A blog about 3D cinema

As we enter a new season of movie-going, the Chinese box-office continues to buck worldwide trends in 3D movie attendance. A month ago, the industry had written off  Pacific Rim  as a well-intentioned exercise in geek-pandering . Jurassic Park 3D  had proved that audiences were never going to go crazy for 3D re-releases. Monsters University was a middling Pixar effort. Midway through September though, China has re-written the history books for all three films, and again challenged expectations of the global audience for 3D. Pacific Rim 's experience was the most startling for the industry: a gigantic movie in every sense of the word, it was always destined to do earn more "internationally" than "domestically". It's reasonably common for big Hollywood action pictures to earn 60% of their total gross in the wider worldwide marketplace, and the other 40% or so of their gross comes from the avidly movie-going State-side domestic audience. What no-one ex...

In a week's time, it'll be the first  X-Men  film's 13th birthday. The movie's critical and commercial success gave Hollywood the excuse it needed to revitalise the comic-book-movie 'genre'. X-Men delivered the industry a template of sorts that has largely remained unchanged in the decade that followed. That template required an ensemble cast, mixing up A-list stars with Academy Award winning actors, character veterans, relative newcomers and a few nerd favourites. X-Men also set a visual-effects precedent that eschewed the overblown Batman And Robin ' look' in favour of more modern effects in the vein of  The Matrix . The revised superhero film template also required the X-Men ditch their traditional bright yellow-and-blue tights for... very Matrix -esque black leather costumes. And, just like that, a modern genre was born. Or, rather, re born. The superhero 'genre' had merely been laying dormant. In the decades since Richard Donner...

Background: Bait asks the question none of us were asking: what would happen if you were trapped in a supermarket, after a tsunami... with a great white shark? Any self-respecting fan of B-movies already knows the answer to that question though: death, and lots of blood. Bait 3D caps off a year of 3D films like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Piranha 3DD  and Frankenweenie  that take the idea of 'high-concept' to ludicrous ly brilliant  extremes. Indeed, Bait went on to become the highest-grossing Australian film released in China, so this type of 3D cinema is likely to continue. Native 3D: Bait  was filmed in Australia by many of the people who shot the Second Unit photography in films like the Matrix trilogy and Superman Returns . Despite its many and varied challenges under-water, they filmed Bait in Native 3D. Until now, shots like the ones they pulled off have been considered one for the 'too hard' basket. Water photography has al...