Seems kind of crazy. I haven’t been able to go to the movies anywhere near as often as I’d like, lately. Yet I’ve managed to see the same film three times in the last four months. And that film is almost four hours long.
But it was worth it. Although I now own it on Blu-ray, Lawrence of Arabia really does deserve a darkened theater, a huge screen, and an audience of more than your friends and family. And this time, I had a chance to see it in a theater that’s really optimized for a big picture, digitally projected.
The theater in question was the Century San Francisco Centre 9 and XD, and they screened Lawrence as part of their regular Wednesday Classic series.
But this was a special presentation. They screened Lawrence in their XD theater. XD promises a very high-quality digital presentation on a very large screen. They use Barco 4K projectors, a very bright image, and top sound. And sure enough, this was the best-looking Lawrence of Arabia I ever experienced.
For my other recent Lawrence experiences, see Great Projection Saturday, Part 2: 70mm & Lawrence of Arabia and The Digital Lawrence of Arabia Experience. Here’s what I say about the movie in my newsletter when it plays locally:
A+ One of the greatest films ever made. Stunning to look at and terrific as pure spectacle,Lawrence is also an intelligent study of
a fascinatingly complex and enigmatic war hero. T. E. Lawrence—at least in this film—both loved and hated violence, wanted desperately to become something he could never be, and told himself that he was liberating Arabia while knowing deep down that he was turning it over to the British. This masterpiece requires a very large screen and either 70mm film or 4K DCP digital projection for its full effect.
The XD theater looked like a typical 21st century multiplex auditorium, but larger. The huge, moderately-curved screen recalled the big roadshow palaces of the 1960s–in other words, the type of theater in which Lawrence of Arabia was meant to be shown. The front row is set back a bit, making it just about perfect for me for this kind of movie.
I should mention that CineMark charges a premium price, $14.50, for XD presentations. But so did those big roadshow palaces.
When the preshow started, I turned around and looked at the light coming from the projector. And my heart sank. Two light sources, one on top of the other, told me that the 3D housing was still on. The picture was bright, so I’m confident that the polarizing filters had been properly removed. I know that with a Sony 4K projector, running a 4K, 2D image through the 3D attachment results in a 2K image (click here for details). With Barco, I honestly don’t know. I called Barco and the theater, and got conflicting information. So I’m not sure if I’ve seen Lawrence of Arabia in 4K.
Update: It appears that the 3D attachment was left on, but it used the RealD-XL 3D system, which doesn’t reduce resolution the way the Sony does. Some image quality was probably lost, but it wasn’t significant. I definitely saw the film in 4K.
And it looked great–crisp, bright, and detailed. The occasional digital artifacts that marred a few minutes of the Castro’s December screening only showed up in only one shot. The large, curved screen made this very immersive film even more immersive. The sound was just about perfect.
A fair number of people showed up, although it wasn’t near a full house. The audience laughed and gasped in all the right places. Some, quite obviously, were seeing Lawrence of Arabia for the first time. Always a good thing.
Of course, you can’t expect a modern multiplex to offer the sort of showmanship you would get at the Castro. There was no curtain. The masking wasn’t versatile enough for Lawrence’s 2:20×1 aspect ratio (a screen shape that died with 70mm projection), resulting in blank screen above and below the image. The houselights went dark at the beginning of the overture rather than slowly fading while the music played.
In my recent piece on the UA Emery Bay multiplex, I stated "One clear difference between an art house and a multiplex: Good coffee and tea vs. none at all." I have to take that back. The Century’s concession stand sold Starbuck’s coffee and Tazo Tea.
I realize that over the past two years, I’ve written three posts about Lawrence of Arabia that concentrated on presentation and said little about the movie. I’m going to have to fix that.
Bayflicks 