STAR WARS EPISODE I in 3D gave Chris a splitting headache!

So yesterday evening, my lifelong best friend Chad and I met up in Durham to do something we had never done before. For all the things we've done together, we had yet to see a Star Wars movie together in the theater.

Okay, we've done that now. I'm thankful that we got to fix that. But that's the only good thing that came out of last night's screening of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 3D(?!?).

Yeah, a Star Wars movie in 3D. I know, it looks good on paper, buuuuut...

Now I have to be honest: there are some parts of the movie that look far better in 3D than they deserve to be. The podrace sequence, f'rinstance. But I'm inclined to believe that's only because it's already moving so fast that your eyeballs are being vicariously assaulted before your gray matter gets time to register the sensation. Unfortunately a movie consumed with things like boardroom meetings and bureaucratic theatrics makes the 3D a tedious thing to sit through. That's when the 3D works at all.

Because there are loads of times during Star Wars Episode I's 3D edition that the 3D isn't there to begin with! Trust me folks, I took off my 3D specs a number of times during the second half or so of the movie and, I couldn't tell ANY difference at all between the 3D conversion and the 2D original that I have seen about 9 times already on the big screen. And then there is what was likely the most significant reason why my visual cortex felt burnt afterward: the schizoid use of 2D and 3D elements simultaneously. I saw plenty of that during the Coruscant scenes in particular before giving up and letting myself just watch the darn thing.

The Phantom Menace in 3D adds nothing particularly enjoyable to the experience of watching a Star Wars movie in theaters... and that's something that I've never had happen to be before, in over thirty years of going to see Star Wars flicks at a cinema. Taking a movie shot in standard 2D and converting it into 3D has proven time and time again to be an expensive and glorious mess. I had hoped, sincerely hoped, that Star Wars Episode I would be the breakthrough movie that put an end to the never-ending parade of 3D post-production disaster. Heck, we've known this was coming for years before Avatar ever came out. In Industrial Light and Magic did I trust.

But no, I cannot recommend Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 3D. Neither can I see myself going to any of the other Star Wars movies set to be released in 3D, one a year for the next five years.

Now if George Lucas wants to produce a new Star Wars film trilogy, and actually shoot them in true honest-to-goodness stereo camera setup THREE DIMENSIONS, I'll gladly see those in the theaters a dozen times over. But turning 2D into 3D?

Who'da thunk that I'd leave a Star Wars movie... any Star Wars movie... cringing about having watched a steaming pile of bantha poodoo.

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Told y'all this was coming: glasses-free 3D television!

Two months ago I discussed some reasons why I wasn't particularly led to jump aboard the 3D television fad just yet. The most prominent among them was my understanding that we could fairly soon expect 3D teevee technology that worked without those clunky glasses (which many are now saying not only induce headaches but are just a plain ol' nuisance to deal with).

Welcome to the future.

Toshiba is set to be the first manufacturer to roll out glasses-free 3D television, according to news site Breitbart citing a Japanese newspaper. The electronics and entertainment giant "has developed a new system that emits a number of rays of light with various angles from the screen so that viewers can see stereoscopic images without glasses". It's added that "People can enjoy images in three dimensions from various positions and suffer less stress."

If true, this will be the big breakthrough that leads to large-scale adoption of 3D television. The first of these sets are reported to be going on sale before Christmas and retailing for several thousands of dollars. Give it a few years' time and this kind of stuff will likely be more standard than not.

See? This blog just saved y'all several hundreds if not thousands of bucks!! :-)

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One of the reasons why I'm waiting to buy into 3D television

At E3 today Nintendo head honcho Satoru Iwata unveiled the Nintendo 3DS. This is the latest iteration of its acclaimed DS hardware... and it does games in 3D.

But here's the kicker folks: the Nintendo 3DS pulls off three-dimensional gaming without those funky glasses!

And this highlights the biggest reason why I'm not about to buy into the 3D television "revolution" going on right now (incidentally ESPN's new 3D channel is showing up in the updated listings but it's not only not airing yet, my receiver box is snidely informing me that I need a 3D capable set in order to pick it up at all). This is such a rapidly evolving technology, it makes the least amount of sense to be an early adopter than I've seen with burgeoning new gear ever. Especially given that the glasses needed to enjoy 3D television sets are priced around $150 each.

The cost of the glasses aside, television is much more a casual experience than watching a film in a theater. People don't usually do things like eat dinner and fold laundry while at the local cinema, but they do those things all the time while a TV is going on. Who wants to keep putting the glasses on and taking them off while watching 3D television? And are there going to be enough glasses to go around when friends and family come over for a visit? Do guests get asked to bring their own glasses over for a Super Bowl party?

People by and large won't want to be hassled with things like that. And that's why 3D television isn't going to seriously take off until there is 3D screen technology that doesn't rely on wearing the glasses.

And that, Nintendo and a few other companies are on the cusp of bringing to market. Given the early raves about the 3DS coming out of E3 in Los Angeles, this could be a big factor in encouraging demand for spectacle-less 3D. Hey, Nintendo broke new ground with the Wii, and now Microsoft is rolling out the very promising Kinect for its Xbox 360 console (with Sony to follow suit on its PlayStation 3).

Good money sez that if you ain't plunked coin down for a 3D set yet, you might wanna wait a bit. There promises to be even better stuff in the pipeline and headed to store shelves sooner than later.

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Apple may enter 3-D market with funky glasses to hold your iPod

Daily Mail has found a patent application made by Apple for some weird eyewear - nicknamed the "iSpecs" by some - that would turn an iPod or iPhone into a portable 3-D movie experience. From the filed application...

Alright, so... who wants to be the first person to walk around the neighborhood with an iPod covering up their eyes?

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THE HOBBIT will be THREE movies... and in 3-D!?

Is it 1998 again? 'Cuz I'm getting the same feeling now that I did when word first broke all those many moons ago that Peter Jackson would be making a film trilogy of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

Well, ever since the third and final installment The Return of the King came out more than a half-decade ago, there've been whispers on the wind about Jackson adapting The Hobbit as well, as a prequel film. And for those of us who've been paying attention, it's been a very crazy ride toward no assurance that this would be happening at all (conflicts with the Tolkien estate, Jackson's dispute with New Line, etc.)... which makes me hope all the more that it's gonna go down this way.

GeekTyrant reported last week that The Hobbit will be THREE movies, with Guillermo del Toro directing the first two chapters and Peter Jackson helming the third. In and of itself that's hella kewl... though I have to wonder how there could possibly be enough material from The Hobbit novel to justify three films (and it might be stretching it too much across two, but in Jackson and del Toro will I trust).

And now GeekTyrant is also passing along word that all three movies will be shot in stereoscopic 3-D.

Whoa.

Smaug the Dragon. In 3-D.

That fries my retinas just thinking about how utterly insanely overwhelmingly spectacular that might be.If the report is true, dare we also hope for IMAX?

(Nah, that would be way too much more crazy eye candy than we possibly deserve.)

Throw in Howard Shore returning to score this, and this might be the definitive movie trilogy of the next decade, just as The Lord of the Rings has been for this one. Now all we need is for Peter Jackson to do a six-film movie adaptation of The Silmarillion and the trifecta will be complete! :-)

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