Se dice que probablemente U2 3D sea un impulso importante para las nuevas tecnologias en televisores en 3D.

Jonathan Takiff: ‘U2 3D’ may send TV viewers to new sets
Philadelphia Daily News

THE GIZMO: “U2 3D.”
For the gamer crowd it was “Madden NFL,” “Grand Theft Auto” and “Halo” that sparked millions to run out and buy a PlayStation or XBox video game system.

For digital music player lovers, it was all those freebies from Napster and the easy downloads of iTunes that got ‘em to take the plunge.

Now a new generation of TV sets capable of showing true 3-D images are starting to make way into consumers’ homes, with rear-projection, DLP-based sets from Mitsubishi and Samsung leading the pack.

But to get owners of these sets to take the extra $200 plunge for a stereoscopic adapter and LCD shutter glasses, there has to be some treasured content that people want to watch.

The tipping point may prove to be “U2 3D,” a spine-tingling new concert film starring the legendary Irish band.

The first live action production shot with digital 3-D video technology, this tantalizingly short (85-minute) treat is making its cinema debut at a 3-D theater near you (hopefully). And it’s likely to show up in a 3-D home version before too long, hints co-director Catherine Owens.

WHAT’S SO COOL: Irish super group U2 has long advocated and invested in high technology. This was one of the first bands to make stadium concerts seem like intimate affairs, both with state-of-the-art sound rigs that made their anthemic music ring out clearly as bells, and by blowing up the show on giant video walls enhanced with groovy pop art animations, much of it created by their longtime art installation pal Owens.

Now, with a 3-D cinema version of their most recent concert show, they’re breaking down the invisible “fourth wall” that separates the stage and performers from the audience.

There are times watching “U2 3D” when Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. loom so close to your nose (and those clear, lenticular 3-D glasses) that you’ll feel you could reach out and touch the guys – or get stabbed in the eye by a drumstick.

The filmmakers also give you spectacular stadium views and audience perspectives so realistic you’ll be yelling “down in front,” when you’re not hoisting your cell phone with the masses for the ever-popular “high-tech lit match” tribute.

“U2 3D” also makes very good use of pop-out animations, zooms, dissolves and fast cuts never before possible in a 3-D movie (or at least, not without making the spectator feel woozy, which miraculously doesn’t happen here).

Even spookier – and most innovative – is the film’s surreal use of layered images that make the musicians appear sometimes to be hovering, ghostlike, in space.

IMAXED OUT: Shot on the band’s 2005-2006 tour of South American stadiums, “U2 3D” is landing today on Digital 3-D and IMAX 3-D movie screens. If you can, see it at an IMAX theater like the UA King of Prussia Stadium 16, where I previewed the movie. The screen looms several stories tall and an equally first-rate surround sound system reveals all the nuances in the movie’s dynamic, 5.1-channel mix.

The 14-song set list leans heaviest on U2 perennials like “New Year’s Day,” “Beautiful Day, “Sunday Bloody Sundy” “Pride (In the Name of Love),” “Where the Streets Have No Name,” “One” and “With orWithout You.”

Director Owens said that her crews – often as many as nine teams, each working on twin camera rigs – shot every song of U2′s shows in Mexico City; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Santiago, Chile; and Buenos Aires, (from whence most of the film is derived), with the band averaging about two dozen songs per night.

But the editing team had the most to work with from the songs the band did consistently from night to night (the hits). An audience-free, abbreviated 10-song performance also was contributed by the band on the Buenos Aires stage just for the film crews to capture closeup shots.

I’m guessing that’s where the most in-your-face images of Bono were nabbed. Otherwise that perpetual motion machine is only seen in medium- to long shots, working the catwalks that stretch into the stadium.

BRINGING IT ALL HOME: In a recent interview, co-director Owens said there’s no plan to distribute this film to theaters in standard, 2-D form. “U2 is not doing this for profit reasons. They are completely doing this because they want to be on the forefront of what they think is the future of film technology.”

P.S.: U2′s movie is hardly the only hot movie property coming down the pike in 3-D. Also on the way is New Line’s “Journey 3D,” and “Fly Me to the Moon” from nWave Pictures. 3-D devotee James Cameron continues work on his next epic, the stereoscopic “Avatar.”

And Disney is selling LOTS of tickets to its three-dimensional concert presentation “Hannah Montana: The Movie.” Landing in theaters Feb. 1 for a brief, oneweek run, this Disney 3-D production won’t be the artistic breakthrough that is “U2 3D.” But your kids will probably want to see it and dive into the action, over and over again. *

Produced by Sandy Climan, directed by Catherine Owens, Mark Pellington, distributed by National Geographic Cinema Ventures.

Comentar esta nota