Hey everyone, I'm back! I know I've been ignoring this blog the past several months, but I'm going to be getting serious about updating more often. For the most part I haven't been updating because we have been getting most of our favorite films on BluRay 3D these days, with the very few non-releases to have not been received being bad movies (and Disney films, of course). This is a bad way to run the site though. If a movie was released in 3D, it deserves to be seen in 3D, whether the movie (or the 3D itself) was good or not. This week proves that more than any other week. On one hand, I want to applaud Nickelodeon for releasing "The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water" in it's native 3D presentation tomorrow. The film (which I found to be largely enjoyable) was sold as a 3D event film, with cutting edge CGI you'd see in movies like "Yogi Bear" and "Alvin & the Chipmunks." What is ironic about this...
...is that the movie itself barely has any reason to be in 3D. The images that virtually all the commercials and print ads showed off take up a mere twenty minutes of the movie, and don't come into play until VERY late into the film (more than an hour to be exact)! Almost the entire film is traditionally hand drawn, giving the technique it's first real hit in years. Truthfully, because of this format, the 3D actually looks pretty awful for most of the film, and this is one time when the 2D version might be the preferable one to watch. Kudos to Paramount for giving fans of the film the choice though, since it costs them very little and goes a long way to providing goodwill to fans of the format. I will still be buying it in BluRay 3D tomorrow. Partially because I might want to watch the one sequence where the 3D matters again, and partly because the format could use all the support it can get, and the difference is going to be a measly $3.
Less lucky is the release of "The Seventh Son" we got last week.
Despite being announced for BluRay 3D along with the 2D versions of the film, despite having the disk up for pre-order for months, and despite many of the disks already being pressed, the movie hit store shelves without a BluRay 3D release, with a new date to be determined. There is no word on what happened in this case, but the fact that many sites (including Amazon) were taking pre-orders until two weeks ago suggests that the decision to forgo/delay the release of the 3D version came late in the game. "The Seventh Son" has not been the luckiest of movies, having been delayed almost a full two years after being filmed and being widely panned by critics. The 3D was tacked on at the last minute of filming to take advantage of the booming 3D craze.
Course, that was two years ago, and it's hard to deny that the format has taken a hit in popularity since then. Most TV's still have 3D capabilities, but almost none of the manufacturers use it as a major selling point anymore. Still, the format has it's fans, there is more content for it than ever before, and since there have already been disks pressed, it's all the more strange that it didn't ship to stores. That said, Vudu has once again come to the rescue by providing a 3D digital download on their service (though only to rent at the moment... oddly enough). I don't like buying things digitally, but it's nice that there is an option of sorts out there. Stay tuned for more developments on the situation as they develop.
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