Sailboat!

Kevin Smith is by far one of my favorite people in film. I adore his work, and I sort of adore him in general beyond his work, but that is not what this post is about. Actually it pretty much has nothing to do with him at all (well not directly anyways).

So anyways, the first Kevin Smith movie I saw was Mallrats. While I love this movie for so many different reasons, and on so many different levels, I found oddly that I really identified with poor William the most. For those of you who are not familiar with the movie or are trying to figure out which character was William, I am referring to the guy at the mall who was so desperately trying to see the hidden picture of the sailboat. I totally sympathize with that guy. I have never seen the hidden picture either, and sadly, unlike William, I never will.

For years I thought those hidden picture things were a joke. I thought that there really was not any extra image inside the static that was the picture. I tried and tried and I couldn't see them. People would give me all sorts of tricks to how they worked; relaxing the eyes, looking past the picture, not focusing on the picture. Yea none of it worked. I was convinced it was a load of crap. There was no sailboat.

Turns out though that it really is me and not the picture. I have pretty much no depth perception. As far as inconvenient conditions go, a lack of depth perception is pretty damn inconvenient. Walking is sometimes an issue. I run into lots of walls and door frames. Driving can be an adventure when you are not sure how far the divider wall or another car is from you. There is a trick to it, which involves counting and a lot of praying, but I have mostly never run into anything (hey I know drivers with perfect eyesight who have hit a lot more things than I have).

Also, along with hidden pictures, I can not see 3D. When I was little I was convinced that that was also a load of crap. When people would 'ooh' and 'ahh' and jump back squealing as something flew out of the screen at them, I was just really confused. The screen was red and blue and blurry. How was this cool? And nothing was flying out at me. I was convinced they were making it up and somehow mocking me. Apparently they weren't.

So this new Hollywood craze of making EVERYTHING in 3D sort of drives me crazy. I mean I don't have to pay the extra $5 on already overpriced movie tickets to not enjoy 3D, I can choose the cheaper 2D option, however I am not spared the shots obviously meant for the 3D effect.

I went and saw the new Fright Night on Saturday with friends and we of course went to the 2D show (the husbeast is also unable to see 3D as he is color blind). The number of pointless blood spurts and splatters that were obviously meant to freak out the 3D audiences, were just a little distracting to the rest of us. I am not certain how that really adds anything to the movie. If I could see 3D I can not imagine that I would enjoy blood spurting out at me, or boulders flying in my general direction, or anything else popping out of the screen. I might just be saying that because I will never see it, but something in me says that I am really fine with never thinking something from my movie is going to hit me.

I would really like to see the sailboat though.