

All right, I love 3D. I do. I've got three different ways to watch it at home--on a 3D HDTV, with various anaglyph (red-and-blue) releases of varying effectiveness, and with a now-obsolete NTSC shutter glasses system (can't use that with HDTVs' all-progressive screens). At least a dozen movies compatible with one format or another. Love it!

And even I agree with you. I'm baffled by the idea that this is anything but the same fad we've seen twice before. Some say 3D will be the new standard for everything? Big deal, they were saying that in the 1950s and it dropped like a stone anyway. Most of what we've seen this time has been 1980s-style junk like 'The Final Destination,' 'Journey to the Center of the Earth' and 'My Bloody Valentine,' which work as a combination of exploitation movie and 3D demo reel. All of the really good 3D films we've had so far all have one thing in common: they can take or leave the 3D part. Either they're just as good in 2D despite some interesting use of 3D ('Coraline'), or they just ignore altogether that they're in 3D at all ('Up'). Live-action 2D-to-3D conversions are the one real new idea this time, and it's a dreadful idea.

I don't love 3D because it turns 'Friday the 13th Part 3' from schlock into a masterpiece, but because it's a really fun gimmick. It's not stereo or CinemaScope, where you get adjusted and see how it can improve a movie; as you said, it's a novelty, and like most novelties all it does it draw attention to itself. There isn't a good movie I can think of where 3D would have done anything for it but wave its arms around saying "hey, this is in 3D!"

In other words, if the standard for effectiveness is invisibility, I can't see 3D ever being effective. Fun, yes. So is a planetarium, but it's not cinema art or good fiction, just a lot of neat stuff on a screen. A lot of people have fun watching it, but few of them (I hope) would consider it a replacement. I don't.

I'm with George--3D makes me physically ill. There are several recent films I would have liked to see, but after having to leave early for both Avatar and Toy Story, I have given up. If they're not in 2-D as well, I'll have to miss them.

I hope this fad will pass quickly--is there anyone out there who JUST LOVES 3D?

Based on my experience with movie message boards, I say no.

Yes, 3D is a 1D too many. It sounds like a great idea, but in practice, over all there years there's just been to real development in it. But this is something that every generation has to find out for themselves. The last 3D craze was in the early 80's. Maybe 27 years ago. The one before that was in the late 50's - maybe 27 years before that.

It seems to me that when audiences figure out how lousy 3D is, they learn it for life.

You didn't answer the question that you led with. Why would this one atrocious movie kill the fad? I'd guess that the studio will still at least break even on the decision to convert to 3-D. The only theaters that will really be stung by the 3-D aspect, I'm guessing, are the ones that shipped out their Toy Story 3D print to make room for it and missed out on Toy Story receipts.

If Last Airbender flops (which I'm sure it will), then it will most likely be due to the fact that it looks awful, it has no stars, and M. Night's last three movies have bombed.

At some point it is reasonable to expect a backlash when the product continuously doesn't deliver on the inflated prices, but Alice in Wonderland had sloppy, last-minute 3-D that made the whole movie look like a bowl of oatmeal, and it was an enormous hit that people seem to love.

I won't go so far as to dismiss 3D entirely. I'm not enough of a visionary, and I don't want to wind up as one of those fellows who said, "Talkies are a fad."

What I do think is that 3D, if it is indeed more than a fad, is at a highly early stage in its development. It is where Technicolor was circa 1928-1930. You will recall that at the time, it was capable of only capturing two of the three colors, so the results were an odd melange of greens, oranges, and browns. It demanded so much light that there was little room for nuance or chiaroscuro. The picture was flat. Worse still, producers didn't know what the hell to do with it. It was a talking dog...it didn't matter what the dog said, only that the dog talked at all. In 1929-1930, a small wave of films came out in color...it was a marketing point. Other films awkwardly inserted color sequences in otherwise black-and-white films.

Then the fad crashed, and Technicolor fell on hard times. It took several more years to perfect the three color process, and even then, it remained something of a gimmick. It took visionaries like Walt Disney and Jack Cardiff to use it with purpose and artistry. All told, it took decades for Technicolor to transcend its reputation as candy-colored excess to become genuinely artistic...1946's "Black Narcissus" being arguably the first.

