Curiouser and curiouser

Recently my wife and I went to see, or perhaps a more appropriate word is experience, two of the remarkable new 3D movies, and we were suitably impressed by this dramatic, much improved big screen technology. The days of the old fashioned red and green plastic, cardboard mounted spectacles, appear to have gone for ever.

However, after viewing the modern version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, I couldn't help wondering two things. Firstly, if the movie's directors might not have over indulged in rather extravagant poetic licence with their version, as compared with that of the original author, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson using the pen name Lewis Carroll. Secondly, how confused might those little children be, whose parents had kindly read to them the original version, written in a genre then known as literary nonsense, which portrayed Alice falling down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of peculiar creatures... then subsequently being exposed to this new, and substantially more terrifying, PG rated film version.

Equally unbelievable was the movie Avatar, although it benefited from more sophisticated, expensive and dramatic 3D flair and animation effects. In this story, the inevitably underdog environmentalists, depicted by the human-like avatars, thwarted the normally all-powerful, environment destroying, exploits of the big, bad, American industrial machine.

And now we must all look forward to the arrival of 3D TV. Actually that third dimension in entertainment has been around since its earliest movie version in 1915, and it has already progressed through several distinct TV technologies. Moreover, the Japanese have had a 3D cable channel since 2008, and another was inaugurated in South Korea early this year. The US, lagging as usual in this electronic field, did announce a full 24 hour broadcast channel at the 2010 Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas. This will be a joint venture between IMAX, Sony, and the Discovery channel, and it is their intention to be up and running with their new channel by the 2010 year end.

Fantastic! Will someone please send me the money to purchase the expensive new TV set that this will obviously necessitate.