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Quentin Tarantino's new all-film cinema


Keith Walters

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Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly Promises Double Features, Vintage Trailers, Tarantino Films & NO Digital. Ever.

http://deadline.com/2014/09/quentin-tarantino-new-beverly-cinema-takes-over-theater-830233/

 

I don't know about this. I don't have any particular beef with digital Projection, but assuming it is competently shot and post-produced, the images are always going to look better after a photochemical capture has done all the heavy lifting.

 

The bulk of the performance claims made for current generation digital cameras are arrant nonsense, spouted by people who really have no idea how either colour film or silicon sensors actually work.

 

If I was setting it up (assuming I had the money) I would get the best 4k laser projector I could get my hands on, and run that side-by-side with a film projector.

 

I guess if you have a collection of old prints that were entirely produced by photochemical processes, there would be some value in film projection, but anything made in the least 10 years is likely to have gone through a 2K DI process, so it's not going to have anywhere near the resolution of an optical print.

 

(Remember, with prints made from a 2K DI master you're basically seeing a fourth generation copy of an image with about the same resolution that normally comes out of a four-generation optical duplication chain!)

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Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly Promises Double Features, Vintage Trailers, Tarantino Films & NO Digital. Ever.

http://deadline.com/2014/09/quentin-tarantino-new-beverly-cinema-takes-over-theater-830233/

 

I don't know about this. I don't have any particular beef with digital Projection, but assuming it is competently shot and post-produced, the images are always going to look better after a photochemical capture has done all the heavy lifting.

 

The bulk of the performance claims made for current generation digital cameras are arrant nonsense, spouted by people who really have no idea how either colour film or silicon sensors actually work.

 

If I was setting it up (assuming I had the money) I would get the best 4k laser projector I could get my hands on, and run that side-by-side with a film projector.

 

I guess if you have a collection of old prints that were entirely produced by photochemical processes, there would be some value in film projection, but anything made in the least 10 years is likely to have gone through a 2K DI process, so it's not going to have anywhere near the resolution of an optical print.

 

(Remember, with prints made from a 2K DI master you're basically seeing a fourth generation copy of an image with about the same resolution that normally comes out of a four-generation optical duplication chain!)

 

 

Tarantino has fervently stated that he feels film projection is where the true magic of the cinema lies. All of those still images projected in rapid succession to produce motion.

 

And he's right.

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Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly Promises Double Features, Vintage Trailers, Tarantino Films & NO Digital. Ever.

http://deadline.com/2014/09/quentin-tarantino-new-beverly-cinema-takes-over-theater-830233/

 

I don't know about this. I don't have any particular beef with digital Projection, but assuming it is competently shot and post-produced, the images are always going to look better after a photochemical capture has done all the heavy lifting.

 

I posted about this in another thread.

 

But from the articles, Tarantino had bought the building of the theater some time ago, and had been 'helping' the theater operator for some before that to avoid having the theater close down. For some time he was 'just the landlord'. However, apparenlty the watershed moment occurred last June when as Tarantino was decrying 'digital projection' at Cannes of his "Pulp Fiction"(1994) 20th anniversary showing, when he could have been 'asked' to bring his own print... the theater operator had just purchased and installed a digital projection system in the New Beverly...

 

My take away lesson is, if you have your own private vault, a big enough name in the industry to get prints from studio libraries (perhaps at some rental fee...), and one owns the building a theater is housed in, well one can continue to show Film film prints.

Edited by John E Clark
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I think that film theaters could become a thing of the future.

There is a market out there for people who want to watch film prints.

Personally I'm not interested in going to cinemas to see a digital projection, I'd rather watch that at home.

 

Freya

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I think that film theaters could become a thing of the future.

There is a market out there for people who want to watch film prints.

Personally I'm not interested in going to cinemas to see a digital projection, I'd rather watch that at home.

 

Freya

Yeah, but while it's true that you can now recreate a substantial part of the cinematic experience with affordable equipment in your home, the simple fact is that vast majority of the population can't be arsed doing so.

For them their appetite for superior sound and big pictures is more cost-effectively satisfied by just going to the movies occasionally, rather than cluttering up their living rooms with oversized A-V equipment. I personally have a 55" TV which I can swing out from the wall, attached to a quality Surround sound system.

However the attached Blu-ray player rarely gets used for playing anything but DVDs, and I'm the only one who ever turns the Surround sound system on :rolleyes:

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I do feel digital projection and blu-ray offers a very decent viewing experience on many occasions (I'm a film advocate and prefer to watch something that at least originated on film) but there are certain films I had seen in the theater years ago, and which I purchase each time there is a new home video release hoping to re-create that experience, that the experience is never the same. This has to do with the distinct tones, colors and atmosphere coming off the print with light shining through it. The most extreme example of this for me is Stanley Kubrick's 'Eyes Wide Shut." That was magical in the theater. Especially, in the scene lit only by Christmas lights (the gala / party in the beginning of the film). In the theater, it had this wonderful impressionistic golden glow. I've yet to feel that again with a viewing in any sort of subsequent digital format. A lesser, though I still think brilliant work, was that film "The Libertine". Again, the tones, color pallet and atmosphere was incredible. The only home video release state side of this latter film is on DVD, but it pales in comparison.

 

-T

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