Reger Ebert's dead right: 3-D just sucks (insert your own funny noun here)

In case anyone's wondering, I'm well aware that there really is nothing that Roger Ebert - and much, much less me - can do to stop the extremely profitable plague that is 3-D, but the world is still just a little better place because he keeps trying.

In what I have to assume is the most recent issue of Newsweek, the estimable film critic for the Chicago Sun Times outlines extremely rational and convincing reasons why 3-D just sucks so hard (though he doesn't put it quite that way, of course.) It's very well worth reading his entire piece, which you can do here, but I've taken the liberty of reprinting his lead, which just about nails things very economically:

3-D is a waste of a perfectly good dimension. Hollywood's current crazy stampede toward it is suicidal. It adds nothing essential to the moviegoing experience. For some, it is an annoying distraction. For others, it creates nausea and headaches. It is driven largely to sell expensive projection equipment and add a $5 to $7.50 surcharge on already expensive movie tickets. Its image is noticeably darker than standard 2-D. It is unsuitable for grown-up films of any seriousness. It limits the freedom of directors to make films as they choose. For moviegoers in the PG-13 and R ranges, it only rarely provides an experience worth paying a premium for.

He pretty much states his entire case there, but it's still worth reading his full explanation. I'd just like to mention the two aspects of 3-D that just drive me batty, even more than the fact that it arbitrarily costs more (and more, just wait.)

The main point, which Ebert elaborates on, is that 3-D is indeed just an imagination slaughterer. Movies are meant to take you away, if only for a little while, from whatever is upsetting in your actual life. You, or at least I, can dive completely into the world unveiled in front of you, and further create it in your mind as a fully fleshed-out universe. Given that, why in the world would you want a computer to artificially do this for you? It just robs you of much of the moviegoing experience, so in my mind, it should cost less, not more, to watch. 'Nuff said.

A second point that Ebert addresses and I agree with wholeheartedly is that 3-D movies are indeed more than a bit "dim," especially the animated ones. The perfect case in point is "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs," just about the very last animated movie I'll ever see in 3-D for this reason. I watched it in 3-D first, and while it was very funny and still entertaining, it appeared to be filled with giant scoops of gray ice cream and beige pizza. Who wants that? Fully aware that it makes the first viewing a waste of money, I went back a week later and watched the movie in glorious 2-D, and the colors really just exploded off the screen. It was just a much more enjoyable experience. For that reason, I'm through with 3-D animation from anyone working now except for Henry Selick, who proved with "Coraline" that he knows how to use it to genuinely enhance the experience.

Ebert offered a technical reason for this a**-awful phenomenon:

Lenny Lipton is known as the father of the electronic stereoscopic-display industry. He knows how films made with his systems should look. Current digital projectors, he writes, are "intrinsically inefficient. Half the light goes to one eye and half to the other, which immediately results in a 50 percent reduction in illumination."

Why in the world would you pay MORE for that? OK, enough about that. Definitely take the time to read Ebert's essay, and I'll leave you with a very funny mashup of "Seinfeld" that reimagines George's life as a seriously dramatic Hollywood movie. Just about perfect. Peace out.

Two crazy rumors, one to laugh about and one to hope for

You know, I would suggest someone try to shame The Sun if it had even an ounce of it left, or the folks who put it out just clearly didn't have so much fun f***ing with the entire world.

The British's tabloid's latest creation, as I've dutifully documented above by sharing the photo, is the immediately shot down but still very funny rumor that one Robert Pattinson would be playing Kurt Cobain in a biopic to be titled "All Apologies." And, as you might be able to tell, that's Scarlett Johansson in the photo as Courtney Love, who Love has supposedly and rather immodestly suggested should play her.

All I can really say about all that is great title, and I'd imagine that last bit about Courtney Love is probably the only thing approaching truth in it. But it's still just a heck of a lot of fun.

And, in a rumor that I would much more readily get behind, the co-creators of "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" - which along with "Coraline" shares the distinction of being one of the two 2009 animated movies that were better than Pixar's "Up" - are eyeing a sequel in the form of "Pickles to Pittsburgh," the soon-to-be-released followup children's book by Judith Barrett.

