As the theatrical film industry moves to digital projection, will we still be able to watch independent films and classic movies on the big screen? Last week I covered one major issue: How will small, independent theaters finance expensive new projectors and the servers required to run them? This week I’m covering the other side [...]
Filed under: Technical, Theaters | Tagged: 35mm film, Blu-ray, DCP, digital projection | 1 Comment »
About the awards Third year in a row that a film shot digitally appeared to be a likely Best Picture winner, but lost to a film shot on film. Early on I thought it was going to be a Hugo sweep, but it turned into a happy ending, after all. I liked them both, but [...]
Filed under: Awards, TV | Leave a Comment »
Esthetically speaking, I see no problem with digital projection. Under the best of conditions, 2K DCP projection looks better than 35mm film–and 4K looks better than 2K. An incompetent projectionist can ruin a digital presentation, of course, but with film, they can ruin the presentation and the print. As transitions go, digital hardly changes the [...]
Filed under: Technical, Theaters | Tagged: bay area, digital projection, Pacific Film Archive, Rafael Theater | 2 Comments »
Few filmmakers could make a thriller that has the audience biting their nails about whether the champagne will run out before the party is over–or a romance where the hero treats the heroine with contempt, but the villain truly and tenderly loves her. Yet the team of Ben Hecht and Alfred Hitchcock could put all [...]
Filed under: Blu-ray Review | Leave a Comment »
How do you top Some Like It Hot? Billy Wilder found the answer in The Apartment, a far more serious comedy about the battle of sexes. Or more precisely, about how powerful men exploit both women and less-powerful men. When The Apartment came out in 1960, critics complained that Wilder didn’t seem to know if [...]
Filed under: Blu-ray Review, Comedy | Tagged: Billy Wilder | Leave a Comment »
There are romantic comedies, and then there’s Annie Hall. It’s about a romance, and it’s definitely a comedy, but Woody Allen’s masterpiece works so far outside the genre that it feels like something entirely different. Annie Hall tracks a very realistic relationship–mostly in chronological order. We watch as up-and-coming standup comic Alvy Singer (Allen) and [...]
Filed under: Blu-ray Review, Comedy | Tagged: Annie Hall, Woody Allen | 1 Comment »
A super-violent cop cleans up the streets of Rio, but at what cost? B Political thriller Written by Bráulio Mantovani and José Padilha Directed by José Padilha Captain Roberto Nascimento (Wagner Moura) strongly believes in killing "scumbags." And as an officer in Rio’s militaristic Special Police Operations Battalion (BOPE), he gets plenty of chances. This [...]
Filed under: Reviews | Leave a Comment »
