A blog about 3D cinema

This year's Awards Season is gearing up for its main event: the 86th Academy Awards. Many cinephiles justifiably find the concept of 'Awards Season' horrifying. They can validly cite examples through the years where Oscar was wrong  ( My Fair Lady over Strangelove ? Crash over Good Night and Good Luck ? Shakespeare In Love being allowed in the same room as the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan ?) and they can cite many more examples where films "should at least have been nominated !" Thankfully, the Academy broadened the nomination pool after universal outcry at The Dark Knight' s nomination snub   in 2008, and that's alleviated those tensions a little. It means we get a more balanced summary of the year in cinema: edgier films get nominated ( District 9 , Amour ), and broader-playing fare ( Up , The Help ) makes the cut as a nearer summary of what movie-goers... go to the movies for in the first place. The Nominees 2013's nominees are...

Background Considered an 'unfilmable' book, Life Of Pi has been kicking around Hollywood for years. Despite being briefly in the hands of Shyamalan and Jeunet , the burden of adapting Yann Martel's award-winning novel eventually fell to Ang Lee. A proven master of visual effects in films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hulk, Lee seemed a good fit for the material. Eyebrows were raised though, when Lee announced he would film in native 3D; the wider industry seemed to ask, "doesn't he have enough trouble with the tiger and the ocean?" If you're after more background info. Native 3D Life Of Pi was shot using Alexa cameras on Fusion 3D rigs provided by the  Cameron Pace Group (as in, James Cameron). In charge of the film's visuals was accomplished cinematographer Claudio Miranda , whose most recent film was the similarly stunning Tron: Legacy . Between these films, his prior work with David Fincher, and upcoming film Oblivion , Mi...

A couple of days ago, Ang Lee unveiled his new film  Life of Pi  at the New York Film Festival. Though the film's not quite finished (Lee has another fortnight of tweaks to go, apparently) it's amazing that a version of it exists at all. There's an old Hollywood adage, that says "never make a movie about kids, animals or water," yet Ang Lee has somehow managed to make a film about all three. If an 'unfilmable' novel weren't challenge enough for him, Life Of Pi is also Lee's first 3D film. What can we expect from Ang Lee's usage of 3D? Well, for one thing, the film itself is going to be painterly. If the trailer 's anything to go by, the film is a fifty-fifty mixture of real-world footage and digitally-created backdrops. Life Of Pi 's crouching tiger is a CGI construction too, though computer-assisted characters have come a long way since Ang Lee attempted one in 2003's  Hulk . In sum, with all this digital information avai...