In the new work, according to Publisher's Weekly, the townspeople of Chewandswallow find themselves still cleaning up all that food rained down by Bill Hader's Flint Lockwood. In what should make for a globe-trotting adventure, they come up with a global food distribution plan, hence Eggplants to Ecuador, Chili to Chile and the titular "Pickles to Pittsburgh."

I'm laughing at that already, so here's hoping this somehow happens, and soon. And in the meantime, Comedy Central has released a short clip of next week's episode of "South Park," which will be the rather seriously amazing 200th one. Never strangers to excess, as you'll see from the clip, co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are bringing back every celebrity who has been mercilessly mocked during the show's run for a class-action lawsuit against the city. Nothing but funny there, especially the return of Mecha Streisand. Enjoy, and have a fantastic rest of the weekend.

Just about the best news animation fans could possibly hope for

Actually, before we get into any of that goodness today, there's some very dark news about the world of TV, which directly impacts the show I was most amped about for the entire coming year (which is, when you think about it, just about the least important thing about this.)

David Mills, who worked closely with David Simon and like Simon was a former newspaper reporter (Mills for the Washington Post and Simon for the Baltimore Sun), died Tuesday night of an aneurysm on the set of "Treme," the post-Katrina New Orleans series he was developing with Simon for HBO (set to debut two Sundays from now, assuming this news doesn't change that.)

Once he crossed over into TV, Mills, like Simon, had a big hand in creating some of the best TV shows of the last 20 years or so. And I'm very far from exaggerating here. He wrote episodes of "The Wire," "Homicide: Life on the Street, "ER" and "NYPD Blue," and also served as a producer for "ER" and "NYPD Blue." His greatest accomplishment, however, was probably serving as executive producer and co-writer along with Simon and Ed Burns for the simply stunning HBO miniseries "The Corner," easily the most depressing thing to come out of Baltimore besides the Orioles, but still very worth watching (and which netted him two Emmys.)

And saddest of all is that he played a key role in "Treme" at the time of his death, serving as executive producer and having already written two episodes. I'm still planning to re-up on HBO in time for the premiere of this and long enough to watch "True Blood" season 3, but this is just a sad day all around indeed. Rest in peace, Mr. Mills.

You can read a much better obituary for the man written by his fellow "Treme" creators here.

OK, enough sad stuff, because for fans of great animation, there's news out there that is nothing short of incredible. Stop-motion master Henry Selick made my favorite animated movie of 2009 in "Coraline" (followed closely by "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.") Shortly after that, however, he was left immediately unemployed after the animation house he toiled for, Laika, closed up shop.

Now, however, that's all changed, and in the best possible way. Selick has just signed a long-term deal to create more stop-motion movies for Disney/Pixar. There's no word yet on exactly what he has in mind first, but I'm betting that anything that springs from his very active mind will be nothing short of amazing.

Remember that it was Selick not, as many people mistakenly think, Tim Burton, who directed "The Nightmare Before Christmas," and he also made the even better Roald Dahl adaptation "James and the Giant Peach" (if you missed that, as many people did, rent it immediately.) And beyond giving him work to do, this welcome move hopefully shows that, despite Pixar's current fixation with 3-D, it and Disney will keep being committed to making all kinds of animated movies.

And finally today, I just got around to examining the lineup for the 2010 edition of the Atlanta Film Festival 365 (for which I'm somehow a member of the press), and it looks great. The Atlanta fest is really homegrown, featuring a lot of regional fare and, this year, a focus on civil rights and music documentaries. I'm incredibly psyched that included in the latter category will be the closing night movie, "The Secret to a Happy Ending," a doco about my favorite rock band by far, the Drive-By Truckers (followed, apparently, by most of the band playing for a party that I WILL get in to.)

But the festival has narrative features too, of course, and I think the one I'm most looking forward to is "The Good Heart." It stars two of my favorite actors in Brian Cox and Paul Dano. Cox plays the owner of a New York dive bar who is slowly drinking and smoking himself to death until he meets Dano's character, a young homeless man who he takes under his wing. I don't know much more than that, but it's enough to get me rather amped for this. Here's the first clip I know of for the movie. Enjoy, and have a perfectly pleasant Thursday. Peace out.

