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Now! For the first time! In color and 3-D!

From Jeff Joseph, SabuCat Productions, Los Angeles:

In a recent Answer Man column, you said this of colorization:

"The abomination of colorization is not against the law. The marketplace rejected it, and Ted Turner ended up with a warehouse full of colorized 'Casablanca' videotapes to prove it."

While I'm no fan of colorization either, from a purely business standpoint colorization was a big success. Ted Turner (and many others) made millions from the process. By the 90s, the novelty had worn off, but it never really went away. And now, since we live in an HD world, many films are being re-colorized in that format, using much more (and cheaper) computing power. I've seen a bit of it and it looks quite a lot better than in the 80s.

Various public domain films (like "Plan 9") are already done in HD/colorized and I'm sure will be out by the end of the year. Movie studios are having some b/w TV shows colorized, and several major Hollywood films have been colorized, including "20 Million Miles to Earth", with Ray Harryhausen's cooperation and input.

By the way, several companies are now developing ways of converting classic films from 2D to ersatz 3D.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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