Category — Technology

I stumbled across an entertaining tribute to the death of the laserdisc by Mark Altman. Apparently, 2008 marks the tenth year since the end of the laserdisc.

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DVD Beaver is a great resource on dvd releases. They know about releases for all countries and formats way before these dvds are released.

And in typical fashion, they told me first that Criterion is finally releasing some titles this fall on Blu-Ray.
Here’s a list of the films:
The Third Man
Bottle Rocket
Chungking Express
The Man Who Fell to Earth
The Last Emperor
El Norte
The 400 Blows
Gimme Shelter
The Complete Monterey Pop
Contempt
Walkabout
For All Mankind
The Wages of Fear

I’m most excited about The Man Who Fell to Earth, which I think will benefit greatly from the Blu-Ray enhanced features.

This might be the final straw for my old dvd player, cos Criterion dvds in HD is definitely a good reason to upgrade to Blu-Ray.

Several major motion pictures are being filmed in 3-D format again. Last November, I watched Beowulf in 3-D and thought it was pretty cool. The action scenes benefitted from the technology, but after awhile I got very tired of wearing those 3-D glasses.

I hadn’t really noticed the resurgence until Yahoo’s People of the Web pointed it out:
“The Return of 3D
Musical acts Hanna Montana and U2 both released concert films in 3D recently, proving there may be new life in the old technology, as well as a potential revenue stream in turning old film libraries into new 3D experiences. Things have improved a lot since the blurry images seen with the cardboard red and blue anaglyphic glasses of the 60s and 70s. New optics from companies like Iconix and display monitors from Digital Ordnance are taking the 3D out of the creature feature swamps and into a new era.”

Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D with Brendan Fraser claims to be the “first live action digital movie”. I have no idea what that means, but here’s the trailer.

It hits theaters on July 11th.

The next big 3D venture is Coraline, written by Neil Gaiman, which sadly won’t be out until February 2009.

Technology is really moving fast these days. It’s hard to keep up sometimes. Take flying cameras for example, I had no idea commercials and films have been using flying camera technology for several years already. They’ve even used these gadgets on a few Harry Potter films, The Da Vinci Code, and The Beach.

Films typically use wires and tracks and all sorts of other devices to get difficult shots. But what if you still can’t get a camera close enough to the action? No problem! Just rig up “the methanol-powered Flying Cam, a mini helicopter that can be outfitted with 35mm, 16mm or HD video cameras” to get the job done.

For amateur filmmakers, you could use a helicopter spy cam instead. However, I doubt the video quality would measure up.

Source: People of the Web: Gadgets and Gadflies