What are you watching?

[Beber]

The last couple of weeks, since theaters have reopened in France :

- The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, on Blu-ray (!) on the giant screen (about 24 meters wide) of Paris' Le Grand Rex.
- Dunkirk, on DCP in Dolby Cinema, in Paris' Pathé Beaugrenelle.
- Se7en, on Blu-ray (!) at Le Grand Rex on their giant screen.
- Memento, on DCP, at Le Grand Rex on their giant screen.
- The Prestige, on DCP, at Le Grand Rex on their giant screen.
- Titanic, on DCP, at Le Grand Rex on their giant screen.
- Batman Begins, on DCP in Dolby Cinema, in Paris' Pathé Beaugrenelle just today.
It looked and sounded awesome. I can't believe how they fucked up the UHD and yet made a non DNR-plagued Dolby DCP with gorgeous desaturated Se7en-like color palette. It felt just like watching a print. I noticed a couple of very dark scenes with crushed blacks, though. Colors are way more saturated on the UHD, at least after conversion to BT.709, and on the iTunes remaster, too. I can't speak about the actual UHD HDR look. I even spotted a few cracks in the audio, accentuating the feeling of watching a film on film.

Tomorrow:
- The Dark Knight, on DCP in Dolby Cinema, in Paris' Pathé Beaugrenelle.
- The Dark Knight Rises, on DCP in Dolby Cinema, in Paris' Pathé Beaugrenelle.

[Beber]

- Batman Begins, on DCP in Dolby Cinema, in Paris' Pathé Beaugrenelle just today.
It looked and sounded awesome. I can't believe how they fucked up the UHD and yet made a non DNR-plagued Dolby DCP with gorgeous desaturated Se7en-like color palette. It felt just like watching a print. I noticed a couple of very dark scenes with crushed blacks, though. Colors are way more saturated on the UHD, at least after conversion to BT.709, and on the iTunes remaster, too. I can't speak about the actual UHD HDR look. I even spotted a few cracks in the audio, accentuating the feeling of watching a film on film.

Tomorrow:
- The Dark Knight, on DCP in Dolby Cinema, in Paris' Pathé Beaugrenelle.
- The Dark Knight Rises, on DCP in Dolby Cinema, in Paris' Pathé Beaugrenelle.

All three look quite different on new Dolby DCP than the video remasters : darker, more film-like, skin tones are more orange and browner, more yellows in bright scenes and more green at night depending on the scenes. I'd say Rises is the one that looks more alike on Dolby DCP to its 2017 video remaster counterpart.

[gladpatrick]

Wow! I wish we had cinemas like that in Stockholm. In Sweden China ownes 98%(monopoly) of all cinemeas. There are a few smaller ones but almost nothing. I will add a visit to the Paris' Pathé Beaugrenelle for my next visit to Paris.

May I ask what this is regarding La Haine, have they restored it?
https://www.cinemaspathegaumont.com/cine...augrenelle

[Beber]

May I ask what this is regarding La Haine, have they restored it?
https://www.cinemaspathegaumont.com/cine...augrenelle

That's what they say, yes. And I've read Studio Canal is to release a UHD, like they did recently with Elephant Man, which also played at Beaugrenelle but in their Onyx theater.

And I just made reservation for The Fifth Element in that Dolby Cinema for Sunday night. Awesome! I have not seen it in theater since that one time in its release summer of 1997.

[gladpatrick]

You guys are so lucky. I wish cinema was like that i Sweden.

My french friends says no one eats candy or popcorn in France because the disturbs other guests, is it true?

[pipefan413]

You guys are so lucky. I wish cinema was like that i Sweden.

My french friends says no one eats candy or popcorn in France because the disturbs other guests, is it true?

This was certainly the case when I visited the cinema in Paris, anyway!

-

As for what I've been watching, one of the main things is that I've been working my way through the entirety of THE TWILIGHT ZONE from the beginning. When the Rod Serling teaser speech at the end of series 3, episode 12 said that the next episode was written by Richard Matheson (I AM LEGEND etc.) and would star Buster Keaton, I nearly fell off my chair. Sure enough, one of the bona fide masters of silent cinema does appear in series 3, episode 13: ONCE UPON A TIME (1961).

Not only does it feature Keaton, the episode takes that ball and runs with it: the episode begins as a silent film, complete with scratchy celluloid, descriptive intertitles, and a jangly piano soundtrack. I won't spoil it for anybody who hasn't already seen it, because if you're a Keaton fan and you haven't watched this, it's essential that you remedy that imo. What I will say is that it very specifically references various Keaton gags, including the sequence from THE GARAGE (1920) in which Keaton's character gets himself into a scenario involving him running from the police in his underwear. He even gets a large, stocky co-star to act as a Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle analogue (Stanley Adams of DEATH OF A SALESMAN / BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S, who later appeared as Cyrano Jones in STAR TREK).

