1. An industry screening of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button had to be called off several days ago, due to a malfunction in the digital projector. This and other recent incidents have raised concerns about the expansion of digital projection to regular mainstream theatres. As producer Frank Marshall put it: “This is a modern-day version of the film breaking, but you can’t paste it back together and keep going.” Or, as Loren Nielsen of Entertainment Technology Consultants put it: “Film is not without the possibility of technical failure, but the digital cinema side has more opportunity for absolute failure.” — Variety, Hollywood Reporter
2. DreamWorks Animation guru Jeffrey Katzenberg says every Hollywood movie will be released in 3-D within five to seven years, so Variety magazine ran a few articles last week exploring the pros and cons of this format, focusing particularly on the importance of storytelling and the possible health hazards. — Variety (x2, x3, x4), Hollywood Reporter
3. Rob Spence, director of Let’s All Hate Toronto (2007), wants to install a web-cam into a prosthetic eye and embed it into his empty eye socket, so that he can record and share everything he sees. (And if he were blind in both eyes, he could do it in 3-D.) Spence is making a documentary about his quest to become a “bionic man”, under the title Eye 4 an Eye. — National Post
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