The Most Recent Movie You've Seen on Streaming, Broadcast TV, or Movie Theater?

Yesterday afternoon:
Watched Wild Tales (2014) on BluRay. Exquisitely arsenic darkened comic anthology film from Argentina. Bad stuff happens to really bad people. Will make you guiltily flinch and laugh. So deserved its Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language film.

Lord of The Rings

The Brand New Testament (2015): An absurdist religious satire set in Brussels, featuring a rebellious 10 year daughter of God and whacky Amelieesque narrative ensues. Rated 8/10.

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016)

Another great Tom Cruise action film that was overlooked by the mass movie going populace. A thrilling 9/10.

I agree. Cruise and Reacher are a great combo.

Kong of Skull Issland--we streamed it and were watching it in bed this QM. Not too bd really. I think there will be a sequel cause time will move on and Kong Is really a good guy .QND---I think the "hollow Earth" finding will become another character. Maybe itll be "Kong at the Center of the Earth"

There definitely will be a sequel. They are in the same universe as the most recent Godzilla (2014).

The next in the franchise universe will be Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019).

I believe that the next King Kong movie will be Godzilla vs. Kong (2020).

Watched on Sunday:
Dunkirk (2017) in it's 70mm format. Something (at least to me) is lost in translation regarding that format. I must be missing something. It looks fine. It's not visually mindblowing ... as some critics make it out to be.

That said, Christopher Nolan's film was amazing and affecting. Great score and editing make this one a must watch at the movie theater.

Later that evening:
The Little Unicorn and it's insanely funny RiffTrax commentary.

Rewatched most of Hillbillies in a Haunted House with it's respective RiffTrax commentary before going to bed.

The point of 70mm is a much higher resolution than otherwise. A lower resolution projection would have blurred out some of the details that you were able to see clearly with 70mm film.

If it were possible to show 70MM side-by-side with a lower resolution presentation, I believe you would notice a significant difference.

I didn't get a ticket at the Lincoln Square IMAX because the only seats remaining at the time I purchased were the first two rows (a neckbreaking experience). Would that have made a significant difference as well? I ended up going to the Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn, where I still had to block my ears from certain pretty loud combat scenes.

So you saw it in Super Panavision 70 then?

The main difference between Super Panavision 70 and IMAX would be the top and bottom of the screen were cropped off to give the movie normal widescreen dimensions. The IMAX 70 showing would be on a much taller screen.

Super Panavision 70 should still have been extremely high resolution though. A digital projector would have to have 8K resolution to match Super Panavision 70.


I can see it in Super Panavision 70 if I go all the way to the Detroit suburbs, but I refuse to go that far unless it is true IMAX 70. I'll have to go as far as Indianapolis to see it in IMAX 70.

There is actually a theater with a 70mm IMAX projector in Grand Rapids, which is somewhat near me (a lot closer than Detroit anyway). But IMAX is releasing so few 70 prints these days that the theater couldn't afford to keep an IMAX 70 projectionist employed. With all the effort to temporarily install IMAX 70 projectors in theaters across the nation just for this movie, there were hopes that IMAX would be willing to provide a temporary projectionist to the theater, but IMAX apparently doesn't think the Michigan market is worth that minor trouble. Chicago got stiffed too, although they are closer to Indianapolis than Michigan is.

I actually emailed IMAX telling them (politely) what I thought about that. I got a short email back thanking me for sharing my concerns. It wasn't a form letter, but it still seems clear that they don't intend to revise their decision or even discuss it with me.

"Super Panavision 70[?]" Assuming that's the case. Tweeted the theater for verification as nothing is stated (that I could find on their webpage).

Super Panavision 70 is the "normal" (non IMAX) 70mm film.

If it was 70mm and not IMAX it was Super Panavision 70.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Panavision_70

UPDATE:

They didn't understand your question. They were telling you what kind of cameras Christopher Nolan used to record the scenes on film.

IMAX 70 can't be used to record speech from actors because the cameras are extremely noisy and drown out their voices. This forces the use of other cameras for any scenes with dialog.

