A tight-knit group of street dancers team up with NYU freshman Moose and find themselves pitted against the world’s best hip hop dancers in a high-stakes showdown.

This is not only the first 3D dance drama but also the first 3D motion picture to shoot entirely in New York City.

Trailer followed by music video below:

Is the movie called Shrek: The Final Chapter as this ad indicates?

It started out as “Shrek Goes Fourth,” and then became “Shrek Forever After,” I thought. But lately, and right up until opening day today, I saw just as many ads on TV and in newspapers, and on websites (including home page on IMAX), in which it appeared that the title is “Shrek: The Final Chapter.”

Today's ad in USA Today -- where's the title?

And then, as if they couldn’t decide what to call it, they ran opening day ads that offered no title whatsoever.

IMAX website calls it "Final Chapter"

Well, whatever it’s called, the latest Shrek movie delivers some of the best use of 3D in an animated movie that I have seen to date, especially in the IMAX version that I saw in a mini-IMAX AMC theater. Not necessarily the most dynamic — it still doesn’t come off the screen and into the audience as I would prefer — but despite what some critics said was almost negligible use of 3D except in a couple gratuitous scenes, I found the 3D to be used very effectively from the opening moments showing horses pulling the Royal carriage and right on through almost every shot. It wasn’t distracting; it made everything more visually appealing and immersive, pulling me in closer to each scene.

Update: Despite significantly increased ticket prices of as much as $20 at some theaters, IMAX pulled in about 7% ($5 mil.) of the overall weekend gross of $71.3 mil. Although it faces competition over the Memorial Day weekend from “Sex and the City 2″ and “Prince of Persia,” its kid-friendly family appeal distinguishes it from the newcomers, which should be significant on a holiday weekend.

DreamWorks website has the title "Forever After."

By the third episode, the Shrek series seemed to be getting sillier, throwing in too many new characters, and getting further away from the cleverness and charm of the original. This one gratefully reigns some of that in a bit. But there is still a dearth of the pop culture references and satirical elements that made the first one so fun. The writers seemed to have lost the funny. Donkey doesn’t have a single funny line, which is amazing when you remember how many times you laughed out loud at his snarky comments in the first movie. The result is a more seemingly unintentionally solemn tone and even moments where it gets a little heavy, or at least dreary and dull.

And like many sequels that resort to throwing tons of copies of the main attraction at you, like hundreds of aliens in “Aliens” and dozens of iron men in “Iron Man 2,” this one falls back on the same formula by introducing a whole bunch of giant green ogres. But just as it worked in those movies, it works here pretty well.

And just as Sylvester Stallone restored a little credibility to his Rocky character by coming back with a much improved “Rocky Balboa” to help wash out the bitter taste of “Rocky V,” “Shrek Forever After” is a fitting “Final Chapter” to the series that is probably responsible for saving DreamWorks Animation in the early days of the studio.

– Scott Hettrick

And thank you for demonstrating once again how a good filmmaker can bring 3D images way off the screen and keep it in the viewer’s face almost continually for maximum dynamic effect without using a single gimmick of poking anything at the camera, without making us feel like we are in a theme park attraction, and without giving us eye or brain fatigue.
(Story continues below the following video from the March 11 premiere at the California Science Center, including interviews with Myers and astronaut Mike Massimino.)

Myers told 3DHollywood.net (in video above) that she and her filmmaking partners approach 3D the exact opposite of their Hollywood brethren who, so far, use what she characterizes as a more cautious approach, or at least prefer to take the image depth behind the screen rather than in front.

For 43 minutes you’ll swear you are right inside the cramped shuttle cabin with the astronauts who appear only inches away. You’ll feel like you are one of the lucky ones on the bleachers at Cape Canaveral cheering the spectacular launch of the shuttle; that is, until you feel like you’re one of the birds almost too close to the lift-off and dangerously close to the torrent of water below the soon-to-be-massive flames from the black rocket cones moments before ignition. You sense the tedium and nervous tension as astronauts work exhaustively in the silent dark vacuum of space to remove dozens of screws — a task they liken to performing brain surgery while wearing boxing gloves — all the while aware that the tiniest rip in their own gloves could be fatal.

Astronaut Mike Massimino says Myers’ IMAX 3D production is so realistic that for the first time he doesn’t feel frustrated at not being able to convey to his family and friends the grandeur and exhilaration he felt on previous missions.

