Dr. Strangelove

[Tyler Purcell]

I guess... I just find the cinema experience to be substandard these days.

[JD Hartman]

I guess... I just find the cinema experience to be substandard these days.

 

Maybe......

With the limited re-release, part of the experience is experiencing it in a theater with a group of like minded moviegoers. Same was true for the limited run of Blazing Saddles. Something that can't be duplicated in the home theater

[David Mullen ASC]

Regardless of the projection quality, comedies play best with an appreciative audience. I once saw "Dr. Strangelove" with a mostly college audience and they were howling throughout, it was very infectious.

 

I remember seeing Buster Keaton's "The Navigator" the first time with live music and an audience and I laughed so hard at one point that I had trouble breathing, I had to look away from the screen and catch my breath.

 

One of the best screenings of "The Graduate" I ever saw was while I was in college -- when the father asks his son "then what were those four years of college for?" and he answers "Beats the hell out of me...", the audience was laughing really hard.

[Tyler Purcell]

I guess my original comment was more towards the point of nobody being at the screening, which is something I experience as well. Maybe not as much with classic movies, but for sure with regular run of the mill stuff. I also have zero interest seeing something on a big screen projected in 1080p for $18 dollars.

 

I agree it's nice to see a classic movie with a full house, one that you've maybe never seen in the theater before, but know well.

[Michael Lehnert]

I also have zero interest seeing something on a big screen projected in 1080p for $18 dollars.

 

 

That's the thing. I am always sad to see so few people show up for the screening of really rare cinematographic works. There is a self-evident difference by a magnitude of, say, watching Kubrick in your home cinema, or on a massive silver screen, as I think movies can only be fully appreciating in the setting they were shot for, a darkened space with a format-appropriate projection screen.

 

Thing is, even in cinémathèques on my side of the Atlantic, projection quality and that sense-of-ocassion is eroded. Often by the theatres themselves.

 

At the Kubrick retrospective in Zürich a few years back — where Jan Harlan was speaking so highly in his intro about the local cinémathèque's programme, and how fortunate everyone should feel here about having such an institution — they were showing all the Kubrick films from a regular Blu-ray in 1080p through digital projection. They literally went through the box set. The quality was unworthy, and the final insult was the Eject-symbol beamed onto the screen at the end of the film, as the operator probably removed the disc from the disc tray.

 

It was sobering, and I can understand that such things kill the interest in going to a theatre in most but very special venues of own architectural distinction.

 

Last time I was at the BFI watching "Le Mépris", and the stench of the people in their "arty" unwashed shirts, thick winter jackets laid over seatbacks (there is a garderobe service at no cost!), or still being worn through the showing, those sitting around me were simply more distracting than part of a social and communal experience of art. I bought the DVD of the rare international edition in a shop in Germany, and watched it on my 28" CRT reference monitor at home with friends, and enjoyed that experience much much more, as sad as this may sound.

 

[EDIT: Typos from Autocorrect, plus 28"/67cm, not 17", of course]

[joshua gallegos]

I think everyone is too obsessed with technology, but I've always found Cinemark's digital projectors to be quite outstanding, especially when Turner Classic Movies is presenting beautiful, innovative work to the unknowing masses. I truly have no issues with digital presentation, because if it were to be presented on film, you would need a skilled projectionist to make the experience less bumpy. I remember reading a review on 'Inherent Vice', and how messy some of the screenings were due to inexperienced projectionists. And I also remember reading about Tarantino's disastrous Sundance screening of 'Reservoir Dogs, he had to take over the booth to project his own movie. I think everyone is nostalgic of dinosaur technology as David Lynch phrased it, we should just embrace change and be glad we're still able to see some great films in this day and age on a big ass movie screen.

 

Next on the list, Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining'.

 

http://www.tcm.com/fathom/?ecid=subnavtcmfathom

[Kenny N Suleimanagich]

I was in the second projection of "Inherent Vice" on the day it opened in New York. The first three reels had a deep scratch running down the right side of it. I asked for my money back, and by the next day a new print was running.

 

I've also been in quite a few digital presentations in which:

 

1. Subtitles did not play

2. The video went black with sound still running

3. subtitles lost sync

 

I still absolutely prefer a theater experience, but I'm also very much in the "these things happen" camp. For all of the ink spilled over "Hateful Eight" release, the showing I saw was flawless.

[Michael Lehnert]

I think everyone is too obsessed with technology, […] I truly have no issues with digital presentation, because if it were to be presented on film, you would need a skilled projectionist to make the experience less bumpy. […]

 

 

 

I see what you mean, but my point wasn't about technology, or digital projection per se. Or David Lynch praising S-Video and D-Video back in the day while under promotional contract for Sony. Or Quentin telling another anecdote about himself and his constant hardship to save the industry from itself.

 

Digital projection is a skilled job, it's not something non-trivial (unless you have a beamer and a box set and a student job to fill).

 

The gods behold we would have skilled projectionists at hand to retain the expertise to project around 115 years of cine-film-captured cinematic art. If cinema is to ascend to the status an opera play has today in a great venue such as Disney in LA, Royal Opera House in London, or Wiener Staatsoper in Vienna, it will require more effort. Concerted effort.