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2 articles from 2009

28 September 2009 1:58 AM, PDT | MTV Movie News | See recent MTV Movie News news »

With the success of 'Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs,' the forecast is good for the genre's comeback.

By Larry Carroll

Robin Wright Penn and Ray Winstone in "Beowulf"

Photo: Paramount Pictures

In 1952, television was increasingly keeping people on the couch and out of movie theaters, so Hollywood desperately turned to a process called "Naturalvision," and 3-D movies were born. Convinced that their best hope to win audiences back was by making things leap off the screen, dozens of 3-D movies were greenlit immediately. But just a few years later, bad scripts and gimmickry had effectively killed the fad.

These days, "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" is riding high at the box office for the second straight frame, the "Toy Story" films are being re-released this weekend in three dimensions, and such high-profile blockbusters as "Avatar," "A Christmas Carol" and "Alice in Wonderland" will all be coming at you soon, »

9 September 2009 6:56 AM, PDT | t5m.com | See recent t5m.com news »

3D has had many heydays through out the history of cinema. The early fifties saw Rko running with the new process and Universal taking punts on many films, some successes and some flat out failures. The ship finally sank after it was deemed too expensive to upkeep dual projectors and panned after terrible syncing issues with running two strips of film simultaneously. The delivering technology simply couldn't keep up with the "fad" and it wasn't until 1954 when single strip 3D was perfected. After that, everyone got into it, even Hitchcock, famously releasing Dial M for Murder in the third dimension. Shlock classic The Creature From the Black Lagoon and Howard Hawks' hit The French Line, which managed to fit Jane Russell in all her glory, into 3D saw the format finally with a steady footing. Or so it seemed until once again cinema finances crumbled when wide-screen formatted screens »

- Neil Innes

2 articles from 2009