P3D Monsters of Grace

[Dave Dyer <ddyer@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Music: standard, Glassical fare, well done but nothing unexpected or remarkable.
If you like Phillip Glass' music in general, you won't be disappointed.

Stereo Film: Seriously flawed in several ways.  

To begin with, they seem not to have realized how much the polarizers reduce 
the actual brightness - they simply needed a brighter bulb in the projector 
to compensate.  

The brighness problem was compounded in several of the sequences by the choice of 
scene. The opening scene was a panoramic view that started just past sunset, and 
continued into full night.  Another sequence featured a leisurely flyover of some 
mountainous terrain, shot in dark, grainy black and white.  I suspect we were 
actually seeing a 16mm work print of an animation test, never intended for 
theatrical presentation.

Some othe sequences seemed aimed at wowing us with tour-de-force rendering -
for example the "bear rug" sequence: with wind wafting subtly in the fur.
Some of these bits were high quality, even state-of-the-art, but most
were easily outshone by sequences I've seen at siggraph, years ago.

All the sequences suffered from somnambulist pacing - the kind where you watch
for a couple minutes and then decide "yes, it really is changing, slowly". This
works for the music (experienced Glass listeners don't hear the notes, they 
hear the changes in the weave), but as a visual technique it's pretty boring.




------------------------------