Ebert Talks 3D Again...

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... and it's more of the same wailing and gnashing of teeth as usual - wailing and gnashing of teeth that I'm prone to agree with, mind you - but this time it's about a film I know next to nothing about, Joe Dante's upcoming 3D family horror flick (and if there's one dude who can be attached to something called "family horror" and not have that phrase make me immediately cringe it's the dude who directed the two Gremlins movies) called The Hole, and he uses the phrase "distracting abomination." That's enough to warrant me quoting it. Says Ebert:

"Now forgive me if I bring up once again the tiresome subject of 3-D. Of the content of Joe Dante's new horror film I will write nothing until it opens. Of the choice to use 3-D, you can't stop me. The 3-D process in this film is the best I've seen in live action, and that includes the preview footage of "Avatar." It's technically impeccable. It makes no contribution to the overall experience.

Now that I've see live action 3-D done as well as it's likely to be done for some time, I realize more than ever this truth: The 2-D process creates a perfect illusion of depth. The 3-D process interferes with that achievement by adding additional information that reduces the illusion of depth, creating distinct planes within the image which our minds are forced to recognize and process. If there is a future for 3-D, and I hope there isn't, it's in animation, which isn't supposed to look real in the first place, and not in live action, where it's a distracting abomination. If you're a director with something to say, don't let your process interfere."

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