Coraline 3D

Coraline is the fairy tale story of a girl who is so utterly bored with her normal life that she retreats into a secret world where all of her fantastic dreams come true. Coraline, the main character of the story, and her parents move into the Pink Palace Apartments. Both of her parents work from home and, therefore, spend a lot of time ignoring Coraline. Her father's brilliant idea of keeping busy during a particularly rainy day (when her mother wouldn't let her go outside because of mud) was to count the number of windows in the house or count the number of doors. As Coraline goes about the excruciating task of counting thing, she comes upon a very small locked door. With only a few questions, she manages to get her mother to open the door for her. Unfortunately, all that was behind the door was a brick wall. Or was there? After Coraline falls asleep that night, a group of mice lead her back to the door where it opens into a brilliant world.

My husband and I took our daughter to see the 3D version of the movie on Sunday. Let me say that I really enjoy the 'new' 3D technology as compared to the campy 80s 3D that just made random things jump out at you. This technology gives an amazing depth to the visuals. It's somewhat difficult to explain. You just need to experience it.

I found the movie to be very fun. Yes, there are some slightly scary parts that may scare small children but my almost-7-year-old was fine. Other than that, it should be an enjoyable time for the whole family.

Chuck 3D

Last night was the 3D episode of Chuck. 3D today is different from the 3D of the 1980s. Back then, 3D meant that Jaws was jumping out of the screen at you. Today, 3D means the show doesn't look flat. The characters stand apart from the background. If you were standing in a store (a BuyMore, maybe) and you looked at someone standing in front of a display (maybe Chuck standing in front of the Nerd Herd booth), there is obviously a separation between the person and the display. In regular 2D television, you don't get the depth perception needed to separate the two. The human brain makes assumptions based on things it has already experienced. That is why we can look at 2D television and not be like "HAY! THAT PERSON IS IN THE DISPLAY!" However, the 'new' 3D makes it so our brain doesn't have to assume things. It can see that the person is standing apart from the display. And it is awesome. I wish all of my TV shows were 3D. Though I don't want to wear those cardboard classes anymore. Those suck lots. I would happily buy a good pair of hard plastic sunglass-type 3D glasses to wear if all my shows were in 3D. But a television that did that for me would be cooler!

Movie review: Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds 3D

Yesterday, I took my daughter to the Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus concert movie. For those of you that don't follow the Hannah Montana news, this tour is the biggest ticket of the year. Some sites are claiming it is bigger than The Police reunion tour. Tickets are selling out within seconds and scalpers are taking in a cool $500+ from parents who weren't able to buy them from legitimate sources. So Disney decided that they would film a couple of the live concerts and release it for one week in February as a 3D theatrical movie. Tickets for the movie? $15 a piece. Overall, the movie was not bad. None of the songs offend my ears and, actually, some of the songs are really quite good. People just write them off because they come from a Disney channel show.

The movie started off with some backstage scenes. It was basically a "how the tour got started" type of mini-documentary. Then the concert started with Hannah Montana (which would be Miley Cyrus in a blonde wig) singing a couple of songs. There was a lot of dancing and running around. It was obvious she was having fun on stage. In between the songs, there was more of the behind-the-scenes stuff with Miley talking about some of the mistakes on tour (in one song, she's carried by four male dancers...in one show, they dropped her) or working on dance moves. It was nice to see what goes on backstage but I felt it really detracted from the concert. People go to see Hannah/Miley sing, not to see how long it takes her (and her assistants) to do a costume change. It takes away the magical feel of a concert.

After Hannah sang, she brought out the Jonas Brothers to sing "Party With Us" before she left to change into Miley. While she was changing, the Jonas Brothers sang two songs. Unfortunately, they picked the two worst Jonas Brothers songs to put in the movie. It was also a little difficult to understand what they were singing because the instrumentals were turned up too high. Luckily, the boys told us the name of each song before they sang it. I don't know that the audience would have been able to identify it otherwise.

Finally, Miley came out to sing. In my opinion, the Miley songs are much better than the Hannah songs. Even the dancing was livelier. Again, there were problems with the vocals being too low to be understood. You would have thought that the sound guy would have picked up on this by now. More backstage documentary pieces told us why she wrote some songs and how her mother helps her out on tour. The concert ended with Miley and a pre-recorded Hannah singing "Best of Both Worlds" together.

Luckily, my daughter really enjoyed the concert movie. It was her opinion I wanted. The concert isn't really geared for us parents. It's for the kids. However, I still think it would have been better if they left out the documentary parts. The Hannah/Miley fanbase is mostly made up of younger kids - ages 4-10 or so. I'm not sure that they are particularly interested in watching Miley rehearse or see her hiding under the stage before an entrance. I also think it might have been better if they had just filmed one concert instead of filming multiple performances then splicing them together to make it look like it was one performance. If you pay attention, you can see props moving around the stage without being touched or the number of guitar picks in a microphone stand changing mid-song. Again, it's nothing big. It's just one of many little things that takes you out of the concert experience.

So, if you or your kids are a Hannah/Miley fan, you would enjoy the movie. But if you are looking to see the movie in place of going to the concert, it just won't work. Maybe, one day, those of us who aren't willing to shell out a couple hundred dollars for a children's concert will be able to have our kids experience an actual concert.