Kenny in 3-D

Tomorrow night, Kenny Chesney's "Summer in 3-D" movie debuts in a limited engagement.  I heard somewhere there's only seven showings over the next couple of weeks, so if you want the full blown movie theatre experience, you'd better grab it while you can!  The end credits of the movie proclaim KMart as the retail partner for the movie (which, honestly, seems a little cheap to me.  But I'm a Walmart girl...) So anyway, I suspect that means it will be on DVD shortly thereafter,

As for the movie itself, I saw it about a week ago out in Franklin, TN.  They did a small screening for about 40-50 of us.  Mac McAnally was sitting in the row in front of me, which I thought was incredibly cool.  Kenny came out and said hello, but didn't stay to watch it. 

I've seen Kenny a bunch of times, including at both Madison Square Garden and Gillette Stadium, so I'd actually seen him in 4-D already.  ;-)  I would say Boston was the predominantly featured show, although there were shots from all the stadium shows, and a couple of songs cherry picked from other places.  ("Better As A Memory" in Indy was particularly cool.) 

The 3-D effects were pretty neat.  The concerts were actually shot in 3-D versus being converted later.  Things don't fly out of the screen at you a la Avitar or anything, but it makes for some neat effects.  I think the fans who can't get enough Kenny are going to love this, but the real audience needs to be up and coming artists.  The movie tells a story of a kid who had a dream and chased it, and used technology to take it beyond anything he'd ever dared to dream. 

If you've never seen Kenny in concert, his staging is amazing.  And he runs around and rocks a stage like someone 15 years younger.

Of course, I can't talk about Kenny without talking about his ACM performance of  "Ain't Back Yet." It's my personal belief, that when you look at the overall criteria for Entertainer of the Year ~ sales, airplay, concert attendance, multi-media exposure, promotion of country music outside of the genre ~ Kenny deserved to win.  I know Taylor is a close second, but she hasn't had as many country hits lately, and she sure didn't sell as many concert tickets.  But I knew when it came to the Carrie Underwood fans, they are a force to be reckoned with.  Face it -- without the fans, none of us would have ever heard of Carrie.  So I wasn't surprised he didn't win. 

But I was completely shocked that he lip sync'd his performance.  I've yet to hear an explanation as to why.  Maybe he was sick, maybe they were juggling the show rundown, maybe that's just a hard song to sing.  I don't know.  But I know if Taylor Swift had gotten up there and lip sync'd the press would have been ALL OVER her.  Yet somehow, with Kenny they're just shrugging their shoulders and saying "I don't know, no one's talking." 

The fans are talking!