Better than Real Life: 3D Blu-Rays Are Well Worth It!

I’m not usually an early adopter, but in the case of 3D blu-rays I am currently among the only adopters (sales of 3D blu-rays have been hampered by slow sales of 3D TVs).  I love them.  And the 3D looks so great.  One of my eyes is much better than the other, so I barely see 3D in real life, but a good blu-ray can blow me away.

The occasion for my current rhapsodizing is my third viewing yesterday of my all-time favorite 3D blu-ray, Gravity.  Watching Gravity in 3D blu-ray on a 55-inch HD screen is second only to watching it in 3D Imax (to compensate for lack of Imax I try to enhance the home viewing experience by sitting much too close to my TV).  I doubt that 90-minutes in actual orbit could be as exciting or seem as realistic.  Plus Sandra Bullock and George Clooney are excellent company in the void of space and perform some cool maneuvers in low gravity.

After Gravity, my other favorite 3D blu-rays include Avatar, Life of Pi and Titanic (even though it was converted years after it was filmed; James Cameron wouldn’t settle for mediocre 3D).  Most animated movies are great in 3D, but it doesn’t seem fair to make live-action movies compete with the amazing 3D effects which can be drawn onto the screen.  My two favorite animated 3D movies are Despicable Me and Frozen (note that Disney chose not to release Frozen in 3D in the US, so you have to buy it from AmazonUK).

I was going to say that there weren’t any 3D blu-rays involving lawyers, but then I remembered that there’s a great one: “Dial M for Murder.”  Voted the 9th best mystery film of all time by the American Film Institute, “Dial M for Murder” includes murder and (short) courtroom scenes.  (I just took a break from writing this post so I could order it [that’s how compulsive, and impulsive, I am].)  It’s Hitchcock’s only 3D movie, filmed at the tail end of the first-wave 3D boom in 1954 and recently lovingly restored for 3D blu-ray.  Can’t beat that.

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