This past weekend we saw the release of Beauty and the Beast in 3D, the most recent in a string of classic films getting a 3D face lift.  The next big re-release is only a few weeks away with the first of the Star Wars 3D updates. Lucas is starting with Episode One, and is moving on through the franchise with a new re-release every year.

Even though the prequel trilogy lives in infamy among most film fans, the impending arrival of a Star Wars film on the big screen still holds some weight. In advance of the February launch a new set of five posters has hit the web, each with a wildy different design and most of them actually pretty cool.

It is gratifying that the posters excise the existence of Jar Jar Binks completely, although it would have been nice had Jake Lloyd received the same treatment. The upcoming 3D versions of these films represents the greatest perk of the 3D post conversion era we live in.

To have an opportunity to watch classic films on the big screen again in new and exciting ways is an exciting proposition. Hopefully lesser films like the prequel trilogy don’t ruin it before we get back to the original trilogy.

You can see the whole set of new posters after the jump.

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The first holiday weekend of the year has come and the big winner was the tender stare of an underwear model. The new Mark Wahlberg actioner, Contraband, came in at number one this weekend with an estimated Twenty-Four million. The impressive total marks one of the highest openings ever for a Mark Wahlberg starring film, and ranks comparably with other January films of this genre.

Coming in at number two was the 3D re-release of the Disney classic Beauty and the Beast. The 3D version raked in eighteen and a half million, which is less than the recent re-release of The Lion King in 3D. Even though the dollars weren’t as good, the sum is still nice considering how long this has been sitting on the shelf. Disney is staying in the 3D reissue business with releases scheduled twice a year for the next few years.

In a number three is the recent box office champ Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, which continues to hold remarkably well. It brought in just over eleven million dollars and became the second highest grossing film in the Impossible franchise. This is a big win all around and looks to be a strong start Jeremy Renner’s assault on big budget franchise films.

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Welcome to the future, a world where it is news that a feature film is being shot on 35mm film instead of digital or in 3D. We now know that the new Star Trek film will be one of those such films, although that doesn’t mean we will be spared the 3-D post conversion.

MTV recently talked with J.J. Abrams about the 2013 film:

“I’m sure, like many people, you see what you do and you go, ‘I really could have done that one better, I should have done that, that was a mistake, more of this, less of that.’ You always do that… I’m hoping that as we do the next one, all the mistakes that I’ve made that I’ve hopefully learned from, I can bring to this one and hope make it better.

We’re shooting on film, 2-D, and then we’ll do a good high-end conversion like the ‘Harry Potter’ movie and all that. Luckily, with our release date now we have the months needed to do it right because if you rush it, it never looks good.

We were talking about [shooting in IMAX] and I would love to do it. IMAX is my favorite format; I’m a huge fan,”

While it is nice that J.J. is looking to get into the IMAX business, post conversion 3D has a rocky history. He sited the most recent Harry Potter film as the standard he expects, but even then shooting for 2D and converting it after the fact never looks as good.

I tend to think of Scorsese as a master of genre films—he’s done gangster films (Goodfellas, Casino), comedy (After Hours, The King of Comedy), police drama (The Departed), psychological thriller (Shutter Island), boxing (Raging Bull), biopic (Kundun, The Aviator, No Direction Home), concert (Shine a Light), historical (Gangs of New York), literary classic (The Age of Innocence), even a remake Cape Fear) and a sequel (The Color of Money)—but he tends to bring such a distinct touch to the films, they don’t quite feel like genre films.

So when I heard he was taking a stab at a kiddie flick, Hugo immediately shot to my most anticipated Scorsese film to date (outside, of course, of the fictional film he was making with Larry David as the money-hurling mob boss in Curb Your Enthusiasm)—added to that who wouldn’t be interested in Scorsese’s take on 3D?

And Hugo doesn’t disappoint. It’s not the most compelling story, but for all its two-hour-seven-minute running time, I wasn’t bored once. There’s a lot more going on, and I’ll get to that in a moment, but first the rundown.

Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) is an urchin who haunts a Paris railway station in the early 1930s, repairing its clocks and stealing various cogs and sprockets to rebuild the homunculus he and his father (Jude Law) were working on right up to his death. While Hugo tends to remain out of the sight and mind of the station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), he’s less successful evading the eye of the toymaker he robs (Ben Kingsley). Caught trying to thieve a wind-up mouse, he’s forced to give up his father’s notebook, which includes all the instructions on repairing the mechanical man and provokes a strange reaction from the toymaker.

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Welcome to another edition of On the Radar where we delve into all corners of the entertainment, tech and geek Internets for news, views and whatnot that may have escaped our regular coverage during the week. Let is know if we missed something interesting.

• It looks like Thor 2 has found its director, and it won’t be Brannagh again. Looks like Monster director Patty Jenkins is taking on the task this time.

• Chris Pine and Tom Hardy fight over Reese Witherspoon for some reason in the first trailer for This Means War.

• Talk about random, here’s an amazing Voltron fan film made by Digg’s Alex Albrecht, starring Psych star Tim Omundson.

• Just to get you ready for the 3D re-release of Star Wars Episode 1, here’s a Maul-happy poster to remind you of the times without Jar Jar Binks.

• Don’t check your calendars, it’s not 1999, yet CBS has announced that they are taking on Fred Durst to star in his own sitcom. Why? We have no idea.

• Walking Dead picks back up this Sunday with season 2, so why not see what you missed last season in every zombie kill in 5 minutes.

• You’ll be too busy getting ready for next week’s release of Batman: Arkham City to realize how awesome Gotham City Impostors will be next year. Here’s a trailer showing you the fun you’ll be missing.

• Unboxing videos are all the rage these days, but what happens when an unboxing goes horribly wrong? Technivator finds out for us.

If there is one company out there that knows how to capitalize on a good thing, it’s definitely Disney. Now that Lion King 3D has made just under $80 million, and the film itself has made nearly $500 million combining it with the original release from 1994, the studio is ready for lightning to strike twice.

It looks like the films Disney is now looking to bring back range from both their 2D cell animated days to the days of Pixar. The plan is to release one older film and one more recent film a year, bringing us to the end of 2013.

Next to hit theaters is a 3D release of Beauty and the Beast on January 31 of next year, to be followed by Finding Nemo on September 14th, 2012. Then for 2013, you’re looking at Monsters, Inc. on January 18th, and The Little Mermaid on September 13th.

This is surely going to be a cash cow for both Disney and Pixar, and may just be enough to keep them from making big releases like Up or sequels like Toy Story 3 for years, which has been pretty costly in the past.

All we know is that this will give us another chance to enjoy these films with a fresh audience and may even introduce a new generation to these classic films.

As a fan of the Star Tours attractions on both coasts, I was excited to go to the D23 panel on the making of Star Tours: The Adventures Continue… I crowded into the 1,000+ seat ballroom, not knowing what Imagineer insights awaited me.

In true Disney fashion, the panel was a professionally crafted presentation, with no room for questions..errr, I mean error. In this panel, lead Imagineer, Tom Fitzgerald, spoke with the aid of Powerpoint and took us on the journey to bring this attraction into the future.

Tom Fitzgerald, began his Star Tours story in 1998 when George Lucas summoned the Imagineer team to his ranch to watch the pod race, and only the pod race. After seeing the infamous scene, the Imagineers decided to wait to see the rest of the film, hoping against hope that it would the pod race would be scrapped for something way cooler.

Ok, so Tom said, “In fact, we did think it was a great idea”, but I can read between the lines. Interestingly back in 1998, way before the 3D onslaught, the Imagineers knew the ride was going to be in 3D.

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Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse when 75% of the films hitting theaters this year are in 3D or RealD, Robert Rodriguez introduces 4D with his new feature, the Aroma-Scope.

Sure, it’s not the newest idea. From the major plot points in Joe Dante’s Matinee from 1993 to John Waters’ “Odorama” in the film Polyester, the idea has been played with in the past, but never to the level of a summer blockbuster. Deadline explains.

[Rodriguez] used the marketing strategy of billing his fourth installment in the Spy Kids franchise as a “4D” flick by adding scratch-and-sniff scent cards for audiences. It’ll be interesting to see if this add-on “Aroma-Scope” value increases moviegoing beyond just the 3D higher ticket prices when the pic opens Friday. ”When it came time to do Spy Kids 4, I couldn’t just go back and do 3D like everybody else is now. I had to bring something extra,” Rodriguez told the the AP.

