Stylish, eh?

These PopMart yellow retro specs will send you to the next stratosphere in realizing what U2 is all about. (click for larger photo)

@U2 will have coverage of U2 3D over the next week with @U2 Original stories, a special podcast, Off The Record column content, and more. To begin, our intreped reporter Tassoula has shared her thoughts of the film. Check it out here.

For those who feel they’re too cool to wear the shades, your view of the film will be really cruddy. Check out the screen without the special glasses:

Woah - dude…it makes the crazy glasses worth wearing. (click for larger photo)

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, and I wanted to see what y’all were gonna do. (Not that if y’all were going to jump off the London Bridge, I’d join you…if you catch my drift.)

You know how to act at a U2 concert - but what do you do in the theater? Do you follow theater etiquette, or do you enjoy your fandom and let loose?

There’s a part of me who wants to stand and dance, and sing along (although, with 12,000 watts of digital surround sound coming through 44 speakers, I’m sure I’ll be drowned out). Yet, i don’t want to be considered disruptive and end up being thrown out of the theater.

What to do?

How do you plan on enjoying the film? And seriously - how many times are you planning on seeing it when it comes to your area? Will it turn into a Rocky Horror situation where people do certain things at certain points of the film?

As previously reported here on the @U2 Blog, part of Best Buy’s agreement with being the Official Presenting Sponsor and exclusive consumer electronics partner for U2 3D in the U.S. is to provide its Reward Zone Loyalty Program members an opportunity to preview U23D.

We’ve heard from Best Buy about the locations of the previews, as there are only 25 cities participating in the preview program. According to Emily Schroeder at Best Buy, “Because demand for the passes is high, the opportunity to obtain passes is limited to select Reward Zone members who received an email invitation directly from MyRewardZone.com.”

When I logged into my Reward Zone online account today, there was no mention of the U23D preview - and I live in one of the geographic areas where the Best Buy preview is available. Please let us know if you have received an email invitation.

Here are the locations participating in the preview program:
IMAX Theatre at Arizona Mills (E3D) 5000 Arizona Mills Circle, Tempe AZ
New England Aquarium / Simons IMAX Theatre, - Central Wharf, Boston MA
Maryland Science Center, 601 Light Street, Baltimore MD
The Henry Ford IMAX Theatre, 20900 Oakwood Blvd. Dearborn MI
Pacific Science Center - Boeing IMAX Theatre, 200 Second Avenue North, Seattle WA
Cinemark IMAX Theatre at Carefree Circle, 3305 Cinema Point, Colorado Springs CO
Cinemark IMAX Theatre, 11819 Webb Chapel Road, Dallas TX
IMAX Theatre, White River State Park - 650 W. Washington St., Indianapolis IN
Marble Kids Museum, 201 East Hargett Street, Raleigh NC
MEGAPLEX 17 at Jordan Commons in Sandy, 9400 S. State Street, Sandy UT
Cinemark IMAX Theatre at the Tulsa, 10802 East 71st Street, Tulsa OK
Smithsonian - National Museum of Natural History IMAX, 1014 Constitution Ave. NW, Washington DC
Ft. Lauderdale Museum of Discovery and Science, 401 Southwest Second Street, Ft. Lauderdale FL
Great Clips IMAX Theatre at the Minnesota Zoo, 12000 Zoo Blvd. Apple Valley MN
Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts, 222 Market Street, Harrisburg PA
Santikos Palladium 19 IMAX, 17703 W IH-10, San Antonio TX
Navy Pier IMAX Theatre, 700 East Grand Ave., Suite 115, Chicago IL
Tennessee Aquarium, Chattanooga One Broad Street, Chattanooga TN
Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, 1800 North Congress Ave., Austin TX
Universal City Walk, 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City CA
Red Rock Stadium 16, 11011 West Charleston Blvd., Las Vegas NV

We all know how U2 feels about corporate sponsorship…or at least used to. In the past, we didn’t have “Budweiser - the official sponsor of the Vertigo tour,” right? U2 did their best to communicate that their relationship with Apple wasn’t them “selling out.” Then again, they had direct control over who they partnered with.

As folks know, National Geographic is the distributor for U23D. Given the costs involved in this production, it was only a matter of time before some company came on board to help “sponsor” the production. It was announced today that Best Buy is the “Official Presenting Sponsor and exclusive consumer electronics partner for U2 3D in the United States.”

What this means to fans….
If you are a member of Best Buy’s Membership Rewards Loyalty Program, you’ll have access to preview nights for U23D showings in 25 cities in the US prior to the film’s formal release on January 23.

Looking into the future, one could only put two-and-two together that Best Buy will soon be selling the 3D electronics for your home and will probably cut a deal (if they haven’t done so already) in offering U23D as a home video release.

U2’s long-time artistic contributor and U23D director, Catherine Owens, was quite clear during her press conference at the Cannes Film Festival last year that U23D would not be released to the home DVD market until the technology was available to fully experience the 3D quality of the film at home.

There must be some U2 fans over at Samsung as they’ve showcased at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 3D capable plasma televisions and a upconverting top box product called TriDef 3D, which comes with handy 3D glasses and everything!

Who thought that the technology would catch up so quickly? Who wants to make a new year’s prediction that we’ll have U23D at home within the next 12 months? (I’m not a betting woman, and I haven’t any clue what the odds would be on that!)

Happy New Year everyone! Thanks to the wonders of the Internet and YouTube, a few folks have put together their own unofficial video versions of “Mercy.” Here’s one who has done a mashup of concert footage - it should be noted the song has not been performed live, nor has it been officially released. The song may evolve into something different when it is officially released. As with the many others, the song is (c)U2.