Diary of a new at Home 3D Blu-Ray Fan or How to get Started with 3D at Home Part 2!

Per my previous post I have jumped into the world of 3D Bluray/Home Projection and I LOVE IT! 3D TV’s being dead, or prohibitively expensive (for the used ones remaining) held me off for a long time. However, I did my homework and research (for months) before acquiring my current system, and for under $1500 ( and potentially under a $1000 if you get great deals) you can all-in [Bluray, projector, glasses] , have a GREAT 3D system.

So quick update on what I have seen on my 3D system, since part 1, and what the winners and losers are.

Let’s start with the under-performers and move up to the home-runs.

THE MAD MAGICIAN Indicator release, was so far the biggest downer. The B&W 3D was not a pleasant experience.

Also another B&W one that is a difficult watch, is DRAGONFLY SQUADRON. Now the 3D in this is actually very, very good. Lots of depth and separation between objects. What hurts the film, is it is very noisy and grainy, and I don’t typically have an issue with grain. GUN FURY 3D was grainy, but the color presentation with it, had no problem with the grain, and the 3D was phenomenal; however with the DRAGONFLY SQUADRON in 3D, the grain and pops in the film feels likes tiny explosions going off while you are attempting to watch the film. A shame because, as I mentioned the 3D is very impressive.

I found the HOBBIT UNEXPECTED JOURNEY pretty underwhelming in 3D.

I heard lots of praise for RESIDENT EVIL AFTERLIFE’s 3D, however finally watched and the 3D is uneven. It comes and goes. Sometimes it has depth, sometimes it does not.

TRANSFORMERS THE LAST KNIGHT is the same way, moments of effective 3D, and sequences that are basically 2D.

Those are probably the biggest UNDER-PERFORMERS so far.

So the Winners so far…

I already mentioned THE LIFE OF PI and GUN FURY 3D as must own 3D films. Both of those films are solid in terms of top-notch 3D presentation. Those are both what i would call demo worthy discs. Solid A+ 3D films.

Another demo worthy disc would be PACIFIC RIM in 3D! Holy cow! That is a must own. Another A+ 3D film.

I would also say STAR WARS FORCE AWAKENS 3D is another great 3D film. Lots of wonderful depth, and one notable striking pop-out. A solid B+.

I’ve only seen a few minutes of IMMORTALS, DRIVE ANGRY and UNIVERSAL SOLDIER:DAY OF RECKONING, but initial impressions is that the 3D in all three of those films, is phenomenal. Especially UNIVERSAL SOLDIER:DAY OF RECKONING (which is the best Universal Soldier film, largely because it is nothing like the previous films. It is Universal Soldier by way of APOCALYPSE NOW). directed by John Hyams I believe, I love this film in 2D, and in 3D it is even better. Initial impressions they are all easily B+, but that grade may go up once i watch the whole film in 3D. DAY OF RECKONING in 3D is a must own. Click on the images to pick up copies while they are still in stock.

MAN OF STEEL in 3D, is better than I expected. People have been lackluster in reviews regarding WB/DC 3D films, but I was pleasantly surprised. While there are no pop-outs in the film, there is nice depth for a good portion of it, especially the more sci-fi aspects. Overall while not an essential 3D disc, the film is more enjoyable to watch in 3D than 2D. And considering I am not a fan of this film (I think it is one of the weakest Superman films, after the first 2 Reeves films, and below SUPERMAN RETURNS), it has its good parts (not the [minor spoilers] video game massacre of millions, and the stupid tornado sacrifice scene), and it is overall a good 3D to have in your collection. I’d say a C+ in terms of its 3D.

Today i will probably sample KONG SKULL ISLAND in 3D, as well as SANGAREE 3D and HERCULES 3D, and I’ll bring you in the next installment what I thought of those.

Also i have some IMAX Docs in 3D coming, so I’ll review those once I view them.

And remember guys, like, subscribe and share this post. If I get 7 likes, on this post as well as the first part, and I will break down the hardware that makes up my system and how I have it setup. Till next time, Gals and Guys, be safe out there!

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Marvel Studios BLACK PANTHER in 3D – The Verdict?

I just came from a sold out upscale theater showing of Ryan Coogler’s BLACK PANTHER for Marvel Studios.

I’m going to try to be brief. As someone who went into this having avoided all trailers, and spoilers, and special feature exposes (that in my experience is like pre-chewing your food before sitting down to eat, making it impossible for fan or reviewer to truly be surprised by a film) I was… blown away.