If 3D is to survive, it needs the same treatment. It needs time to advance with technology, to transcend the many technical problems that hinder it. Moreover, it needs visionaries to employ the process with purpose, people who have an understanding of basic and advance principles of cinematography and composition.

Right now, that isn't happening. I work in the industry, and have commented before on the current obsession with bulky lens adapters and digital SLRs to capture moving pictures with an absurdly shallow depth of field. I've marveled at pre-production meetings where directors and cameramen demonstrate a total lack of understanding of depth of field. To them, it is an effect, like the damn zooming, or shaky cam.

When I push for deep focus photography in the pictures I DP, the response is often that deep focus looks too much like video. For shame! It is small wonder that 3D is such a shoddy gimmick. When filmmakers lack an understanding of even how to capture images in 2D, how the heck can they expect to work in the "third dimension."

I haven't given up hope. Werner Herzog is employing 3D on a new project, and he is the epitome of old school craft in cinema. If anyone can make something of 3D, he can. Christopher Nolan is also said to be intrigued by the process, and together with his cameraman, Wally Pfister, one of the best now working, there is real potential there.

I will end with this: something MUST be done about the proliferation of fake 3D films like Airbender. It is one thing for a film to be shot with a truly multiplane process, but conventional films converted to 3D in post are just plain false advertising, and are conning people out of their money. I don't often say this, but there almost needs to be some legislation to protect theatregoers from this flim-flammery. It's getting out of control.

Brian Rose

I'm one of those weirdos that like 3D, but only when it's done well. None of the live-action 3D films I've seen really worked, especially with fast motion. The ability to watch a clip, go back in and tweak things to your heart's content gives pure CGI 3D an advantage.

The novelty is beginning wear off even for me though. A couple of years ago, I'd go see anything in 3D, then it became any CGI cartoon in 3D, now I pick and choose. And I know a guy who gets severe headaches from 3D, and I'll cheerfully take the 2D rather than leave him out.

What really surprises me is that no one has made any skin flicks with the new 3D. Do you think that, if these new 3D systems had come out earlier, they could have saved the porn theater industry?

I am now firmly of the opinion that a movie projected well on a big screen has a 3D quality all its own, one that involves a part of our brains which assigns -- unconsciously -- depth cues to 2D images to make them seem that much more real. IMO, it's counterproductive to frustrate this, and more useful to engage the part of our visual cortex which actively participates in watching the film, so to speak.

"When it comes to reading, which do you find more immersive -- a novel or a pop-up book?"

That analogy is poor. A better one would be a standard picture book versus a pop-up book.

Brian, you said it perfectly.

And on an unrelated note, I'm waiting for a Tarsem Singh movie in 3D.

I was around for the early-Fifties cycle of 3-D pictures, but even as a kid I could tell the process was somewhere between a playtoy and a distraction from the real movie. Most of my 3-D memories from that time are absurdities such as, in the Randolph Scott western THE STRANGER WORE A GUN, "rocks" being matted into the foreground to scream 3-D! 3-D! 3-D! during a chase scene--and when the camera panned, the rocks panned with it. (Director Andre de Toth, with only one eye, saw nothing in 3-D, so maybe this was a private joke.)

There was one artifact from the 3-D era I never got to check out properly at the time; nor had many other people. Alfred Hitchcock had made DIAL M FOR MURDER in 3-D but, because the craze had ended by the time the movie was ready for release, most if not all of its theatrical engagements were in 2-D. Big deal, it never seemed to be anything but a very minor entry in a major career; the source was a hit stage play, and except for a few shaky process shots of a London street, most of the film took place in an apartment. It was still, so it seemed, a play. And thus it continued to seem when revisited on TV and in film series ... till 1980. That year there was a brief revival of several "3-D classics," DIAL M among them. And it was a revelation.

