Dot writes: there’s an article by Mark Cousins in the October issue of Prospect magazine (which Ken bought while he was away at the weekend, for reading on the ferry) about cinema in 3D. As it happens it uses as its main example the film Up. Ken and I saw Up in 3D but Hugh refused to wear the special glasses. According to Cousins Hugh may have had a more authentic and stimulating cinematic experience than we did:
the 3D technique…is something other than cinema… When I took my 3D glasses off, I had a sense of bringing something to the experience of watching – mental imagery or long evolved perceptual processes. When I put the glasses on, these processes seemed redundant.
When I took my 3D glasses off my main sensation was that the image was very faintly out of focus. The 3D appearance is fun but I didn’t find it as enveloping or oppressive as Cousins seems to have done. The effect was much like looking through one of those old-fashioned stereovision photograph viewers: there was a sense of depth but not of mass, of flat images displayed at different distances. Maybe it would seem more genuinely three-dimensional with a normal film as opposed to an animation. Anyway. What I set out to say really was – nice gimmick, but does it make that much difference? Hugh thinks not.
Ken and Dot's Allsorts 
We were most annoyed to discover that trying to find a local showing of Up in 2D is next to impossible; c. 2 showings a week when it opened. Since Jon has monocular vision and trying to perch special glasses on a nose already taken up by regular glasses I think we will have to wait on this one to come out on dvd. I just hope that this current 3D fad doesn’t last too long.
If he has a dominant eye, wouldn’t he still be able to watch the 3d version (wearing glasses); only without the benefits? I think the glasses work by polarisation. You have to use the glasses to stop the image seeming out of focus.
Dot and I were both six-eyed for the screening.
Ken
apparantly 3-D is here to stay, like surround sound. My boyfriend does a lot of work for dolby etc, and assures me that is more and more 3d technology coming up, and that soon all the hollywood films will only be released in 3d. This is because it’s getting cheaper and easier to make, whilst being relatively difficult to pirate. It also makes going to the cinema more of an ‘experience’, so people are more likely to go than watch a dvd or a pirate copy. In other words 3d is the film industry’s latest attempt to fight to keep their profits up, their cinemas open, and piracy out. It’s an ongoing technical struggle with both sides waging war on each other. Personally I think that’s really exciting – piracy forces the film industry to come up with innovations and keep upping their game.
I’m not surprised Cousins doesn’t like it. His book ‘the story of film’ is interesting, but he’s a miserable intellectual git really. He claims that early movies were all about spectacle (rather lowbrow), then there was a golden age of movies all about narrative and emotion – in other words films for people who don’t really like films, and would really prefer to stay at home and read a book – and then CGI and special effects came along and ruined it all by making things – the horror! – entertaining. Personally I like to be entertained, and I’m not going to spend about £8 to watch something at the cinema when it would be just the same on dvd – but something like star trek or a 3d movie is well worth forking out for to see at the cinema. I think they’re onto a big winner with 3d.
Don’t know about the new glasses for the new 3D but he’s never been able to see anything decent with the red/green ones.