3-D Movies Are Cool Now
Weirdo German auteur Werner Herzog's new film, Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a 3-D documentary about ancient cave paintings in the south of France. It's easily the best 3-D documentary since Justin Bieber's Never Say Never 3-D. As a bonus, it's making 3-D safe for "serious" grown-ups.
I have unabashedly loved the recent 3-D movie revolution. Avatar was a revelation, despite Roger Ebert's grumbling that 3-D "adds nothing to the experience." Movie snobs hate 3-D! Admitting that you're excited about, say, the 3-D remakes of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings is to many people a shameful act on par with confessing you're a huge fan of tentacle rape porn.
So, it's great that movie snob-favorite Werner Herzog decided that his new documentary had to be filmed in 3-D." Now fancy people can validate their secret love of crass novelty by praising Werner Herzog's 3-D in fancy ways. Roger Ebert, who scoffed that 3-D was "unsuitable for grown-up films of any seriousness," has changed his tune.
"There are occasions when 3D is appropriate… and this is one of them," Ebert wrote on his solid gold Macbook. "[Herzog] never allows his images to violate the theater space; he uses 3D as a way for us to enter the film's space, instead of a way for it to enter ours." At Slate, Daniel Engberg (who, to be fair, has been a longtime booster of 3-D) describes Herzog's use of 3-D thusly: "The double-lens camera evokes depth at multiple scales, plunging us first into a claustrophobic, underground space and then across the rippled limestone walls of its interior."
And the LA Times deems that "this film's gratifying use of the third dimension is no gimmicky ploy to hype the box office" as if any gimmick could boost a Werner Herzog documentary about cave paintings to blockbuster status.
There you go, closeted 3-D fans. You can now walk the streets with your head held high, broadcasting your love for 3-D as a perfect way to "enter a film's space" or meditate on the process of filmmaking as world-creation or something. Just make sure you don't slip up and accidentally admit it's super awesome.