I suppose we shouldn't have been shocked to discover that Hitchcock had known what he was doing. In 3-D, the film was a whole other experience, much more nuanced and involving. I know there was a lot of discussion here, back at AVATAR time, of whether 3-D involves truly cinematic space at all (and Jim's invocation of some eloquent images from Mizoguchi persuasively made the case that it didn't). I can say that space, the idea of space, changed dramatically in the 3-D DIAL M. That London flat, previously a zone for filmed dialogue, became charged with menace, enigma, a floating air of sinister possibility. And whenever Hitchcock went to his bird's-eye, looking-down-at-people-in-a-trap angle, the effect increased geometrically.

Commentators cited as high point the moment when Grace Kelly, bent back and being strangled by the intruder, reaches out toward the camera as if imploring the audience to help. (She's also, as she comes to realize, reaching toward a large pair of scissors in the foreground of the shot.) Pretty cool, I agree. But the moment that took me by the throat had occurred a little earlier, during the scene when Kelly's husband Ray Milland has invited old schoolmate Anthony Dawson in for a drink. As polite but insinuating dialogue fills in Dawson's shady history and character for us, and has Dawson himself increasingly apprehensive about what he's got himself into, Hitchcock keeps adjusting the angles of the shots and editorially tightening the screws. We've seen the tactic in many Hitchcock pictures, and its effect is to shift the scene and the psychological space from watching a character or characters walking somewhere, doing something, to watching with them, going with them, as they do it. Here it's just two guys sitting in a room and talking, but the dynamism is there.

Then the moment comes: Dawson has turned somewhat awkwardly in his seat to set his glass on a table behind him, and Milland asks without warning, "How'd you like to murder my wife for me?" Cut to Dawson--and this time, for the first and only and chillingly right time, the camera is directly in front of Dawson and he turns slowly to look straight into our eyes.

To be sure, the directing, angling, cutting all seemed perfectly apt on previous viewings in conventional "flat" format. But that night in 1980, I was in the room.

Jim forgot the other 3-D film for adults that's actually a pretty good movie, "Kiss Me Kate."

I'm personally pro-3-D as an occasional novelty, not as a regular thing and certainly not as a default. I don't even mind it when it's gimmicky. Indeed, my favorite use of 3-D was in the IMAX short documentary, "Galapagos," in which I had an iguana sitting within head-patting distance of me. I would have probably hated "Polar Express" flat -- it's not a good movie in any normal sense -- but as something just this side of a motion-simulator ride in IMAX 3-D, I had fun with it.

I will say that, now that it's been pointed out to me repeatedly, the loss in brightness is starting to bug me, however.

Movie studios have chosen the technical gimmick route since Speilberg and Lucas appeared on the scene in the 70's. 3D is just another gizmo to wow the public. The technical limitations of TV has forced it to innovate by telling better stories. I just watched John Ford's 1917 silent film, Bucking Broadway, running just under an hour. I found it technically more interesting than Avatar, because I knew there was no CGI gimmicks. There is one scene of a cowboys moving a heard of cattle. Two ridges frame the scene with cowboys on horses on both sides, and the cows in the valley. It was a magnificent shot. I was stunned by what I saw, thinking, how did they pull that off. This is 1917, not 2010.

I am a huge 3-D fan who is especially fond of the first wave from the 1950s. Filmmakers like Shyamalan ought to know by now that 3-D and darkness do not mix well ... unless, of course, the film is being shown on a really bright IMAX screen. Zemeckis' CHRISTMAS CAROL is another recent film that was simply too dark for regular 3-D viewing - unlike the brightly-colored Pixar releases, UP and TOY STORY 3.

Re your statement "with the exception of Alfred Hitchcock's 'Dial M for Murder' (adapted from a stage play), none of these films were targeted toward adults" - you left out one of the best and most dazzling 3-D films ever made, one that was definitely aimed at an adult audience, George Sidney's KISS ME, KATE.

People have a choice, they don't have to watch movies in 3D. Why does Ebert or anybody else for that matter who hates 3D, continuously chooses to watch them? I personally, am never going to watch another 3D ever again.

I can't help but think, when I see people pontificating en masse about how utterly disgusting 3D is, that they are either enormously different from the general population or they are just revelling in the feeling of being superior to the masses.

Do people here really think that Avatar made eleventy jillion dollars at the box office despite everyone hating the 3D? Obviously, most people don't have a problem with it.

