A Los Angeles Times article I read recently made me chuckle. It began by wearily tossing an exhausted barb at the 3-D phenomenon sweeping Hollywood: “With sighs of relief, critics last week took off their Polaroid glasses and looked at a couple of old-fashioned, two-dimensional films.” The big-screen photography of one of those pictures drew particular attention, with one critic noting that “It gives reality a true third dimension. . . the kind of 3-D you cannot get with mechanical tricks or by any other means except a rich comprehension and ingenious mastery of the visual storyteller’s art.”

Well, let me fess up. I read the article recently, yes — but in a fifty-year-old copy of the Los Angeles Times. The paper was dated May 6, 1953, and the two-dimensional film being praised for bucking Hollywood’s push towards 3-D was Shane.

It was a time when TV was cutting deeply into movie profits, and studios were scrambling to win back the wandering eyeballs of America. Cinerama, an ambitious, three-projector widescreen extravaganza, debuted in New York in the fall of 1952, with its test film This Is Cinerama garnering front-page fanfare and great acclaim. Bosley Crowther, the Roger Ebert of his time, gasped that it gave the audience “the same sensations. . . felt on that night, years ago, when motion pictures were first publicly flashed on a large screen. . . People sat back in spellbound wonder. . . as though most of them were seeing motion pictures for the first time.” In a single evening, the development of all-new expansive formats had become a fait accompli, and studios immediately began looking for ways to capitalize on the buzz. (more…)

I’m one of the last liberal believers in American Exceptionalism, and as I look around the political and media landscapes around me, I’m damn lonely. Not just liberals, but conservatives – like Andrew Bacevitch – seem to be shedding any idea that America is more than just another country with bigger shopping malls than most.

I don’t agree, and I think it matters that I be right and they be wrong.

It matters because in a world where the power of images and ideas is becoming stronger every day – where people defend themselves against men with guns by using cellphone cameras – we seem to be fresh out of ideas.

There’s a physical war going on out in the world with us on one side – and on the other a group allied in large part by their rejection of our beliefs as much as their rejection of our power. They are fighting us with bullets and bombs – and with YouTube videos, discussion forums, and impassioned manifestos. They believe, alright. If you ask them, they will clearly tell you that they do and tell you in what. (more…)