One treat some film lovers will envy of New Yorkers is this fortnight's festival of historic 3D at Film Forum (Hoberman in the Village Voice). As the Wall Street Journal reported "When Film Forum expanded and relocated to its current West Houston St. headquarters in 1990, Mr. Goldstein saw to it that one of its three screens was equipped with the necessary hardware to show 3-D movies—what enthusiasts call 'stereo films.' It was an act of faith, as there were barely a handful of two-strip 3-D films available for exhibition at the time." Some critics - Mark Kermode, Roger Ebert - are very vocally against 3D, deeming it a superfluous waste of time and money. And admittedly, most recent efforts pale in the after-light of Avatar. Dance movie Step-Up (3D) doesn't do much for the dancing of its very talented cast (the girls win in the acting stakes) and for the most part falls into the 3D trap, as Ebert noted, of looking quite dark. And really, couldn't they think of something more exciting than balloons and bubbles popping out of the screen? A shame because it's not a bad movie in the least.
The pro 3D arguments

Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore has the very experienced Steven Poster at the camera helm (president of the Intl. Cinematographers Guild) and certainly seems to give more of a natural 3D illusion mixing live action, puppets and CGI animation. Perhaps it's in a scenario such as this where our belief is somewhat suspended that 3D works best. Where we are already prepared to enter a world other than our own. But the Cats and Dogs plot execution makes Toy Story 3 (3D) seem like Shakespeare's Hamlet. It's another holiday fun movie, though, with plenty of silly, cheasy one-liners (great voice-over work) to take parents' minds off the woes of the outside world. And make trudging through the local park just that bit more naughty.

More cinematography in the story of British film pioneer and unsung talent William Friese-Greene and his legal battle over the Biocolour process in The Magic Box. In 1889 he filed a patent for the 'chronophotographic' camera that took up to ten photographs per second using perforated celluloid film and he was experimenting with stereoscopic cameras as early as the 1890s (the BBC ran a series about his son Claude). Champion of forgotton Brit cinema Martin Scorsese is currently shooting his 3D film The Invention of Hugo Cabret now - (how you got away without using moi in London Mr. Marty none shall never know ;)) And Werner Herzog is using 3-D to film the prehistoric Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc cave paintings in France. Piranha 3D is just out but whether it beats the low-budget ingenuity of Mega Piranha is your to decide.
Earlier this year, Sony opened a 3D Technology Center in LA to train technicians. "Bad 3D will sour consumers on the experience," said Chris Cookson (President of Sony Technologies). "“It’s in Sony’s enlightened self-interest that everyone learn how to do this,” said Sony's George Joblove. “For us, it’s about information sharing. If other studios do bad 3D work, it hurts everyone.”

And musing of robots and the like, the big news of the year was, of course, the restoration of 96 new fragments to Metropolis. Director Fritz Lang was by all accounts the ultimate cliché of an über-tyrant. “I have to feel you are inside the robot,” Lang insisted to Helm [his leading lady] at one point, as she slowly asphyxiated in the wood and plaster armor that transformed her into the robotrix Maria." According to the catalogue essay from the North American LA Premiere at this year's TCM Classic Film Festival the film ran an estimated 153 minutes at its 1927 Berlin premier, Paramount in the U.S. cut the film to approximately 90 minutes and the 2001 restoration ran 124 minutes. But in the summer of 2008, the curator of the Buenos Aires Museo del Cine discovered a 16mm dupe negative and the new version was premiered at this year's Berlinale on February 12th. Kino releases in America and Eureka on September 10 in the UK. The DVD for both regions is due November but Eureka promises more extras than Kino with a specially commissioned commentary. Oh to have been at the Berlin premiere this year with live orchestra playing Gottfried Huppertz original score. Still, well worth reaching into your near empty pocket to pay and see this film on the big screen. Decades later, cinematographer Karl Freund was approached by Desilu, the new television production company founded by the married acting couple of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball and developed what became known as the 3-camera method for shooting TV shows affordably on film with I Love Lucy. Strange are all our journeys.
Lang's Metropolis beat Aldous Huxley's book Brave New World by about 5 years, by the way.
Meanwhile in New York, Josef von Sternberg was busy with Underworld (1927), The Last Command (1928), The Docks of New York (1928) just out on Criterion DVD in the States.
Park Circus (UK) have Blu-ray of Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush (1925) along with Modern Times (1936).

Still in weird German vein, Eureka also releases this week The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (IFC Films released in May, NYC). Dr. "I hate human beings" Heiter (Dieter Laser) fails in his engineering experiment of joining 3-dogs into one and goes the human route. When a couple of stranded female American tourists come knocking on his palatial door in the rain he seizes the opportunity, sedates them, and begins suturing them mouth to anus to his already kidnapped Japanese front man (Akihiro Kitamura) -hence the title. It all sounds totally disgusting. But writer/director Tom Six, who learnt his craft directing Big Brother shows in the Netherlands, Europe and the States, doesn't for one moment titilate the viewer - there's not a bare breast or arse in sight. What also makes the film quite strange is that it's not even particularly horrifying (compared to most films in that genre). It's cool, calm, clinical, and mordantly funny without being tasteless. Moreover, it makes one consider whether the experiments on many people's will to fame ever since reality TV grabbed hold is actually any more disgusting than the method elicited here. Salt director Philip Noyce mentioned in an interview that his 'spook' father always believed that the deadliest weapon was the human being. At least the reality show contestants had free will. Or were they more like the frog in the simmering water. Pavlov's dog coming to the boil.

For those sick of Brit social realism then Ben Wheatley's blackly comedic debut Down Terrace may prove an antidote. Others are hailing Frontier Blues as eye-opening realism on the northern Irani front. But if bleak, darkly realist comedy of life is your thing then Tulpan's god was a far better stand-up comedian.
Frightfest is this weekend