Giants of Patagonia Poster “Dinosaurs: Giants of Patagonia” directed by Canadian Marc Fafard was the third large screen 3D dinosaur film I have seen in recent years and, from the standpoint of image quality as projected, easily the best. It combined footage of the current Patagonian landscape, thought to be little changed in 100 million years, with animated dinosaurs. Problems with parallax and skew and asymmetries of the cameras were minimal and the overall image was superb. They let the excellent animation and the austere landscape dominate the story of an Argentinian paleontologist’s recent discoveries of the world’s largest dinosaurs. No dumb stories directed at 8 year olds, as we see too often in other large screen films. Recommended!

Best of Both Worlds Poster“Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert” was a live action soft rock show by the American teen sensation and this summer in the USA it had the highest grossing opening weekend of any 3D or concert film in history. This was mainly due to the fact that 684 3D digital theaters were available in the USA and that they charged up to $15, but also to Miley’s recent rise to fame among the teen and preteen set, and to her promotion by Disney. Her backup band The Jonas Brothers already have their own 3D concert film. They used the Pace cameras and the image and stereo were generally quite good, with modest degrees of skew and little excessive parallax. However, with the rapid movement of cameras and the constant jump cuts it was hard to tell. The bottom line is that, as with most of the films here, I experienced essentially no eyestrain, so they did a pretty good job under trying conditions.

Likewise with the even more difficult shoot done by 3ality during U2’s South American tour for “U23D”. Other than logistics, the biggest problem I see was the mostly very dark concert halls, which makes any video tough and much more so for getting good depth in 3D. U2 3D Poster For me the biggest plus is that director Catherine Owens is an artist who turned the film into the most beautiful feature length 3D video art piece ever done, in spite of the fact she had to work with mostly very dark images and her entire subject was 90 minutes of nighttime concert footage. As with many concert films (including Miley Cyrus), the words were largely inaudible, so I just absorbed the visual and sonic beauty of it and had a great time. The film would have done better, but Disney pulled the nasty trick of releasing Miley Cyrus at the same time, taking many of the 3D screens that U23D was going to use. I discussed with Catherine the possibility of doing a release on HDDVD, TV or the net, but she said the band had no interest in lesser quality formats. Of course the releases of all recent 3D films (e.g., Lava Boys and Shark Girls, Spy Kids 3D, Miley Cyrus etc) on DVD has been in a very poor red/blue anaglyph format with no ghost reduction, so there is little 3D or color and lots of eyestrain. Also, I don’t recall any instructions for optimal tweaking of the images, nor suggestions that they should only be watched with digital links to digital tv’s (i.e., avoid analog).

There are very few people who have ever seen a really well done, full color, ghost reduced digital anaglyph film in red/cyan or (better) orange/blue (i.e., the 3DTV SpaceSpex format), so probably nobody in Hollywood, nor anyone anywhere in a position to make this happen, understands the possibilities. The Japanese 3D release of Cameron’s “Ghosts of the Abyss” used the eyestraining ColorCode orange/blue process, with no ghost reduction, but at least it had color and depth. The only reasonably good full color anaglyph digital DVD I know of is an adult movie done in California in the Anachrome process 5 years ago but again, neither of the ghost reduction processes (i.e., H shift or image processing) were used.

Next Up: More Reviews, including Journey to the Center of the Earth and Bolt.
Back To: 3DX Singapore, Part 1