In terms of look, performance, direction, pathos, and humor, and rock solid action, it is without argument one of the best of the EIGHTEEN Marvel Studio Films released to date. I saw it in 3D and it is worth seeing in 3D. You don’t get the things flying into the audience effect, but the sense of looking down, and into chasms and waterfalls, plays up to 3Ds strengths. So I recommend seeing it at least once in 3D. I say once because like the original AVENGERS film, this is a film that deserves to be seen more than once.

I plan to see it in 2D when I go back next time.

This BLACK PANTHER film, released during Black History month, in my humble opinion is in a three way tie for the #1 Marvel Movie of all time; tied with the original AVENGERS by Josh Whedon and CAPTAIN AMERICA WINTER SOLDIER by the Russo Brothers. Those three movies share one shining exquisite truth; they are not just great comic-book movies, they are great films… FULL STOP.

Okay that should be all you need, go see the film now.

Okay still here, the following contains minor spoilers.

BLACK PANTHER is a great film from first frame to last. It is masterfully done; weaving effortlessly between drama, pomp, circumstance, humor, horror, tragedy, and heroism and hope. Chadwick Boseman is astonishing as the titular character, playing him with understated grace and elegance, that carries effortlessly the weight of the film. He is the rock upon which our tale is moored.

Writer/Director Ryan Coogler in three films has catapulted himself as one of the defining directors of our age, and BLACK PANTHER is that talent writ large. This is the tale of the death of kings, of fathers and sons, and things lost in the fire, this is about nothing less than the fate of the world, and about nothing more than the grief of boys for their fathers, a beautifully developed thread in all of Coogler’s films, but never done so well as here.

Coogler takes the admonishment of Hamlet ‘The common theme of life, is death of fathers’ and uses it like a lover and a lance, to both caress and break your heart. And he takes King Henry’s complaint in THE LION OF WINTER ‘I could have conquered Europe all of it, but I had women in my life.’ and here makes of it the saving grace of the protagonist, the film, and the world.

It is the women in this film who save the world, who save the men from their self extinguishing thirst for conquest and vengeance. And taking that line from LION OF WINTER, to also mean parental and familial influence, the difference between T’Challa and Killmonger then ultimately is in their relations to their fathers, even to the structure of their afterlives, one is defined by the inspiration of his father, and one by the lack of his father, and both of them have become completely extraordinary men in staggeringly different ways because of these relations.

It makes for a film of unexpected emotional intensity and depth. Coogler as a filmmaker has my number, as tears unbidden came to my eyes in places in this film. But I would argue he has everyone’s number, if you have the heart to feel, be you Irish or Korean or Ethiopian or American, Coogler will find those places that bind us all,… and squeeze. And then he’ll hit you with the action, then the humor, and sometime when you are laughing, he will squeeze again, and the tears will rise and you will know this is a filmmaker.

And it is wonderful when a director finds his muse, and an actor finds the director that gets him, brings out his best. Coogler and Michael B. Jordan are that combination.

They join legendary director/star pairings such as:

Ford and Wayne
Hawks and Wayne
Kurosawa and Mifune
Hitchcock and Grant
Lee and Washington
Scorsese and Dinero
Scott and Washington
Woo and Yun-Fat
Ayer and Smith
Fuqua and Washington (It is not lost on me that Denzel Washington’s name appears with three different directors. It just shows the kind of fantastic actor he is, the longevity of his career, and that he can embody for many directors, the perfect actor).

Those pairings when they happen are the source of cinematic gold. And it happens in BLACK PANTHER with Coogler and Jordan, two of the respective best of their generation.

Simply a masterful film, with a stunning cast, and great performances. And Kudos to Kevin Feige who with 18 films under his belt, is not just producing films that transcend the source material, he has proved himself the most successful and influential film producer, in the history of the medium.Supplanting such names as Zanuck or Lewton.

It is a success richly earned.

That said, a lot of fans and reviewers care about the numbers, how much a movie makes. I do not. I could not care less if BLACK PANTHER made $1 or 1 Billion Dollars. In this day where studios own the films and the theaters; that is money that is being taken out of local economies. It is good the movie is successful in that we get more such movies from that director, that producer, those actors, but as far as making Disney richer, that does not concern me.

Now should we go back to the days of local and community owned theaters, then that matters, that we should support, because those dollars are staying in the community.

So I’m happy for the movie not because it does this much business, or that much business, I’m happy for the movie, because such visions raise us all, and the success allows such visionaries to keep telling stories.

Grade: An unqualified A+.