The fact that it can be done wrong doesn't make it different from any other movie effect. Frankly, I think it's rare for a film to do night-time scenes well, but I would never express that as a loathing for nocturnal scenes in movies.

It's not the 3D that makes "The Last Airbender" a bad movie. Nor is it a reason to hate it. If it had been a great movie, would it have mattered if it was in 3D or not? I imagine the experience is equally as agonizing without 3D.

You were correct when speaking about "The Happening". M. Knight has forgotten how to tell a story visually. His cinematic language has become so retarded that it sends me into a rage. If for no other reason than one of the most brilliant films I've ever seen was constructed by M. Knight, which would be "Unbreakable".

Why Jim...why...

I report with a full write on my website.

"Will Airbender (mercifully) kill the 3-D fad?"

I can only hope. More and more I hear my friends groaning about 3D. My girlfriend refuses to see Toy Story 3 in 3D (as do I). I've talked to parents who are getting tired of paying higher ticket prices for what they view essentially as crap. I only hope I'm not the only one seeing this trend. Avatar was, and still remains, the only 3D film I enjoyed more because it was in 3D.

Anyone else remember when Shayamalan was dubbed "the new Spielberg"?

I enjoyed the 3D in "Beowulf", anyway. It made the movie seem more immersive. However, that is an exception; I've hated 3D nearly every other time I've been exposed to it. It's great for some IMAX movies, and planetariums, but that's about all!

Will Airbender do it in for 3-D? Honestly, I don't care. 3-D isn't truly a part of the movies, really. It's just a strap-on. It doesn't change the gender, it just makes it all more visually aggressive. Those of us who don't care for the gimmick can watch "3-D" movies without the 3-D.

I do agree, though, that it's distracting and pointless. Those famous deep-focus shots from "Citizen Kane", for instance, are plenty three-dimensional already, aren't they?

Day & Night (the short before Toy Story 3) is a good example of a movie that wouldn't have worked nearly as well in 2D. At least, you wouldn't have understood the separation between the 2D foreground characters and the 3D backgrounds nearly as well.

3D is good for atmosphere: raindrops, leaves, bubbles, etc. things that don't always come through vividly on 2D. But it's lousy on flesh and blood human faces; I feel like I'm looking at them through a viewmaster.

The thing is, when 3D is done broadly it's a distraction, but if it's done subtly, I'm thinking "this isn't that different than if I saw it at regular price".

I'll admit that there are movies that probably could use 3D more than others. (Watching "Beowulf" in 2D, it couldn't have been more obvious that it wasn't meant to be watched that way.) But I've seen the first two "Toy Story" movies in 3D, and it really didn't impress me. Nor did "A Christmas Carol." If that's the future of film, maybe I'll start reading more.

Incidentally, I once redid a "Garfield" strip in 3D once. I can tell you that it's really annoying work. You have to separate things into different layers and move them around... and the effect doesn't look that great, anyway. I would hate to be one of the people who had to convert an entire battlefield into 3D; not only having to separate every different character, but then moving around the borders of the layers for every frame... and again, it's still not going to look as good as if you'd just shot it in 3D.

I'm not totally against 3D. There are movies coming out that I wouldn't mind seeing in 3D (Scorsese's "Hugo Cabret," Herzog's documentary, Spielberg's "Tintin," "Crank 3" and maybe "Tron Legacy"). But I think most everybody can agree, fake 3D is a waste of time, for everybody involved--audience and artists.

I don't think 3-D should be rejected a priori as tempting as it is. There are rare cases where it can potentially bring something to a film that wouldn't otherwise be there. Ace of Sevens mentioned Pixar's brilliant short film "Day & Night." I'm not sure I agree, but I can see how the experience would be very different watching it in 3-D. Hubble 3-D sounds like such a film, as Roger Ebert detailed in his review:

"The important thing to understand about the 3-D photography of stars is that they are too far away to give any true idea of their distance. Almost all of the objects in the universe are very, very far apart. What they did was take Hubble photographs of small and old (therefore young) slices of the sky and use spectrum analysis and a computer to separate the stars according to their distance."

This makes sense. It's using 3-D photography show something that couldn't have been shown in two dimensions. I wish more films had more thought put into them before a decision regarding 3-D was made.

