They should ditch the glasses and do a 3D remake of The Last House on the Left using magic eye-style stereograms.
I’m just throwing this out there, hate me for it if you will, but!
3D Shawn of the Dead.
I actually was suckered into seeing this opening night and yeah the acting was bad but the effects were pretty sweet. Though I do think they might have been better for me if we were sitting directly infront of the screen rather then to the side. I’d almost like to go again and see if that is true.
I don’t understand any of Mordrak’s posts in this thread. Hoping that a new technology fails… because… you just like things the way they are?
Here are some facts to dispel some of the conjecture going on in this thread. HD home theater is not failing or dying or even not living up to expectations. If anything, it’s exceeding them (I’m only going to post the things I can say, there is more data not released as yet):
[ul]Blu-ray adoption rates are roughly three times as quick now as DVD was when it was introduced.[/ul]
[ul]There are currently about nine million Blu-ray players in homes now, seven million of which are PS3s.[/ul]
[ul]The two million non-PS3 Blu-ray owners are, as expected, the more avid purchasers and renters of Blu-ray.[/ul]
[ul]For 2008, Blu-ray accounted for roughly 8% of total home entertainment sales, but that’s already trending up:[/ul]
[ul]Iron Man, released in September of 2008, has sold about 900,000 Blu-ray discs, 11% of total sales. Contrast that with Dark Knight, which has already sold 1.7 million (potentially 1.9 by the end of this week) Blu-ray discs, or 15% of its total sales.[/ul]
So you can see there is an acceleration, especially in genre films, which also lend themselves best to 3D technology. Here’s the big fly in the ointment, however: the PS3 apparently doesn’t handle 3D discs all that well. That’s going to cause a lot of the studios to think hard about their commitment to the new technology. Plus they don’t want to offend Mordrak, of course.
It has nothing to do with offending me (other than government mandates for switching to digital, selling off broadcast bands on the cheap, and the rapidly shortening windows of planned obsolescence in the name of growth. Heh.), but I can’t seem to find reliable numbers on Blu Ray sales. For instance, this articlesays blu-ray only accounts for 3% of home video revenue in 2008.
Now, if sales are 8 percent, but revenue is 3%, that means there’s a lot of video stores more than likely taking a loss on Bluray or they are getting it for a 1/3rd the price consumers are or less. Though that also leads me to believe the format transitions may be a way of pushing back up the disc price so they can get back to sticking it to consumers and video retailers by re-establishing the new release and sell thru dichotomy that dominated the VHS market for so long.
So until I see how they’re measuring it, I’m not really sure how successful it is. I don’t doubt it may be a little faster than DVD just because the usability transition between VHS and DVD was worse than DVD and Bluray, plus studios know to push the prices down more quickly. But given the time frames of the dual-platform releases and the soon (or are they already out) hybrid blu-ray/dvd discs, numbers are going to be misleading. I don’t think many people want more than DVD or can even tell the difference unless it’s specifically shown to them.
Edit: And there’s going to be a lot of format cheer leading going on from pretty much everyone in the movie entertainment industry. They want to make it seem like it’s inevitable (which is likely anyway), but they want to push when it seems inevitable up so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And for example, let’s take a look at these numbers more closely. According to this site, Iron Man sold roughly 10 million on DVD (not including Blu Ray). Now let’s assume your 900,000 is correction. To get the blu ray percentage of total sales: 0.9 million / (10 million + 0.9 million) ~= 8.3%.
Now let’s take a look at The Dark Knight. Again, according to this site The Dark Knight sold roughly 12.9 million, excluding blu ray. To get the blu ray percentage, assuming your blu ray numbers are right, 1.7 / (12.9 + 1.7) ~= 11%.
So that still is an acceleration, but the total percentages are smaller than you indicated. It also doesn’t take into account that The Dark Knight is a more highly regarded film than Iron Man. It’s getting Oscar buzz for Ledger (or at least was), so it’ll likely sell more to HD collectors and PS3 owners than Iron Man would.
Let’s take a look ratios of gross and disc sales for both titles. Iron Man grossed $318,412,101. The Dark Knight grossed $531,037,655. Well that’s a ration of about 1.68 : 1 in The Dark Knights favor.
Let’s use your disc numbers for Blu-Ray, it’s about 1.89: 1. That’s still an uptake, but again The Dark Knight just might be more attractive to HD collectors than Iron Man given its critical as well as financial success.
And of course, none of this accounts for how many were sold to video rental outlets or blu ray’s relative performance there. I could guesstimate based on first week sales, but that could be way, way off. Nor do these comparisons take into account the existance of Netflix and how that affects the sales and whether it’s ease of use grew the rental market between DVD’s release and now. So anyways, most numbers I see I consider PR, rather than an honest comparison.
That site’s numbers are not 100% accurate (unlike you, I can find absolutely accurate numbers for DVD sales, I just can’t publish them online).
Regardless, it sounds like you agree with me, so I’m glad to welcome you to the fold of those who embrace new technology!
