![]() ![]() The first wave of 3DĪny film professor worth her salt will tell you that sound is just as important as picture. A few Cinerama screens are still out there, but for large format event presentations, Imax is King. By the 1960s some Super Panavision 70mm films, like 2001: A Space Odyssey, were shown on the curved screens care of special lenses, but by then the novelty had worn off. Early Cinerama films were basically showcases for the technology (This is Cinerama featured roller coasters, bull fights and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir) but two traditional movies were produced in the three-strip process, the most famous being How The West Was Won. This was an incredibly expensive process, from production on the way down through editing and presentation. Two would criss-cross, one would be down the center and, if everything lined up correctly, no one in the audience would notice the seams. Thus begat Cinerama, an initially successful experiment in which three projectors beamed images onto a giant screen with a 146 degree arc. When things couldn’t get any wider, they curved. In an effort to combat the creeping competition of television, the movies went wider. Here’s a reminder of other technological advances that croaked before it. ![]() But once it’s covered with earth and left to rot, it should know it has some good company. Is 4K 3D 120FPS dead? Considering we still haven’t found a uniform way to describe this thing, I say yes. Only two theaters – AMC Lincoln Square in New York City and the Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles – are exhibiting the film the way Lee envisioned it. (So it ain’t just me.) As such, Sony, the studio releasing the film, offered only traditionally projected press screenings after the festival. I strongly doubt we’ll be seeing it again in a Hollywood movie any time soon.īilly Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk has over twice the frame rate than Jackson’s Hobbit did, at 120 frames-per-second (not that I was counting), and it was altogether panned by critics following its debut at the New York Film Festival. This reading maybe makes HFR an interesting discussion point in the context of this specific film, but also a one-of-a-kind gimmick. After all, Lynn is a returning war hero with PTSD, mostly quiet and observant, and as his mind adjusts it’s as if he’s on another planet. Out of respect to Ang Lee, who has made some terrific movies in the past, I’ll rationalize that maybe this is all intentional, and that Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is some brilliant, Brechtian exercise in distancing its audience toward some higher goal. Forget that, give me back my glasses, they worked fine. “You’ll get used to it,” the doctor said. It’s like the first time I tried hard contact lenses. I found it impossible to get oriented, even two hours in. Close-ups of Steve Martin’s enormous sphere of a head all up in your business is fascinating, but good luck concentrating on what he’s saying when you can count his lower eyelashes. It is like watching a play, only with editing and a mobile POV. It’s like sitting in a theater and the screen is an window onto what your mind perceives as just more of life. ![]() The 120 frames-per-second rate, the crystal clear 4K projection and the extremely fluid 3D (no pop-up book-style planes here) kneecaps the suspension of disbelief. I recognize that I’ve been conditioned by seeing a lifetime of movies a certain way, but this isn’t an enhancement, it’s an obliteration. So having seen it, I can tell you, no, 3D high frame rate doesn’t really “work” in this genre either. But perhaps a tense drama with lots of action would work with this new technology? (Captain Phillips, a film released at the same time as the second Hobbit, was one I suggested could maybe pull it off.)īilly Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is no Captain Phillips, but its intersection of international affairs and individual psychology is at least in the same ballpark. You could see where the practical set ended and the keyed-in computer generated backgrounds began. With such resolution you could see the makeup lines on the Dwarven faces. “It just doesn’t feel like a movie!” I barked, but, for fear of seeming like a luddite, I conceded that maybe high fantasy wasn’t the appropriate genre for this first encounter. When I saw Peter Jackson’s Hobbit films, the first to be presented in 3D and in high frame rate (at 48fps), I bristled at the smooth, plasticized look. ![]()
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