<![CDATA[Gawker: defamer, gimmicks]]> http://tags.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/gawker.com.png <![CDATA[Gawker: defamer, gimmicks]]> http://gawker.com/tag/defamer/gimmicks http://gawker.com/tag/defamer/gimmicks <![CDATA[Hollywood Goes to the 3D Circus]]> There's nothing Hollywood likes more than a new toy; Smell-O-Vision, the casting couch, Pauly Shore. In their day they've all been played with to death by the dream factory. And now, they've got hands on another treat — Digital 3D.

Of course, filmmaking tools don't kill people; out-of-control directors kill people. Or at least they kill audiences. 3D in the right hands can and has been used for good as well as evil. American's delighted to soar through the air with Mr. Fredricksen in Up and see tumbling race cars fly off of the screen and chop their heads off in Final Destination 3D.

But once a couple of kids in the class start playing with their Pokemon cards, its only a matter of time before the whole class is flinging them at each other, stuffing the cardboard down each others' throats and burning the school to a ground in a bonfire of trading card rubble. So it has been with 3D; suddenly little Jimmie Cameron shows up with his immersive trailer and everyone's gotta have one.

The madness started yesterday when director Paul W.S. Anderson (the Resident Evil one, not the Boogie Nights one) announced that he was remaking swashbuckling classic The Three Musketeers. Anderson said he is looking to give the period epic a contemporary feel, and what says contemporary like Digital 3D.

Then Steven Soderbergh jumped in on the act, announcing that he will film a musical about Cleopatra starring Catherine Zeta Jones. In 3D of course, because how else would you want to see a musical about Cleopatra?
"Cleo is going to be a total party," he promised.

And with all this going on, who could expect Jon Favreau to stay in his seat and just make a little 'ol Iron Man sequel in pathetic little 2D. So suddenly out of nowhere, Iron Man 2 will be, it seems, in digital three dimensions.

Lost in this pile-on is the question whether 3D actually makes the movie going experience any better or does it just provide pointy things coming out of the screen to distract viewers from the Mariana Trench-wide potholes and the matching holes in their wallets where a hundred dollar bill used to be before they showed up with their families at the multiplex

]]> http://gawker.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5351291&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[Meg Ryan Becomes Latest Member Of Reviled 'Fat Suit' Club]]> To say that Meg Ryan's career is in a free-fall would be to imply that her career hasn't already hit rock bottom. While it's true that she's poised for a potential comeback in this fall's remake of The Women, anyone with half a brain realizes that her star died the day the news broke that she was schtupping Russell Crowe on the set of Proof Of Life back in 2000. Making matters even worse for America's Former Sweetheart™, in Meg's newest (straight-to-DVD) movie called My Mom's Hot Boyfriend, she becomes the latest in a long string of actresses to strap herself into a fat suit only to magically "slim down" to win the heart of a handsome man — a trick which stopped being funny the second time that the Friends gang went to that well. While we're not about to get up on a pedestal and start going off about the offensiveness of fat suits, this news did prompt us to go back and take a look at some of the stars who have donned prosthetics to plump up on-screen in the past (rarely, if ever, to humorous effect). Play along with our latest round of Defamer Bingo after the jump.

[Photo Credits: The Makeup Gallery]

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