Har har. Unless 3D can prove to be more than a gimmick, I do hope it fails, because (if Beowulf is any indication) it’ll actually degrade my movie watching experience. Congrats to you and your secret numbers though and good luck trojan horsing Blu ray into an even faster success. :)
Haha yes, I hope to sweep up all the Qt3 members and, uh… buy a new Porsche?
Anyway, it’s silly to hope 3D fails simply because in your mind it can’t be used to make good movies. Filmmakers should see it as a challenge, every much so as using a slow lens or color film or color timing or digital timing or CG or any of the other myriad of technological innovations which have come along the way. The hope should be that it provides a new tool to better tell stories with, rather than an albatross which can only do violence to the medium.
I’m with Mordrak on this for purely selfish reasons (I think NWJ et al has the better factual arguments). Due to an eye operation when I was four I’ve lost my stereo vision, so my world is 2D and those glasses never works for me… I’d hate for them to be an requirement, since movies would just be a blurred mess for me.
I want a 3D mumblecore film.
Sure, it may just be a matter learning new techniques in montage and cinematography. But honestly, I don’t see what it brings. Color not only adds the visceral appeal of realism (well hyper-realism), but a greater symbolic range as well. How will 3D do that.? People already use depth of field or depth within the frame for symbolic expression effectively. 3D doesn’t offer anything new, it just exaggerates what film already accomplishes.
As for Beowulf, the problem isn’t that Beowulf was a bad film. And the problem wasn’t that I wasn’t getting the whole experience in 2D. The problem is that in 2D, it’s actually a strain to watch because of the forced perspectives; 3D already does violence to the medium. The fact that 3D requires me to purchase new equipment is just an added annoyance, especially when it’s fueled by planned obsolescence. Color is the only really comparable improvement from the consumer’s vantage point and like I said, it offered more to the medium without any of the headaches.
It does? You must have one terrible cineplex.
In the best MBV3d moments, the 3d effect created a ‘you are there’ feeling I have not felt in even the most awesomely filmed 2d movie(I’ve seen a ton of movies).
It’s just an whole new level of immersion that 2d cannot match. That right there is more than enough reason for being.
The trick though is to iron out the glitches. The ghosting, the occasional stuttering framerate effects, things like that.
Plus, much like directors had to learn to use the camera back in the early movie days, so movies didn’t just look like filmed stage plays, I think it’s going to be a while before directors learn to use 3d to full advantage.
Although if this round of 3d doesn’t last, I doubt there will be enough time. It’ll be a shame if that happens. This 3d is a completely different animal than that ‘red/blue glasses’ method. This was a clear, sharp, and colorful nonheadache inducing experience for the most part. I don’t wear glasses or contacts though, so ymmv.
Yeah, I caught it last weekend as well. The movie is awful, but the 3D was interesting.
IMO, it worked FAR better when it was just a regular scene that happened to be in 3D, than when they tried to poke things at the camera.
I saw MBV3D over the weekend. Maybe it was the crappy theater I saw it in but the 3D effect was pretty horrible. I just kept thinking that it’s 2009 and the 3D effects are no better (and maybe worse) then Captain Eo at Epcot. It even had the cliche’d moments that I remember from old 3d movies like jaws. OMG BRANCH THROUGH THE WINDOW!!! :P
Movie was typical slasher stuff but I expected that going in.
The best 3-D movie I’ve ever seen, bar none, was the Terminator one at Universal Studios. This may have to do with the fact that the entire theatre was designed around that movie, though. Actors actually ran around on stage firing blanks, when a Hunter-Killer zoomed by overhead they used lights in the ceiling to show it “searching” and when a big explosion happened at the end they blew smoke over the audience. Aside from that the actual 3D was pretty cool. They also used surround sound to good effect, something they don’t do enough of in movies in the theatre IMO. It was really an experience . . . but of course that’s because there was tons of stuff going on.
Well, yeah.
Shrek 4-D at the same park and the four 3D shows at Disney World (Mickey’s Philharmagic at Magic Kingdom, Honey, I Shrunk The Audience at Epcot, MuppetVision*3D at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and It’s Tough to be a Bug at Disney’s Animal Kingdom) are all gonna pretty much beat the shit out of stuff like My Bloody Valentine since everyone from the ceiling to the chairs is designed around bringing the 3D to life beyond the visual trickery. It’s Tough to be a Bug has a bunch of effects that use motion and tactile sensation in the chairs (which terrify the shit out of the kids in the audience) while MuppetVision 3D has a number of animatronics. It’s not really fair to compare them. Despite the fact that stuff like Terminator and Honey I Shrunk The Audience are well over a decade old, that form of 3D hasn’t really changed that much and they’ve got the whole show designed around them. They also benefit from the fact that the shows are only like 10 minutes long.
Still, Terminator is pretty damn awesome. It’s hard to believe it’s thirteen years old.
I’ve seen the Terminator 3D one not too long ago, and looking at your list, Disney’s Philharmagic is the most amazing from what I remember.
That really is awesome. Easily the highlight of my visit - I thought some of the other rides and shows were okay, but nothing else I did was nearly as impressive.