That is why the IMAX showings of Dark Knight/Dark Knight Rises/Interstellar/Dunkirk expand to the full IMAX height for non-speaking scenes, but collapse down to normal movie dimensions whenever someone is speaking.

In the case of Dunkirk, Nolan used Super Panavision 70 cameras to record the scenes where he couldn't use an IMAX 70 camera. He also tried to craft the movie with as little dialog as possible, even researching and resurrecting old silent film techniques for conveying a story without speech.


The difference between having the movie projected in Super Panavision 70 verses IMAX 70 is that there would be no expansion of the image to the height of a tall IMAX screen whenever there was a non-speaking scene. Having it projected in Super Panavision 70 would result in the movie staying in typical widescreen movie dimensions throughout the entire movie.

Going to step up on a soapbox and rant at Hollywood for a bit......

What gets me is the way the rest of Hollywood tries to mimic Christopher Nolan's use of IMAX 70 film but most of them completely fail to understand the point of using such a medium (the point is the extremely high resolution). They waste tons of money recording scenes on super high resolution IMAX 70 film. Because the cameras are noisy they have record their dialog on a format that collapses the image back down to normal movie dimensions. And then after going to all that expense/trouble the only thing they do with all that high resolution raw footage is create a 4K digital master that is a small fraction of 70mm resolution and which could easily have been created with digital cameras.

Even worse, since digital cameras don't drown out people talking, had the morons not wastefully used IMAX film and instead used one of those digital cameras, they could have produced their entire movie at IMAX screen height instead of shrinking the picture whenever they encountered dialog.

4K digital resolution is 4096 × 2160. If you stretch those pixels to fit the full IMAX screen height, the image would fit an area equal to 4096 × 2864 non-stretched pixels. The Arri Alexa 65 digital camera has a resolution of 6560 x 3100 pixels, more than enough resolution to capture such an image.



Note on these IMDB technical pages "Negative Format - 65 mm (horizontal)" and then under "Cinematographic Process" there is no mention of any low-resolution digital intermediate:

The Dark Knight (2008)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/technical

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1345836/technical

Interstellar (2014)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816692/technical

Dunkirk (2017)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5013056/technical

That is how you properly use 70mm IMAX to make a movie.



Now note on these IMDB technical pages "Negative Format - 65 mm (horizontal)" and "Cinematographic Process - Digital Intermediate (4K) (master format)":

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2488496/technical

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2975590/technical

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2527336/technical

That's how you waste a ton of money on high resolution film stock producing a (comparatively) low resolution movie.

I'm not saying a 4K movie is bad. But if you make a 4K movie, for the love of God don't waste precious 70mm film on it. Use a digital camera instead.

And if you do waste IMAX film making a 4K movie, don't go blabbering about 70mm trying to fool people into thinking that your 4K film is somehow comparable to a Christopher Nolan production.



Not everyone in Hollywood is incompetent though. Here are two movies that are made with a 4K digital master, that used digital cameras and didn't waste any 70mm IMAX film to record at a resolution that they were never going to use, and as a consequence were able to record voice dialog without collapsing the tall IMAX image down to normal movie dimensions:

Sully (2016)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3263904/technical

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4154756/technical

If you're going to make an IMAX movie with a 4K digital master, that's the proper way to do it.

Although I note that they made their movie so it only expands up to the partial height of a LIEmax theater rather than the full height of true IMAX. I guess they wanted their movies fully compatible with all IMAX screens. It should be possible for an enterprising filmmaker to use an Arri Alexa 65 to make a 4K movie that expands up to full IMAX height though, if he or she chooses to.



OK, I'm finished with my ranting.

Oh, one other thing. If anyone is confused over 65mm vs 70mm, they are the same thing. It is 65mm in the camera and 70mm in the projector. The extra 5mm are for audio tracks.

Here's a Dunkirk poster showing the different versions:

Other than that Mrs Lincoln, how was the movie?

That monkey is never completely dead. Hes always ALMOST dead.

Anyone who sees Dunkirk at one of these theaters will be amazed:
https://able2know.org/topic/389393-6#post-6467440

Otherwise it isn't worth seeing.