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Things I learned after FINALLY Watching Avatar

When the opportunity presented itself, I took advantage – Avatar has been re-released in IMAX 3D and I decided to end my embargo on the film. Why did I refuse to see the film for such a long time in the first place, you may ask? The reasons are several fold – among them:

  • my often stated (and well documented – see below) resistance to embrace the 3D craze that is poised to take over cinema
  • the extremely delayed realization that Titanic was a pretty lame movie; as a result not wanting to believe the hype of another James Cameron movie

So, the afternoon, as I took the escalator up to the IMAX theater of the Lincoln Square Cinema, my expectations were rather low ….. but as the closing credits rolled and afterward, I took stock of the experience and assessed what I had learned:

  • I was wrong to wait so long to see this movie
  • I forgot all the stuff I really liked about James Cameron prior to Titanic – he made several fun action-packed movies that I enjoyed watching during the 80’s and 90s, and
  • not all 3D has to give you headaches – no headaches here!

As you can tell from my list, I was pleasantly surprised that I saw this film – I really went with it. Has it changed my perception of 3D? Not really sure at this point but I after seeing Avatar on the big screen, I cannot imagine seeing this film anywhere else. It truly was a cinematic event.

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3D: Old/new Wave of Future?

In the film community there has been a lot of talk surrounding the future of 3D in cinemas. A favorite film critic of mine, BBC’s Mark Kermode, has talked at great length about 3D and the issue of piracy. I have embedded one of his video blogs that discusses that very problem:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/markkermode/2009/04/piracy_240409.html

Meanwhile I had the pleasure last weekend of seeing the sixth installment of the Harry Potter film series (Half Blood Prince or HBP) in IMAX 3D. The Lincoln Center cinema was one of a handful of theatres nationwide showing HBP in IMAX ahead of the July 29th nationwide release in this format (click here to find out why).

I will spare you an actual review of HBP since I am an unapologetic devotee of both the books and the movies. I will however comment on the “IMAX 3-D” experience. Simply stated the best experience for me was watching the trailer for the Disney IMAX 3D version of A Christmas Carol, starring Jim Carrey.

As far as the feature presentation goes, the 3D was reserved for the first twenty minutes. Wow! There was a lot of deatheater flying, and swooping down alleys, across bridges and in narrow alleyways. The result left me a little light headed. For my movie-going companions, the experience was a bit more extreme; the experience bordered on nausea. At first, I thought it was just me but was I glad to find out I was not the only one.

At the end of the twenty minutes, I was more than happy to take off my 3D glasses at the prompting of the flashing of the red glasses on the cinema screen. The whole process of being instructed to do something in a movie theatre was a little disconcerting.

Another observation is that in a few scenes there was a weird ghostly/shadowy thing going on. Maybe it was just the print (hmm?).

My conclusion? Just give the IMAX experience if you want to get me excited about going to the movies – 3D is for the birds.

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