If this is what 3D is going to be like, count me out!
I am VERY glad that the IMAX 3D portion only lasted for the first 12 minutes of the film. There are some slightly (and I stress slightly ) cool moments with the 3D effect, but the technology is just not good enough, IMO. I've seen this (Harry Potter 6), Up and Ice Age 3 now all in Digital 3D or IMAX 3D and I have to say that I have completely had my fill of it!
There are artifacts. Plain and simple. Motion looks distractingly blurry, images at the edges of the screen "split" apart, traditional camera focus creates distractingly blurry objects either in the foreground or background. It's just a mess, it doesn't look good and all it does is serve to constantly remind me that I am watching a gimmick and stops me from getting fully engrossed in the movie.
Fail.
Now that was the 3D...let me tell you about the horrible theatre experience! I'm that guy who pops up 15 seconds before the movie's going to start and goes and closes all the entrance doors to the theatre! I hate having light coming into the theatre and I hate being able to hear the sound from all the other theatres where no one has closed the damn doors!
So I get up, close all 4 sets of doors. Doesn't matter! The entrances themselves are fully lit! There is light streaming onto the screen, washing out both bottom corners! Totally unacceptable!
Honestly, I just cannot take it anymore. I keep my mouth shut because the other people I'm with never seem to notice or care. I know that I'm the only one bothered by these things, but honestly - we're being charged $15/ticket for crappy 3D on an IMAX screen where the bottom two corners are lit and washed out by stupid entrance lights that never shut off!
And then there's the IMAX conversion - FULL of awful looking edge enhancement. The wide exterior shots looked like SDTV due to all the ringing and artifacts that are the result of trying to "sharpen" the original film image for IMAX.
Bottom line - I will NEVER see another movie in IMAX that wasn't fully shot on IMAX cameras. I'm also going to take whatever means are necessary to shut off those entrance lights. $15 to watch a blurry, edge-enhanced, washed out picture? eff that!
The movie itself? Pretty good. I'm not really a fan of David Yates' directing. The characters are all so completely lifeless under his direction and he seems to be overly fond of long pauses that I assume are meant to have that "this is like real life" sort of awkwardness to them, but it just doesn't work for me.
Mike Newell's effort was by FAR the best, IMO as he was the only director to actually make the characters seem like completely real kids in a completely real school.
Still, this Half-Blood Prince was well made and I enjoyed it for what it was. I probably would have enjoyed it more if the theatre experience had not been so completely unacceptable.