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Though some people look down on sequels past number 3, there are a few pretty good films out there in the high sequel count that have had a decent fan response in the past. With that in mind, the upcoming 5th film in the Final Desintation franchise already has 83% over at RottenTomatoes, so it can’t be that bad, right?

The series was “rebooted” with #4 to a new audience, bigger budget, and slightly more 3D element (from the already nonexistant 3D in 1-3). That film took off and had some pretty big numbers in the box office, so why not continue with a fifth film? Exactly.

In honor of the film hitting theaters this Friday (in 3D and 2D), the fun folks over at Screened.com managed to compile every death from Final Destination 1-4, which managed to leave us off with a nice round 30 kills overall.

Just watching this montage made us realize how beautifully violent and deranged some of these deaths turned out to be, and how hilariously campy some of the Rube Goldberg-esque traps were setting us up.

Check out the montage after the jump and race out to see how much more ridiculous the deaths can get this Friday when Final Destination 5 hits theaters everywhere.

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Between films like Piranha 3D and Sharknigh 3D, studios have touched on the lameness of the 3D craze, but until now, we haven’t seen it taken to the level of ridicule that it truly deserves with the first trailer for A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas.

The film picks right up where the last film left…only 6 years later. Here’s the official synopsis (as if you need it).

After years of growing apart, Harold Lee and Kumar Patel have replaced each other with new friends and are preparing for their respective Yuletide celebrations. But when a mysterious package mistakenly arrives at Kumar’s door on Christmas Eve, his attempt to redirect it to Harold’s house ends with the “high grade” contents — and Harold’s father-in-law’s prize Christmas tree — going up in smoke.

With his in-laws out of the house for the day, Harold decides to cover his tracks, rather than come clean. Reluctantly embarking on another ill-advised journey with Kumar through New York City, their search for the perfect replacement tree takes them.

Expect to see all of your favorite friends return, even Neil Patrick Harris, who was killed in the last film (don’t worry-they explain that). Loaded with dirty humor and digs on modern cinematic crazes, you can expect to see A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas in theaters on November 4th.

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Nintendo has sent out official word that in two weeks, their latest gaming platform, the Nintendo 3DS will be having its first price drop. Usually price drops happen once a system has been available for an extended period of time and the initial sales spike begins to falter. Unfortunately for Nintendo, their 3DS never had an initial spike.

A few years ago, the Nintendo DS was the chart topping selling system, even overtaking the next-gen XBox 360 and PlayStation 3, many times beating the Nintendo Wii and completely crushing the PlayStation Portable. Since its March release however, the 3DS hasn’t even hit the 1,000,000 seller mark and it has not been for lack of systems available to consumers.

Now in what looks to be a desperation move to entice consumers to purchase the new portable, Nintendo is dropping the MSRP a full $80 from $249.99 to $169.99. Never before has a Nintendo console had such a massive price drop, especially in such a short time since its release. The lack of software available to consumers is most likely the reason for the system’s subpar sales. Even with the price drop, it will be the software that ultimately will drive sales to the system.

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The Summer movie season is in full swing and as such we should expect to see lots of trailers and other publicity materials for all sorts of movies coming out over the next few months. This time around Summit Entertainment has released a new trailer for director Paul W.S. Anderson’s The Three Musketeers.

This one is a new take on the classic Alexandre Dumas story that also happens to be in 3D. Not sure why the director and producers felt like it needed to be in 3D but heck, what do I know?

With audiences seemingly less interested in 3D these days and unwilling to pay premium prices for it, it seems like a bad idea to make this kind of movie in 3D — especially if something like Transformers 3 doesn’t help revive the 3D slump.

Although, according to the trailer, this movie was filmed in 3D and not converted after the fact. At least that’s something and doesn’t completely look like such a blatant grab for extra case from audiences. Plus, the movie has the underrated Ray Stevenson, Christoph Waltz and Milla Jovovich, so at least that’s something.

Click through for the trailer. The Three Musketeers hits theaters on October 14th.

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