Dreams, Dirk, and Why It Matters to Movies

I don't like 3D. I can't articulate exactly why...but I just don't care for it at all. The other night I was talking to some friends about dreams and it occurred to me - dreams look like movies. I wonder if people in the early 1800s dreamed in images the same way we do. That is to say - are dreams influenced by movies OR is our attraction to movies because they resemble dreams? I am sure Bazin and other early film writers must have written about this. I am too lazy to look it up. I suspect it is the latter: we have an instinctual attraction to movies because of their resemblance to dreams and memories.

And this is where 3D gets it wrong. 3D is an attempt to try and resemble more closely real life. To give us depth, etc. Now, I realize these are probably similar arguments made by fans of silent cinema around advent of sound and color and so forth. Although, I imagine we always dreamed in color and sound has proven very much to enhance cinema. Also, silent movies were never really silent at all, they were played with music, so the advent of sound was really more about the synching of sound to picture and widening the options over time. The advent of sound did nothing to the image. But 3D is about the image.

When it boils down to it, I believe 3D is mostly a business gimmick to get people to the theater. That is to say, it is not a lasting technology that will stand on it's own. There will occasionally be an Avatar like film, but it strikes me these will be few and far between and be saved for certain kind of epics. Sort of like 70mm prints of films like 2001 and Lawrence of Arabia.

I was thinking this morning about Soderbergh's decision to retire because he feels he is not bringing anything new to movies. Very well. I am all for re-invention and originality, this is why we go to films...but I also started thinking about Dirk and his incredible playoff run. Now, Dirk wasn't exactly reinventing basketball or reinventing himself this year. He just became more precise. He worked on the little details about his game and moved closer toward perfection (obviously never achievable). Now why isn't that a satisfactory enough goal with filmmaking? Why wouldn't Soderbergh be happy improving his "crime movie" for instance and try to make a better one than Out of Sight? Just got me thinking about how big our goals really need to be...and how Dirk didn't change anything fundamental, just got closer to perfection at a few small things.