Adding a New Dimension: The 61st International Film Festival Berlin (Festivals‪)‬

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In its latest installment the Berlin Film Festival went 3D, sending a clear signal that the new technology has arrived in full force on the festival circuit and is no longer confined to what Berlinale-goers usually dismiss as popcorn cinema. Running in the Competition, Michael Ocelot's Les contes de la nuit/Tales of the Night is an animated fable in which an old movie theater becomes the nightly playground of the imagination for a young girl and boy. Inspired by Lotte Reiniger's famous silhouettes of the 1920s, Ocelot brings to life a magical world of werewolves, sorcerers, and damsels in distress. Then, taking 3D beyond the customary world of animation and sci-fi, the British thriller The Mortician (Gareth Maxwell Roberts), starring rapper Method Man, uses the technology with more mixed results. The grim settings of an urban ghetto and a morgue appear even darker through 3D glasses, while the rapid camera movements at times look blurry, and the characters often seem two-dimensional, like the paper mache cutouts of film stars in DVD rental stores.