I usually like 3D, but due to all the bashes against this film's 3D I went to see it today in 2D. I thought it was fantastic.

The special effects looks great, the screen was bright and clean, and I thought the film was a lot of fun. I really wish Ebert would rewatch in in 2D. I think he'd enjoy it that way.

Great comments -- and I'm pleasantly surprised that intelligent dialogue about 3D's role in the future of movies doesn't translate into a kneejerk proclamation of "to hell with the third dimension!"

The novelty hasn't worn off for me yet, and my first viewing of Up was ruined by constantly taking off my glasses to figure out what the heck was even in 3D. (Maybe that means it was a subtle and graceful use of the medium, but having those idiotic glasses clamped over my regular glasses was a distraction.) I'd love to see a mature, visual, non-popcorn film made in 3D to see if the experiment works. Can anyone imagine, say, Woman in the Dunes, or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (all those angular doorways and windows sticking out at you) getting the third D? Would the effort of 3D ever be squandered on a film not expected to make a killion dollars? Could some Final Cut-esque invention give affordable 3D to enterprising filmmakers, which would really show us how 3D can be used?

Will "Last Airbender" kill 3D? No. They'll just blame it on M. Night Shyamalan. He made a poor film. It is a poor film whether it is seen in 2D or 3D. Even my kids were able to pick it apart on the way home, and they're none of them vicious critics of film (the 6 year old liked Marmaduke...). And I have to add that the entire family are rabid fans of the TV Series "Avatar: the Last Airbender".

Reading the other comments, I have to add two other comments:
1) The low-rent 3D that was applied to Last Airbender was pathetic. I can't think of a single shot that looked "3D-ish". Given what effects shots there were, I think they could have done something spectacular using Cameron's 3D process from Avatar (and think of the irony...)

2) I think that the "language of film" needs to be updated to reflect 3D. The composition of shots can, and probably should, be different for a 3D film than a 2D film. Shooting 2D, you need to use tricks to suggest depth (such as the long focus), which you don't need to do for 3D. So I think that there will be an evolutionary process while some directors tinker with how to shoot scenes in 3D to maximize the impact. If I'm correct in this, then when they do reach that point, 3D will knock people's socks off...and then it will become the norm, which is really unfortunate for those it makes ill.

Having just got back from "Toy Story 3" in glorious 2D, I must say that I can see where the 3D would fit in. But I think seeing it in 2D doesn't diminish the movie.

The major fallacy in 2D-to-3D conversion (aside from my earlier mention of "too much work with little reason or results") is that 3D movies tend to be made with 3D in mind, and 2D usually isn't. A shot between someone's legs would be done differently in 3D than 2D; a falling train would be shot differently. Try to imagine "The Graduate" in 3D, with the infamous "are you trying to seduce me" leg shot. It wouldn't look quite as good as a similar shot in "Toy Story 3," because Pixar did that shot with a 3-dimensional effect in mind, whereas Mike Nichols and cinematographer Robert Surtees shot without even thinking of 3D. If my memory serves me correctly, it seems that they shot that bit with a longer lens, "flattening" the image; "Toy Story 3" obviously had no need for lenses, but the simulated lens looked much shorter.

In fact, that's a major issue with 2D vs. 3D: In rewriting the language of film for 3D, long lenses would be rare to useless. It would almost be like removing the word "and" from the English language; sure, we may be able to find ways around it, but it's so much easier to actually use it for its purposes, no matter what the replacement may be.

(Oh, and "Night and Day?" Maybe it'd work in 3D, but 2D works just as well. Do the characters just look like they're moving holes on a black wall in 3D? Or do they actually "jump out" at you, like they have rounded bodies?)

3D is a gimmick, but a very smart move for the studios. Does 3D add anything to the film? No. Does it add anything to the cost of your ticket? Yes, about $3.50 extra (at least at my local theatre). I read that for every $100 million a film makes, the extra money from 3D adds on another $18 million to the gross.

Of course 3D costs the studios money, which is why while this gimmick will never take off with smaller, low-budget or independent films, soon enough every big release (the movies pratically guaranteed to cross the $100-million mark) are going to be 3D. Not just action and horror, but comedies too (Jackass 3D will be one of the first). As well, it's in the studios best interest to phase out 2D screenings of their films. When I went to see Toy Story 3, the 2D screenings were every two-and-a-half hours; the 3D screenings were every half-hour. Already it's becoming difficult to catch a "3D-film" in 2D.

Don't get your hopes high. the movie is poorly written and directed. the effects are the high point of this movie, and even those are mediocre. t's hardly a 3-d movie.. you'll be disapponted especially if you're avid fans of the nicktoon series.

DylanG just mentioned the one thing I despise about the 3D movement: the lack of options. I live in a small town with one 16 screen movie theater, and they aren't even showing Last Airbender or Toy Story 3 in 2D, which means that if I really wanted to see either film I'd be forced to see it with the extra dimension and the extra ticket cost.

That's the real problem with me. I can deal with crappy 3D transfers if I have the option to see the film in 2D. But if there's no other choice, then I get denied the experience of seeing certain films in theaters. Now I'll have to wait for video on TS3.

I suffer from strabismus (wandering eye), which requires rather expensive lenses to correct (or rather make allowances for) the condition. I attempted to watch the latest Final Destination Movie (don't mock, it wasn't up to me), and what I got was crosseyed and a headache. Simply put I'm one of that unlucky minority that, no matter how great the 3D effects might be (and even Ebert said Avatar was pretty awesome in 3D), I can't enjoy it. Of coursing watching a 3D version of a movie without the glasses is almost as unenjoyable as watching it with the glasses on, so I'm certain glad my crappy little local theater only gets the ordinary 2D films. I still thought Avatar was a stunning, beautiful film, even if the leaves and flying dragons didn't try to leap out at me (or in my case, make me want to vomit).

3D is just a way to scam extra cash out of moviegoers. It was a largely pointless sales scam back in the 50s and 60s, and it isn't any different now. If my theater starts moving to the 3D versions, I'm afraid I'll stop going.

I sympathize with all of the people who say that 3D movies make them feel nauseous. However, while it may sound callous to say "tough cookies", I don't know what else to say.

Frankly, I think it's very self-centred to declare that a medium of expression is terrible just because your personal disabilities keep you from enjoying it.

"First-person shooter" video games make me nauseous after a while. That means I cannot play them for long periods of time, under any circumstances. However, I don't run around telling everyone that the entire FPS genre is horrible, just because it doesn't agree with my personal physiology.

Michael Bay said something intelligent.

My heart almost stopped.

For over a hundred years, cinematic art has developed based on the camera as a single omnipresent Eye, a disembodied point of view that can be anywhere. It can be within a drop of water, or outside a cluster of galaxies. It can be an unseen party to an intimate human moment, or a God's-eye view of a mighty battle. Does it replicate what we could see with our own eyes? No; it's better.

What can using a pair of lenses three inches apart possibly add to that experience? (I should note that I don't have stereoscopic vision in real life, so the gimmick is totally wasted on me.)

I attended the last 3-D festival in Hollywood in 2006 at the Egyptian Theatre where they screened many of the movies made during that brief period in the early to mid 1950s. Some of the 3-D prints were never screened to the public and were actually a premiere of sorts. Most of the movies were B-movie crap that looked even more fake because the 3-D enhanced the fact that they were filming on a soundstage and not in the jungle, bayou, what have you. I was wearing frameless Polaroid-type clip ons that sat on my prescription glasses so I ceased to notice them at times. All the movies were screened in 35 mm double interlock Polaroid on a huge screen.

Kiss Me Kate was one of the original Technicolor prints that just made my jaw drop it was so bright and vivid. Ann Miller steals the show and seeing a young Bob Fosse was awesome. Not muddy in the least.

Other than that one the best movies were ones shot outside in natural light like Miss Sadie Thompson starring Rite Hayworth shot on location in the South Pacific. Gorgeous. There's a bar scene with Rita performing for some soldiers and it's so humid all the cigarette smoke is just hanging in the air. Her dress is clinging to every curve of her body. I could tell the sweat beading up on the brows of all the men was real and not from a water bottle spritzing. The 3-D effect was stunning.

