Comments on: 'Chuck' in 3D falls flat

Intended to promote 3D films soon available in theaters, the version many saw on their televisions Monday night didn't do the 3D movement any favors.

[tonhogg]

I saw it again. This article mentioned red and blue glasses and movies of the past. Movies have not been shown in red and blue since the late 1940's. All of the movies of the 1950's boom were polarized ( I saw jaws 3d in 1983, guess what, it was polarized). It was the 3d comic books of the 50's that were red and blue, not the movies. Now if they are shown on tv or on dvd it is red and blue because polarized can't be shown on regular tv's and computer monitors. However, movies released in theaters are polarized, not in red and blue.

[Tom Christner]

My wife and I were so annoyed that I was trying to find ways to share my disappointment. Though we finished the episode, we complained in unison throughout the show.

Thank you for discussing this topic.

[xim1970]

Here is the problem with "hype":
You have to DELIVER!!! Saying that you are going to put a 3-D experience onto your television initially made me want to find the 3-D glasses...until I found out it was the 1950s-era red-blue glasses. I don't think anyone would call that "3-D" these days. I saw an IMAX movie back in 1996 (which, plot-line wise was horrible), but had the clear glasses, and made it SO much more enjoyable than I would have thought. Why? Because I COULD SEE COLOR AS IT SHOULD BE! And I swear that airplane wing would clip my nose! If it's going to be 3-D, and you are going to advertise it as such, please respect your consumers enough to advertise the glasses as "red-blue"...otherwise we all just hate your network. Poor PR work causes so much damage...

[ChrisMohrSr]

Apparently someone or something has somehow created some kind of mass hypnosis that has taken hold of all reporters doing an article on the renewed interest in 3D. If one or two would fall under this hypnotic spell, that might be understandable, but when 99 percent are infected with the same fallacy, it becomes downright wierd.

That 99 percent of which I speak are somehow under the impression that the 3D movies of the fifties were presented on a single strip of film encoded with two of the primary colors red and blue. And that these anaglyphic films were viewed through cheap cardboard glasses with red and blue cellophane filters. I cannot think of one first run 3D feature film of the fifties that was presented that way. They were all presented by a synchronized two projector system through polarizing filters and shown on a silverized screen so as not to depolarize the images. The glasses were also polarizing filters that separated the left and right image. And, when the projectionist did his job properly (which seldom was the case) the 3D image was superb. Cardboard red and blue cellophane filters were usually reserved for cheap 3D ads and comic books. Since not many, if any, of these reporters were even alive during that time, one can only conclude that they were too lazy or untalented to do the proper research on the subject and just repeated the total inaccuracies of some other hacks. Why work at it when plagiarism is so easy. One amusing aspect of their deception is the fact that most of them use the exact same terms to describe the quality of those glasses and the quality of the headaches those glasses supposedly induced. All of this would be more amusing if it were not for this type of reporting causing the destruction of the trust we once had in our newsmen and newswomen. When I was a child all we had was radio, but when some newsperson we liked said something, we knew we could take it as fact. Unfortunately that is no longer the case.

The same was true of the proper use of the spoken word. When a trusted newsman like a Walter Cronkite pronounced a word, we knew that it was correctly pronounced and we could safely pronounce it that way and not seem illiterate. Today, too many of the people who get paid to speak correctly are somewhat illiterate and don't even know it.

A case in point is the word "height". Too many people today pronounce it "heigth". As far as I know there is no such word as "heigth". At one time, a well paid illiterate probably reasoned that if the words were "length", and "width", then the other measurement must be "heigth". The frightening thing is that it caught on. It really pleased me when I heard our new President pronounce the word correctly the other day. Had he said "heigth", I really would have been shaken.

Even more frightening is the misuse of the word "healthy". We are constantly being told that we must eat "healthy" vegetables to get the proper nutrition. Eat "healthy" foods they keep saying. Who would knowingly eat a "sick" vegetable or a "sick" food? What these well meaning people mean is, eat "healthful" vegetables and "healthful" foods.

The educational system in this country is a disgrace. It may be even as bad as the economy. Let us hope that our new President has the help and cooperation he desperately needs to get us back to our rightful place as the greatest country on the planet and to have the coming generation be able to put it into the proper words.