National Post

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Why 3D isn’t going anywhere

From January’s release of Underworld: Awakening to next Christmas’s Life of Pi and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, 2012 has more than two dozen planned 3D releases, with more yet to be slated.

Studios and cinemas like the automatic surcharge they make on 3D films, and audiences seem to have more or less shouldered the change, just as they did with the half-hour of advertising and trailers that now precede most screenings.

There have been some glorious triumphs for the format in the last year, mind you. German filmmakers Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders have created documentaries that almost demand to be seen in three dimensions. Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams explores ancient paintings in France, the camera capturing not just the images but the undulating rocky surface on which they were drawn.

Wenders’ film Pina just opened at the Bell Lightbox in Toronto, with more locations to follow. It shows dancers on the stage and outdoors in Wuppertal, Germany, the camera capturing not just the movements of individual bodies but they way they fit into each other and their environment. It feels as though we’re among them.