If you like this movie I recommend the following:

The following movies are too good, to trust in the ‘cloud’ or ‘streaming’ to always have them available, or always have them available in unchanged, unedited, or unaltered versions. The below movies deserve to be owned in physical form, in the age of digital.

Chadwick Boseman’s excellent A MESSAGE FROM THE KING

LION IN WINTER

http://amzn.to/2CtUltq

HAMLET

http://amzn.to/2C6aEk6

AVENGERS

http://amzn.to/2C5Lx0W

CAPTAIN AMERICA : WINTER SOLDIER

http://amzn.to/2C3M97v

CAPTAIN AMERICA : CIVIL WAR

http://amzn.to/2szGli8

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Movie Review : STAR TREK BEYOND… Great or Badly Flawed??!!

STAR TREK BEYOND – As a rule I avoid trailers for movies I know I’m going to see. Like CAPTAIN AMERICA CIVIL WAR or STAR WARS THE FORCE AWAKENS, I knew STAR TREK BEYOND was a movie I knew I was going to see, so I wanted to go into the film, and be as blank a slate as possible, not basically pre-watching the film before the film.

It has worked with me for other films. Loved CAPTAIN AMERICA CIVIL WAR, liked STAR WARS THE FORCE AWAKENS.

With STAR TREK BEYOND I did manage to catch one trailer, the one with the mortorcycle and music that caused something of a negative pushback online, but for myself I thought it was fine. Not a great trailer, but an okay one.

The movie, finally seen, in a solid, nearly empty theater with great picture, and great sound (2D not 3D) and verdict?… I enjoyed it. I think the look of it was fantastic, the beginning and middle solid. Some good performances and fun scenes. It’s a nice, if flawed, addition to these new STAR TREK films.

Why flawed?

To explain that I’m going to have to get into specifics, as in spoiler theory. But a quick nonspoiler take on STAR TREK BEYOND… if you haven’t already seen it in the theater, save money and wait for it on streaming or for rent. A cheap rental.

Okay that sounds harsh for a movie that I thought started off very strongly. Okay here is some detail to explain my feelings. To avoid spoilers skip everything except the last paragraph, and come back after you’ve seen it.

Here we go:

An action movie ultimately is defined by the quality of the conflict, the quality of the conflict that opposes our heroes, the quality of the antagonist. STAR TREK BEYOND has a great actor, Idress Elba, who is completely wasted; who is given a largely mediocre and nonsensical role, and motivation.

You have an antagonist that in one of the film’s most memorable scenes early in the picture, shows he possesses a weapon that can kick serious ass. But instead of using this awesome weapon for achieving his vengeance, he… for over a hundred years… only uses this devastating weapon, to pirate other ships, in an attempt to find a so-called ultimate weapon.

That weapon when found is unimpressive piece of nonsense, compared to the weapon he already had at his disposal.

It’s like somebody who wants to take revenge against the people he blames for his family’s death, armed with a machine gun, who instead of taking this machine gun and getting his vengeance immediately, spends over a hundred years carjacking people in the hopes of finding a different ultimate weapon, and that weapon when found, turns out to be a yo-yo or slingshot.

It’s that much of a let down and disappointment, compared to the weapon he already had.

It makes no sense and delivers a flawed and weak and toothless ending. How no one in production could see this glaring issue with the plot/script is baffling.

And speaking of weak, why would our antagonist, this eater of life… be getting weaker after consuming lives? Each life should be making him stronger.

So on top of this dud of a doomsday weapon, this antagonist himself at the ‘climax’ Of the film, for no conceivable good reason… is a weak, crying, easily beaten, and more than a bit rubbish, whiner.

The actors do the best they can with this, but the writing /plot ultimately lets them down. This one falls squarely at the feet of the writer, Simon Pegg, who writes everything well except the most important thing to get right, the villain and the villains motivations.

I thought the first rebooted STAR TREK film was great. In many ways it is STAR WARS done better than STAR WARS, possessing as it does that EMPIRE STRIKES BACK vibe. It is a solid A-.

I thought the 2nd one, while it had deeper pitfalls than the 1st film, the poor idea to try to cleave too close to WRATH OF KAHN, also had higher peaks. And as a whole I think it is masterful, it just edges out the first film being a solid A-/A.

END SPOILERS

This third one I was enjoying till the whole idiocy of the ‘doomsday weapon’ and the poorly written antagonist and final act. Whereas I can rewatch the first two reboot STAR TREK movies constantly, and proudly own both Blu-Rays, I have no desire to sit though this 3rd movie ever again.

Grade: C-.