The larger-than-life rock band is given perhaps the only treatment that can properly capture its outsized popularity with a 3D concert film extravaganza. Produced by the 3D masters at 3ality Digital Entertainment, the film comprises footage from seven different South American concerts... [More]

The larger-than-life rock band is given perhaps the only treatment that can properly capture its outsized popularity with a 3D concert film extravaganza. Produced by the 3D masters at 3ality Digital Entertainment, the film comprises footage from seven different South American concerts during the group's 2007 Vertigo Tour. A massive undertaking, the project called for nine different cameras, making it the first-ever 3-D multi-camera live shoot. Directors Catherine Owens and Mark Pellington had previously worked with the band--Owens as the designer of screen visuals for their tours, and Pellington as the director for the "One" video--and they may have succeeded in doing what few concert films can, by truly capturing the ecstatic joy of a massive rock show. While still offering plenty of footage of the rapturous crowd, the film puts you exactly where you want to be at a concert: as close as possible to the performers. You get so close, in fact, that the first time the camera swoops in on Bono, it creates a strange sense of, well, vertigo, to have the mega-star's nose nearly grazing your own. The cameras draw in close enough to show beads of sweat flying from The Edge, and even reveal the middle-aged paunch Bono has hidden inside his motorcycle jacket. The sound quality is impeccable, and the moment it kicks into the drumbeat for "Bloody Sunday," it is nearly impossible to keep at least one body part from involuntarily bouncing in time. For U2 fans, the film can only be exhilarating, though it may hold less sway for those who don't own the band's complete, decades-spanning catalog. [Less]