And finally you’ll feel a very different kind of star-struck and humbled by the 3D computer-generated fly-bys of star Sirius and Orion’s Belt and beyond our Milky Way to neighboring galaxy Andromeda and the Virgo Cluster of two thousand galaxies, just one of which is ten times bigger than the Milky Way.

You can practically turn your head left and right to see the celestial bodies sail past. You have never felt so surrounded by stars or simultaneously awestruck and insignificant.

In addition to the primary behemoth 700-pound IMAX 3D camera fixed in the cargo bay loaded with nearly 1-mile of film that yields only 8-minutes of footage and which therefore had to be judiciously turned on and off and affixed with the proper lenses and correct exposure settings each time by astronauts who were trained for months by Myers, the flight also included several HD cameras that were manipulated back home so the images filled the seven-story tall IMAX film frame and were converted to 3D.

For the space flight simulation, Myers, in cooperation with NASA, used actual data and images from the Hubble and created by the imaging team at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, and the computing facilities at the Advanced Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne. One can imagine that the resulting visualization could look very close to an actual inter-galaxy flight light-years in the future.

Warner Bros., which is distributing the film, will expand the release to newer and smaller digital IMAX screens in multiplexes such as AMC in August. Here’s hoping that Hollywood filmmakers embarking on their maiden 3D voyage take 43-minutes to learn just how dynamic and potentially powerful 3D is when used properly with restrained aggression.

The 17-minute musical space adventure from George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola and starring Michael Jackson and Anjelica Huston is being showcased for what is being dubbed a special limited engagement in the Tomorrowland Magic Eye theater at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, Ca., where it began and played for 11 years from 1986-1997. (Story continues following 2 1/2-minute video of “re-premiere” below.)

It is a new 70mm print and the sound system in the theater has been upgraded but some of the first-of-their kind synchronized in-theater effects will not be re-created since the theater was retrofit for subsequent movies like “Honey, I Shrunk the Audience,” which has not played there since Jan. 3 but which sources say will return to the theater as early as this fall after the “Captain EO” engagement, unless “CEO” is still doing well enough to hold the venue longer.

Jackson performed two original songs for the movie about a cast of merry, mythical space characters with dual personalities who undergo magical transformations to become Jackson’s electronic band in conquering the forces of darkness.

The original characters in the film include:
* Hooter, the little green elephant-like creature who sneezes wild musical notes through his flute-like trunk;
* Fuzzball, the orange-haired space monkey with butterfly wings;
* Geex, a golden-haired, two-faced personality with two left feet, one right foot and two shaggy heads named Idy and Ody;
* Major Domo, whose mirrored silver costume becomes a complete set of drums;
* Minor Domo, with his sparkling purple torso that turns into an electronic synthesizer played by Hooter.

During the journey, Captain EO and his merry crew discover a colorless planet where they are confronted by the Supreme Leader (Huston) and her forces of darkness. Using the power of music, dance and light to fill the planet and the theater with all the shades of the rainbow, the EO crew turns the black and white land into a magical world of color and happiness.
– By Scott Hettrick

The performances in “Larger Than Life … in 3D” were filmed at music festivals this summer, including the Austin City Limits Music Festival in Texas, the Mile High Music Festival in Colorado and at All Points
West Music & Arts Festival in New Jersey.

Cinedigm will also distribute 3D concert events including the “Best of Lollapalooza” and the “Best of Austin City Limits” in the first and second quarters of 2010.

Since 2007 Cinedigm has presented sports events(see video below) and concert events to digital theaters. Among the concert films have been the South by Southwest Music Festival, the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers documentary “Runnin’ Down a Dream,” John Mayer’s “Where the Light Is: John Mayer Live in Los Angeles,” “Three Days Grace: Live at the Palace 2008,” and a one-night-only concert from Grammy Award-winning Christian rapper TobyMac in May.

“The ability to see Dave Matthews in 3D, on a big screen at your local theater, for far less than the cost of a concert ticket is an exciting option for music fans,” said Bud Mayo, Chairman and CEO of Cinedigm. “This is the future of modern cinema: movies, music, sports… the options are limitless.”

Play video below to see Cinedigm’s 3D theater presentation of the BCS championship football game: