“Fantastic Sights Leap At You!”

Here’s a review of Universal’s fine (and very affordable) Blu-ray of It Came from Outer Space (1953), which in the U.S. is an annoying Best Buy exclusive, but in a quirk we’ve never seen before north of the 49th parallel, the same release has been available in Canada since October!

The BR sports the gorgeous restoration undertaken by the 3-D Film Archive and Universal, and ports over extras from the prior 2002 DVD, but what’s ultimately important is that another classic 3D film has been rescued from oblivion, and ordinary film fans can own this classic in stunning clarity.

 

 

This is still one of the best 3D movies of the fifties: the effects are smartly applied, if more often than not quite subtle, and the depth of field, especially in shots with diagonal perspectives, is superb. Pretty amazing Universal got so much right on their first 3D production as they rushed to beat Warner Bros.’ own 3D extravaganza, House of Wax (1953), which is also available on Blu in 3D, and I’ll cover at a later date.

Part of my keen interest in ‘subtle’ / well-done 3D is that between Xmas and New Year’s I plan to fiddle around and see if there’s a way to create 3D using vintage tube video cameras for a proposed music video. I’m sure some oddities will emerge in the goofball discovery process that I can use for future weird visuals, but we’ll see what emerges come January 2017. My screwball idea might actually work. Worst case scenario is I get to play with a vintage Ikegami ITC-75.

Moving on, I just recorded another fun podcast which should be up next week, timed to coincide with another documentary recently released on DVD, and there’s Part 2 of the Tom Roston-Norman Wilner discussion taped at Bay Street Video back in May that’s slated for mid-December publication.

Also coming very shortly is a short audio interview with Kris Bovenizer and Dawn Hemmy whose fine graphic work was exhibited at Toronto’s Urban Gallery in November. The audio quality had some technical issues, but the final piece, packaged in another installment of ArtScopeTO, should be up late Wednesday.

 

 

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com

Tags: 3D, featured, full-image, It Came from Outer Space

Category: EDITOR'S BLOG