There are a lot of nice touches in this, not least the fact that when Keaton is in "silent film" mode,

he doesn't say a word, instead relying on body language, facial expressions and gestures to convey everything he needs to... even when he's transported to a decidedly non-silent 1961 present day where we do actually get to hear his voice. He does talk, but when the flow of the episode switches from the "talkie" present day dialogue scenes to the implied hyper-reality of mimicing sequences previously seen in his silent films decades earlier, he stops speaking and switches entirely to physical mode.

The way the episode is shot makes a good attempt to lean into this as well; it subscribes to a very Keatonesque conceptualisation of reality, including the idea that "if it's not in frame, it doesn't exist". There's at least one moment where characters disappear off the edge of the shot and then something daft happens that doesn't make any sense if you think of it as happening in the real world, but it makes complete sense in the context of Keaton film logic. It's really, really nice.

Depending on precisely when this episode was shot, Keaton was likely about 66 years old at the time (it aired in December and his birthday wasn't too long before that) but he could evidently still take a pratfall like a man made of rubber. It melted my stony heart to watch him in his element here. It isn't necessarily the best Twilight Zone episode of all time, nor perhaps even of this season (which is quite strong for the most part), but it's my favourite so far. Bless you, Rod Serling.

[spoRv]

2001: A Space Travesty (2000)

I was sure to have watched all Leslie Nielsen's comic movies, so when I stumbled upon this title I realized it was not the case, hence I decided to give it a try, even after I read the review written by Evit. Well, he was right: this is, I guess, his worst movie... yes, I chuckled once in the first twenty minutes, but I can't resist more, so I quit watching. It does not happen often, but was impossible to continue...

2/10 (regarding first 20 minutes, pretty sure remaining can't be better)

---

Project Power (2020)

You all know how much I love superheroes and mutants, so it was impossible to skip this. A sci-fi Netflix production with Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon-Levitt could not be that wrong, and it was not; at the contrary, a well acted flick with quite some surprises, despite the fact story was far from original - near the end it recalled me a PS3 game that I can't remember the name now. Still, interesting to watch, great SFX (albeit quite scarce for a sci-fi film), and the little girl rap was good - at least dubbed in Italian.

7/10

---

Lake Placid (1999)

Watched maybe twice, probably more than 15 years ago, it was time to revisit it. And if you take it not as a real horror movie, but more something like a mix between monster and comedy, it is still a fun film - even if CGI did not stand other films, for example Jurassic Park from 1993 had better SFX. So, do not expect a masterpiece, but an honest attempt to entertain any monster (or biiig animal) lover.

6/10

---

Lake Placid 2 (2007)

What? Yep, I know even before watching the trailer it would be a bad movie, but still, after watching the first one, I wanted to give it a go. Worst mistake ever! After, what? two minutes, I just decided to FFW it until the croc showed up. And it was even worst. I tried to find a single thing that could be considered not good, but at least mediocre. And can't find it. Bad acting, horrible CGI, stupid story... should I continue? I thought that previous "Space Travesty" was bad, but this beat it! PLEASE, DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME even watching the trailer!!!

1/10 (because CGI made me laugh)

[Beber]

I just watched Dominic Cooke's The Courier (2020) today (or Ironbark, apparently; maybe the title was changed or it depends on the market it's being released in):
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8368512/
It's supposed to be released next fall, but since I'm working on it for the French release (entitled Un espion ordinaire, litterally "An Ordinary Spy"), I got an advanced workprint.
It's a pretty good small scale Cold War spy story "based on real events" as they say. Not at all an actionner à la James Bond or The Man from UNCLE, but rather a kind of Bridge of Spies. Good acting from Benedict Cumberbatch and the supporting cast, especially Merab Ninidze who plays the Russian spy, code name "Ironbark".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qeo8qs9x...=emb_title

[spoRv]

The Ash Lad - In the Hall of the Mountain King (Askeladden - I Dovregubbens Hall) (2017)

A friend of mine had this BD on its table, and I was curious to know more about it; sadly, it was only in its original language, Norwegian, but as it's available also in my language, I decided to watch it in Italian. Very nice tale, with good acting, decent SFX and CGI, good music and wonderful scenery. Sure, story is the usual quasi-medieval quest, so nothing new, but if you like Lord of the Rings and similar, you should give it a go - even if this is not a big Holliwood production, it works very well!

6/10

---

The Ash Lad - In Search of the Golden Castle (Askeladden - I Soria Moria slott) (2019)

Sequel of the previous one, sadly I think it does not exist (yet?) in Italian or English, hence I was forced to watch it in Norwegian with English subtitles. This time production was visibly bigger, and CGI had the biggest improvement (even if far from perfection, it was better than the previous chapter), with more locations and adventures; still good acting and music, and even more astonishing locations. A must see for the ones that liked the former film.

7/10

[PDB]

Need to get back into using this thread.

Finally, watched Fright Night 2. Been on the watch list forever but I avoided it as I thought it would be a poor, poor cousin to the original. Although, I would not call it better than the original by any stretch, I found it to be a very entertaining and fun film. It did justice to the original by expanding the story but maintaining the fun.

It also took me forever to figure out where I had seen the main villain before...Sam Neil's partner in the Mouth of Madness.

3/5