IMAX 3D First city in space

[P3D Eric Drysdale <Eric_Drysdale@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey, Photo 3d-ers...

>I remember last week someone saying that the new IMAX 3-D movie, "L5: First
City in
>Space"

I don't know if it's playing in So. Cal or not, but I scored a free preview
pass and saw this here in New York last night!  Though the story is schmaltzy
as usual, it's got a bit more to it than other Imax features... one question
though, why is every IMAX 3D movie "seen through the eyes of a child"?

The "story" revolves around a little girl named Cheiko as she witnesses the
building and sustaining of the first city in space, actually a big space
station in orbit around the moon, and how she sees her father save the colony
by attaching rockets to a comet filled with water... or something. The whole
thing had a 1939 world's fair quality of presenting technologies that seem
just plain silly.  My favorite was the futuristic farm with an inexplicably
complex high-tech chicken coop.  Also, in the future, there'll be a little
electronic check-in station whereever you go (it looks like they used the
same prop over and over again), and a "newsstand" that supplies you with
headphones.  Hilarious!  

All of the space-stations and space vehicles are computer generated, and...
WOW!  This stuff just looks superb!  Especially the stuff that's
traditionally rendered best by CGI, shiny machines.  The sequence where an
astronaut (Cheiko's father) navigates a little probe around a meteor while
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 11:25:28 -0500
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debris and rocks knock him to and fro is amazing!  Having a virtual camera
means that there's alot of flying around, and the opening shots of the space
station are dizzying and terrific.  

There was one moment that seemed stereoscopically incorrect; a fly-over of
mars (apparently rendered from real NASA data) that was shot (rendered)
hyper, I believe, which made it look more like the surface was passing by you
at about chin level.  Very weird. My friend said, "Why am I eating mars?"

In addition, there are some great effects on the space station intereior
mixing live action with computer animation, and there's a peek at some 3D
imaging systems of the future that somehow produce stereoscopy from a ring of
bicycle reflectors.  Oh yeah, and there's a great full IMAX-3D shot of the
Space Shuttle taking off. Oh yeah, and there was some gratuitous bubble
blowing at the camera...

In summation.  The first city in space is cheesy, sure, but the story is
slightly stronger than other IMAX movies, and the effects are very, very
impressive.  O.K. Very, very, very impressive. Definitely recommended for all
Photo-3ders.

I'm just rambling now... but I also heard this explanation of how the
sequential shutter glasses work:
"Y'see, these LCD screens flash green and red sequentially so fast that you
can't register the colors.."  I politely straightened the confused patron
out, and held a short seminar on polarization for a small group of people.

-E


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