This year’s San Francisco International Film Festival ended nearly a week ago.
Either the festival programmers did an excellent job selecting titles or I had exceptional luck picking ones to see. Of the 16 new films I caught this year (two on preview DVDs and 14 at the festival itself), six earned a full A, and only three received less than a B-. The only real absolute stinker was The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu, which got a D-.
I’m delighted that three of my A films–Terri, Life, Above All, and The Mill and the Cross–are likely to receive theatrical releases in this country. My only A- selection, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, is already in theaters.
Another interesting trend: Both Kanbar Award Winner Frank Pierson and State of the Cinema speaker Christine Vachon spoke of how TV has replaced theatrical film as the exciting, edgy medium. I’ve been hearing that a lot lately, and I have to (but hate to) admit that I can see their point.
Not that it doesn’t find a lot of resistance amongst cinephiles. One couple, waiting with me in line to see Caves, proudly asserted that they didn’t own a television.
Speaking of electronic cinema, all of the Kabuki screens have terrific digital projection now. I found myself disappointed every time a movie started on film. (Well, not always. The Light Thief was projected off standard-def DigiBeta, and would have looked much better on film.)
Actually, I thought the digital projection of Dog Day Afternoon (at the Kanbar Award presentation) looked maybe a little bit worse than a good 35mm print. While it lacked film’s dirt, scratches, and vibrations, it suffered from occasional artifacting. Festival Technical Director Jeremy Stevermer has since told me it was projected off of a Blu-ray disc rather than a hard drive. That would result in compression and color depth issues that you generally wouldn’t see in theatrical digital projection.
But it’s nice to know that Blu-ray is capable of looking reasonably good on a giant screen, even from the second row.
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