I filed an item for Wired News about the new IMAX movie Deep Sea 3D (trailer). Yeah, you have to wear goofy glasses to watch it, but the results are pretty awesome. I attended the film's premiere with my nrrdpals Sean and Michael, and we were "dude!"-ing and "OMG!"-ing like 6-year-olds for hours after we left the theater. "Awwwthat mantis shrimp was kigASS, man, 20 feet high on that screen with ninja moves like Chuck Norris!1!11" Snip from report:
Narrated by Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet, Deep Sea 3D chronicles the interconnected lives of underwater critters — and the destructive impact of human pursuits back on the planet's surface.
The film's cast of characters includes a feathery Rainbow Nudibranch, a giant Pacific octopus that shifts colors as fast as a strobe light and many other beings of diverse size and form. With claws as powerful as a 22-caliber bullet, a 10-inch shrimp squashes a mussel for lunch.
Huge sea turtles and supersized fish hang out in ocean floor "day spa" spots, where schools of tiny fish who would otherwise be prey whisk algae off their backs.
We witness what might be described as an undersea smartmob: off the coast of Mexico, eight nights after the August full moon, every coral organism on an entire reef spawns, at precisely the same time — exactly one hour after sunset. How do such simple life forms coordinate such a complex act? Nobody knows, but text-messaging has nothing to do with it.
Link to story, with pics.
Image: click for large size. Reef fish nibble algae from a green sea turtle's shell off Hawaiian shores for the filming of Deep Sea 3D. Courtesy Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. / Peter Kragh.
See also this related Wired Magazine story:
Stereo-Vision Camera Dives Deep, by Sonia Zjawinski.
Update: Here's a phonecam snap of Sean "metblogs.com" Bonner and I inside the premiere, wearing stupid-looking goggles that made the movie (not us) look great: Link.
