3D or not 3D? The future of cinema is...the past?! This Is Entertainment looks at Ice Age 3 through 3D specs

I saw my very first 'Real 3D' film yesterday. I felt as though it should have been a massively significant moment, as if it would change the way I looked at films forever and warp my mind in ways never before experienced.

So, I got to the cinema, fashion-disaster 3D glasses in hand, went into the screen, sat down to enjoy the Odeon Digital 3D experience and...

...got a headache.

The film itself, Ice Age 3(D), was reasonable. Your classic kids' film mix of cliché, parody and talking animals sees Manni, Sid and Diago return in another slapstick adventure with added family, another inevitability in kids' film sequels.

While the endless toils of the acorn seeking Scrat raised a smile or two, if hand-in-hand with some eye-rolling moments, the deminishing return of the jokes from the first film was now began to show.

That said, Simon Pegg quickly turned a limited stereotypical role into a filled out comic relief machine. As the other characters collected and toyed with their collective baggage, Pegg's 'Buck' ("short for Buckington") riled off one-liners and delightfully mad mannerisms to keep adults, as well as kids, entertained.

The 3D effect though is an interesting beast. At times the effect was sublime, drawing you into the picture with perfection to make the events on screen grab your attention and 'come to life' all the more. One particular highlight was when the camera flew right through a torrent of molten lava, peppering the screen (your eyes) with intense colour and forcing you try to move your head to dodge it.

Often though, particularly when changing scenes, the action moved too fast for your eyes to keep up with, making the 3D animations blurry and difficult to concentrate on. Too often I found myself longing for characters to stop moving to save my retinas.

The glasses are reasonably comfortable, compared to the red/green specs of old, but if you didn't have to wear them things would have been far more comfortable, particularly since the 3D magic stopped at the edge of the film screen and not the glasses.

The only comparison to make is with IMAX, the only significant 3D experience I'd had before, and it was so much more immersive. Part of that is the far-bigger-than-a-standard-screen aspect, but in Odeon's favour their film was far more entertaining than watching underwater creatures.

Since 3D has been around for so long, Hitchcock famously imagining Psycho and Vertigo in 3D back in the mid 20th century, it's staggering it's taken so long to get from the early stages of the technology to where we are today, and the fact that it still underwhelms is disappointing.

For glasses wearers the toil and trouble is even worse, since you're forced to balance them precariously on the end of your nose to fit your own glasses on in between. Price is another factor, with even a student 3D ticket costing a meaty £8.50.

All in all there is definite glimmers of potential in the technology, but we're not quite to virtual reality film-watching, and with the escapism of film being one of its strongest points, do we really want to be?

The future's bright, the future's...green

As if there were no end to the Great Green Revolution, gadgets are now no longer safe from an environmental reform.

Surely the most obvious way to minimise your carbon footprint would be to dispense with the sort of gadgets people didn't need five years ago, like hair straighteners and satellite navigation systems? No? OK, probably too obvious.

The latest news of change in the way we pick our latest tech is that retailers are going to begin advertising hardware by its 'Green Index', essentially displaying on the shelf whether the company that makes it has done so in a 'green' way.

According to the BBC, the CEA (Consumer Electronics Association) has uncovered research suggesting this would be favourably adopted by consumers:

"Green is becoming a purchasing factor," said Steve Koening, director of industry analysts at the CEA, "More than half are willing to pay a little more for 'green' and 22% said they were willing to pay up to 15% more for it." BBC Online

But what does this mean for prices and sales figures? Needless to say people are already tightening their belts and all those other terrible clichés, but if the 'staying in is the new going out' mantra catches on, people will increasingly be investing in Blu-Ray and HDTV to get high definition entertainment in their own home.

22% is not even close to a majority, and generally people who are technologically focused aren't necessarily 'green', but that trend is changing as recycling becomes the norm, so much so that it's almost a social faux pas to throw something in the normal bin which could be recycled.

It's only a matter of time before we start to see the long term effects of the eco-concious lifestyle, not on the environment itself (that ship sailed decades ago), but on our high streets.