Georgia Trip: Day 7

On our last day, we did a little shopping then spent the afternoon with my Grandaddy. He still lives in the house my mom grew up in. It used to be a good neighbourhood, but apparently it isn’t anymore. There have been a lot of foreclosures on the street, and there had been a squatter in the house next door not too long ago. Grandaddy used to raise bunnies, ferrets, and chinchillas, but not anymore. When I was a little girl I had a white bunny with red eyes named Snowball that he kept for me. Sadly, Snowball is no more. The only animal he has now is his big suck of an attention hogging dog, Rosco.

That evening, our last in the city, we went to see U23D. It was kickass. We did get glasses, but not the old school red-and-green ones. These were just gray tinted and I have no idea how they actually work. But they do. The effect of the 3D does two things: the first is the expected things-hovering-in-front-of-you effect, or things coming out of the screen at you. The second, which I didn’t expect, was it gave depth to everything on the screen. As cliché as it is to say, you really do feel like you’re standing right there. Everything looked so present, even the microphone stand held fascination because it looked so round.

They didn’t play the 3D for cheesy effect. For example, Bono didn’t throw his sunglasses at the audience or anything. In fact, with few exceptions it was gimmick free. There was a couple of computer-generated things where words flew from the screen, but other than that it was a straightforward concert movie. What was special about it is that it looks so real you feel like you can reach out and touch Bono. There were shots where you literally felt like you were a part of the crowd.

I have to commend the people who did the sound editing. The problem with concerts is that the audience begins screaming before the band steps on the stage and doesn’t stop screaming until the band is long gone. They did an amazing job of filtering out the audience and only including them in the soundtrack when it made sense to. The over-all editing was good too. The movie was made from about 4 concerts, but it plays pretty seamlessly as one complete show.

My only problem with it was the length. It was only 80 minutes long. That’s far shorter than an actual concert, and means they have to leave out so many good songs. The highlight of the movie was the performance of Love and Peace, because Larry sings and Bono bangs on the drums. Also because it’s a great song. Here’s a performance from a concert DVD.



And here’s another performance of the same song. Worth watching if only for the way Bono says “lovely” at about the 1:10 mark. (I can practically hear you rolling your eyes, but I truly am this obsessed).



In conclusion. U23D was an awesome movie and I think even people ambivalent to the band and/or immune to Bono’s rock star charm would like it anyway, just for the novelty of it.