Faux Life in 3D

Entertainment in red and green

It all started in 1915 with suckers paying money at the Astor Theater in New York to put on cardboard glasses with red and green lenses designed to give them the ultimate thrill: a movie in 3 dimensions. It didn't catch on. Oh, it was tried several times before Bwana Devil caught our attention in 1952, followed by House of Wax in '53 which also featured stereophonic sound! Imagine that! Actually, the year 1953 proved to be the halcyon days for 3D pictures when a total of 27 were made. By 1955, though, only a single movie tried to recreate the amazing (?) view. Of course, at this time, sunglasses made everything look green, too, if you remember that! Now, though, things have swung again.
it seems like every movie coming out in animation features 3D technology. Now, the glasses have plastic frames and look like REAL glasses! Of course, with the added price of the movie, we begin to resemble those folks in New York back in 1915.
I saw Avatar in 3D a few weeks ago because my son wanted to see it (and didn't have any money, I suspect). During the course of the movie, I didn't see anyone in the audience duck when the flying things came our way, and I didn't notice anything really "gee whiz" about it. In fact, I took the glasses off midway through and had some difficulty noticing the difference...except that I didn't have money for treats because I'd spent it on the movie ticket! Now, of course, all the latest and greatest are hitting the theaters in 3D...and in video games as well. Seriously.
Nintendo intends to release the 3DS Handheld gaming system sometime in the next year. The big selling point? You won't have to wear the stupid glasses! Of course, there are purported to be some shortcomings such as the viewer cannot change his or her position while playing the game or the effect is lost.
All of these entertainment advances, and I still cannot program my TiVo. Sad that I'm being left further behind. But I still ahve my 8-track player.