Looking in at a 3-D world
”
A Journey to the Center of the Earth
”
starring Brendan Fraser, Anita Briem and Josh Hutcherson
It seems the new fad in Hollywood filmmaking is the 3-D movie.
Just a few months ago I wrote about the U2 3-D Imax concert and
just weeks after that premiered, Disney released a Miley Cyrus
concert that popped off the screen.
Looking in at a 3-D world
“A Journey to the Center of the Earth” starring Brendan Fraser, Anita Briem and Josh Hutcherson
It seems the new fad in Hollywood filmmaking is the 3-D movie. Just a few months ago I wrote about the U2 3-D Imax concert and just weeks after that premiered, Disney released a Miley Cyrus concert that popped off the screen.
Now more mainstream movies are taking the technique to theaters. And it’s sure to pop up in more and more theaters closer to home – even Platinum Theaters in Gilroy opened up a screen dedicated to Dolby Digital 3-D just in time for the release of “Journey to the Center of the Earth.”
3D isn’t a new technique, at least according to some research I did online. It seems the first 3-D film showed at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles in 1922. Harry K. Fairall produced it and Robert F. Elder filmed it, but the movie dropped out of sight after its demonstration and no one knows if a copy still exists.
But the demonstration was enough to start filmmakers on a quest to perfect the technique. The golden era came in the 1950s and our Hollywood correspondent Bob Valenzuela likes to reminisce about the films of his youthful heyday. At the time, filmmakers developed disposable glasses made with a cardboard frame that users could wear during viewing. Previously users often had to hold a metal plate with two lenses in front of their eyes to see the images pop. Imagine having to hold that still for a two-hour movie.
The first full-length films to use 3-D technology were “Man in the Dark” and “House of Wax” – not the version with Paris Hilton. The eye-popping films stuck to the horror and thriller genre, with Hitchcock producing “Dial M for Murder.”
But soon Walt Disney Studios got in on the game and released “Fort Ti” and “Melody.”
Actually Disneyland offered me my first exposure of 3-D. I believe “Captain EO” starring Michael Jackson was the first film I saw as a kid, and we donned the cardboard glasses and were awed by the movements on screen. Now the glasses have lightweight plastic frames and they make characters from the Muppets or “A Bug’s Life” pop out at us.
Though there have been 3-D movies released in the past, including “Jaws 3-D” and “Friday the 13th Part 3,” the film technique does seem to be on the rise. At a recent showing of “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” previews included at least five 3-D movies that will be released in the next year, including animated films and live action ones alike.
The thing to remember, of course, is if a film is in 3-D, it’s probably going to have some gimmicks in it. That was certainly the case with “Journey to the Center of the Earth.”
In the film, Trevor Anderson (Brendan Fraser) is a wacky professor of geology who has never gotten over the disappearance of his brother Max 10 years before. When Max’s son, Sean, (Josh Hutcherson) comes to visit him, they both discover an old copy of Jules Verne’s “Journey to the Center of the Earth.” This is where the first 3-D gimmicks come into play. When Sean plays around with a yo-yo, it looks like it is about to pop us in the head. And in the same scene, a bunch of marbles started flying all around the room. I am sure people watching the movie at a regular theater are going to be at a loss.
After all the chaos, Trevor notices there are notes all over the book and he begins to suspect they may have something to do with his brother’s disappearance. He and Sean set off to Iceland, a place Max had visited and researched. They look for a research institute and find that the man who ran it has died. His beautiful daughter (Anita Briem) is a mountain guide, however, and she offers to take them up to the top of a volcano.
After an all-day journey that is costing the man and boy hundreds of dollars an hour, a thunderstorm suddenly strikes. They are forced into a cave to seek cover, but a lightning strike causes a rock slide that closes the entrance. Now they need to find a new way out of the cave, which used to be part of a mine shaft.
This is where the 3-D effects really make the film worth watching. There are scenes that make viewers feel like they are about to fall off a cliff, or that they are crawling through the dark spaces in the cave. There is even one part where the underground visitors whiz along a track in an old mine cart, and it feels a lot like a rollercoaster ride.
Once the explorers arrive at the center of the Earth, the effects continue though the plot starts to lag a little bit. This movie is for those who are into technology more than those who want a great storyline.
