The director of Titanic, True Lies and Terminator 2 sees “a future in 3D.” Given his tenacious titling tendencies, maybe it should be 3T… Anyway, James Cameron says he has been considering a re-release of Titanic in the IMAX 3D format, and is currently lensing his Journey To The Center Of The Earth using stereographic cameras. Cameron adds that he doesn’t want to make movies “for people to watch on their cellphones”. 

Thanks to the relatively easy-on-the-eyes IMAX 3D format, which blacks out vision in alternate lenses in sync with projected left and right frames, 3D is making a big-budget comeback. Any computer-animated feature is capable of repurposing for 3D, and a process has been devised for synthesizing depth from already shot movies. Thus, Titanic - it’s just like going down with the ship!

The upcoming Superman movie will feature 3D sequences, and a Robert Zemeckis-helmed version of Beowulf will be entirely in the format. By the way… BEOWULF? Can THE ROSETTA STONE starring Tom Hanks be far behind? Zemeckis is apparently out to prove that he can make anything into a movie. Sorry, digression.

If this situation sounds familiar, think back a little over 50 years. 3D’s first halting steps took place in the fifties, a response to those scary new television sets, which had screens only twice the size of cell phones. IMAX is the Cinerama of the new millenium. And like Cinerama, IMAX is expensive to install, uses three times as much film and is much more fun to watch than a regular movie. I’m rooting for it; movies suck on small screens in two dimensions.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 26th, 2006 at 4:20 am and is filed under General, Motion Pictures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.