Goofy with a guarantee of laughs

You know, I always thought Pearl Jam was more than a little overrated at its heyday, mostly I guess because they were just way too earnest for my tastes.

But, over the years, I've warmed a lot to at least Eddie Vedder, mostly because of the great soundtrack for "Into the Wild," but also because their cover of "Last Kiss" is just a little delight.

Anyways, I tell you all that to tell you this: You can stream the new Pearl Jam album, "Backspacer," on the band's MySpace page here. I'm only on song three now (mostly because it has the nasty habit of crashing my Firefox at the end of each track), but it sounds pretty epicly good to me so far.

And on a different subject, it seems that Neil Patrick Harris hosting the Emmys will deliver a bonus for anyone who bothers to tune in for the almost completely suspenseless broadcast. According to Entertainment Weekly's seriously TV-obsessed scribe Michael Ausiello, there will be a "Dr. Horrible"-themed production number about midway through the show. Harris and his castmates already won an Emmy for the Web show "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" created by Joss Whedon. No word yet if Whedon will be involved in tonight's show, but that's still more of a reason to tune in than watching "30 Rock" win 20 awards yet again (though I do love the show.)

But on to the main event: "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" is an almost thoroughly enjoyable animated delight and, blasphemy I know, more entertaining (and frankly that's what matters most to me) than "Up."

What makes it, if not unique, at least original enough to work is the goofy spirit of both the story and its voice actors, who are clearly all in on the fun. I think it helped going in to this one that I really knew just about nothing about the children's story by Judi and Ron Barrett, on which this is based.

The story itself is indeed so silly that you have to wonder how it could possibly work for anyone over the age of 4: Our hero, Flint Lockwood (voiced by Bill Hader) is a boy and quickly man who just wants to invent things rather than get any kind of actual job (and really, who doesn't?) He lives in the quickly dying town of Swallow Falls, dying because its most famous export, sardines, are simply disgusting (though I've always kind of liked them.) I don't want to give too much away, but Flint somehow invents a device that turns water into food and, on a grand scale, causes it to rain food down on the town.

You can tell early on that this won't go extremely well, and it surely doesn't, but the jokes do. From the outset, they're not throwaway pop-culture references, but quick-flying bits that fit organicly with the story, from Flint's one-word commands to himself and his helper monkey Steve to the newspaper headline "Sardines are really gross."

The best jokes of all though, largely thanks to Anna Faris as the voice of wannabe-weather girl Sam Sparks, come at the expense of The Weather Channel. For me, the only weather channel I've ever tuned in to has been my front window, so the puns and especially the cut-in to a cute animal just hit their target spot on.

And with Bill Hader and Anna Faris leading the cast, plus Neil Patrick Harris (yes, him again), James Caan, Andy Samberg, Mr. T, Bobb'e J. Thomson (that fantastically foul-mouthed kid from "Role Models") and even Bruce Campbell in the voice cast, this could easily have turned into a hipster-irony disaster, but for the most part they disappear into their parts with ease. Faris (a favorite around here, in case you couldn't tell) fares the best of all, but Bruce Campbell as the mayor of Swallow Falls who jumps all over the opportunity to promote the town with Flint's new creation, is also a hoot. Lauren Graham is somehow in this too, though only for about 90 seconds at the very start, which is about as good a summary as any of just how well her movie career has gone since "Gilmore Girls."

As with any animated movie for kids and goofy-minded adults, there comes a point when the directors, here Phil Lord and Chris Miller, want to tell us the message about gluttony and obesity rather than simply show us through the story. Luckily though, after about a 10-minute dead space (in what is only an 81-minute movie), they quickly realize that any town covered one day with giant hot dogs and the next with kids sliding down giant scoops of ice cream pretty much speaks for itself.

I guess you can tell by now that I had a heck of a lot of fun with this one, but I'll leave you with just one more word about why: I watched it through exactly one pair of glasses, MINE. The colors of "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" jump from the screen, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching them unfold in 2-D rather than being muddied with those silly 3-D glasses. Judging from the packed house at our Saturday afternoon screening, I'm apparently far from the only one who doesn't want to pay an extra $2 for this worthless gimmick. Peace out.