In an effort to lure you away from your super-sized flat-screen TVs and back into the cinemas, Hollywood film studios have scheduled over a dozen 3D movies for release this year. And the plan is for 5,000 cinemas in the US and 500 in the UK to be 3D-ready by the end of 2009. While the majority will be kids-friendly animation by the likes of Dreamworks and Disney-Pixar, another 40 films shot in 3D are already in production.

Gone are the days of red-and-blue 3D and daft-looking cardboard glasses, we’re told; today’s technology allows three-dimensional images to be separated, then when combined into one, ‘appear to be bursting off the big screen’. Hmm, that’s all very well, but even the wonders of 3D can’t eliminate the vile stench of hot dogs and the incessant crackling of cellophane sweet bags that are such an integral part of the movie-going experience in most multiplexes. Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, which has already seen the closure of many cinemas as audiences switched to watching films on DVD at home, a filmmaker has announced that he will be using these special effects to heighten the impact of the love scenes in his $4m production of 3D Sex & Zen. He claims that in the many close-ups the performers will appear to be only a few centimeters from the viewers.

‘Just imagine that you’ll be watching it as if you were sitting beside the bed,’ he says. Shooting will begin in April for release in cinemas by Christmas, a report said. No doubt, the adult industry will seize on the sales potential of threedimensional hardcore DVDs, sooner or later. Will this mean in-your-face cumshots for viewers, too? Meantime, a number of companies are developing the next generation of players that they claim ‘will breathe new life into your old DVD movie collection by transforming it into explosive 3D’. Hey, you could have somebody’s eye out with that schlong, Lexington!

Posted at 2:59 PM on Thursday, March 26, 2009