Inferno shot on location in the California desert with one of the flaming red heads of that era - Rhonda Fleming - screened from the original 3-strip technicolor print. It felt like the sun was baking me out in the desert with them. Decent noirish script, too.

Jane Russell came to support her old star vehicle French Line and although not nearly as colorful as Kiss Me Kate it was still very bright and not at all dingy.

Dial M for Murder was certainly the best script-wise although the print they had was nearly a black and white it was so faded. But, it didn't take away from what Hitchcock managed to accomplish. I've watched a number of his other films on the big screen and remembering them feeling flat, sterile and obvious. This was probably the first time I felt the full weight of the script without thinking about the cast having to act on some cheesy soundstage.

The one guilty pleasure was a true B-movie if ever there was one called Gorilla at Large partially filmed on location in an amusement park in Long Beach, California. Anne Bancroft as a buxom babe was hilarious, Raymond Burr, Lee J. Cobb and even Lee Marvin making an appearance. Colorful, bright and thoroughly entertaining even with the idiot in the gorilla suit.

It would do some of our current crop of 3-D filmmakers good to do some real research and find out what worked and what didn't in the two previous attempts to bring 3-D movies to mainstream America. By the way, one of the key reasons 3-D bombed in the 1950s lands squarely on the shoulders of the theatre owners of the day refusing to upgrade equipment and many opting for the absolute worst 3-D experience. It's no wonder people were turned off when they had to wear those awful headache inducing anaglyphic (red/blue) glasses.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised I liked the film festival so much and if anything was more annoyed at the low-quality fare Hollywood chose to make it's case for 3-D at the time. The live-action movies had a physical depth that I have never experienced with 2-D movies were I did feel at times because of the way things were shot that I was sitting in the room with the actors. It really was about the subtle things and not throwing stuff at the camera that made some work so much better over others.

Only time will tell and the filmmaking has to be top notch or people won't support it no matter what. I've only seen two movies of the recent crop.

Avatar was a gorgeous movie but bloated like all Cameron's movies so my mind kept wandering and focusing on the finger print I'd managed to smudge on my own prescription glasses. Had he done a better job editing and held my attention I wouldn't have noticed it at all.

Toy Story 3 was the last movie I saw in 3-D and it did enhance the experience significantly so I'm not throwing in the towel just yet.

I saw Avatar in the theatres several times in 3d and enjoyed it very much. I then saw Avatar at home on Blu Ray on my 32 inch LCD and found the experience equally enjoyable. Ditto for Coraline. I notice no improvement watching the film in the theatre in 3D versus at home in 2D. I certainly noticed the 3D effects; I just didn't care.

I'm not a technophobe. I've been an early adopter of many great technologies from MP3 players to E-Book readers. So I don't object to new technology just because it's new.

3D doesn't make me sick, and I don't really care about the extra $3.00 ticket price. For me, the reality is that 3D is a pointless gimmick that I never asked for, never wanted, and doesn't remotely interest me or enhance my movie-going experience. It's just a naked cash-grab by the studios.

I've never seen a movie that has made me say "Don't watch it until you can see it in 3D!". The best I have seen is 3D that doesn't piss me off, which would include Beowulf and Avatar. I've never enjoyed the movie less in 2D. The only time I've even seen 3D convey a detail that 2D couldn't was in Avatar, in the 2D version you can't tell that all of the computer screens in the movie's world are 3D. Doesn't make or break the movie, but I was glad to see it used for SOMETHING. In order to show that every screen was 3D in 2D would have required different angles, so there's one tiny thing.

Also, many movies made for 3D look weird in 2D, as the special effects seem a little more detached. When you see a movement designed to show off 3D, but are watching it in 2D, it just looks weird and a little more fake. A good example is Alice in Wonderland, which I've only seen in 2D, but when she falls down the rabbit hole, the objects falling alongside her seem to be on a different layer than the rest of the movie. I'm guessing in 3D they were scattered all about the 3rd dimension, and look more like they were overlayed onto the shot. When you count on changes in the 3rd dimension for the movement of the effect to make sense and be convincing, it loses that in 2D.