Universal and Hasbro’s $200 million-plus Battleship has emerged overseas, prompting one Germany-based critic to gas up his flamethrower and go to town : “This thing is an Asylum movie with hundreds of millions of dollars of gloss on it. And much like that hallowed studio, Battleship also feels free to snake ideas from other flicks. In fact, all of its ideas come from somewhere else. Its alien design steals from Halo and Power Rangers as well as a highly recognizable character from Green Lantern . The plot tricks come straight from ID4 (including a “Welcome to Earth”-style line for Rihanna (who, no kidding, is one of the few actually trying hard to deliver a real performance)). By the time they copy Transformers , Terminator and Predator , it’s sad. When they copy Titanic and Space Cowboys , it’s downright depressing.” Can’t wait! [ Film School Rejects ]
” By 2013 , film will slip to niche status, shown in only a third of theaters. By 2015, used in a paltry 17 percent of global cinemas, venerable old 35 mm film will be mostly gone.” The epic life and death struggle between film and digital rolls on, and in LA Weekly’s cover story must-read Gendy Alimurung details the sobering — and imminent — sea change in film production and exhibition with insights from figures at every stop on the cinematic food chain: Filmmakers, arthouse/rep theaters, film curators, projectionists, preservationists, and even the cold, lonely (and increasingly studio-blocked) vaults that house the dwindling ranks of cinema’s remaining 35mm prints. “Digital is the future!” you might say. “It’s cheaper and looks just as good as film!” Great taste, less filling, etc. Many a sentimental plea has been made on behalf of 35mm: The way things are going, repertory houses will find their programming options limited to the smattering of popular titles studio vaults make available. There’s that distinguishable living quality to film, with its pops and hisses and beloved imperfections, that digital prints just can’t replicate. Or, as Edgar Wright suggests, shooting on costlier film changes the relationship a director has to the process itself: “Because when you hear the camera whirring, you know that money is going through it. There’s a respectfulness that comes when you’re burning up film.” Most of that’s already been argued, but Alimurung takes pains to appeal to the pragmatic side of digital cheerleaders by pointing out what many proponents of digital film and its many admitted benefits (lower cost, ease of production, cheaper distribution methods) seldom have an answer for: the long-term hazards of going exclusively digital. “The main problem is format obsolescence. File formats can go obsolete in a matter of months. On this subject, [UCLA Film & Television Archive director Jan-Christopher Horak’s] every sentence requires an exclamation mark. “In the last 10 years of digitality, we’ve gone through 20 formats!” he says. “Every 18 months we’re getting a new format!” So every two years, data must be transferred, or “migrated,” to a new device. If that doesn’t happen, the data may never being accessible again. Technology can advance too far ahead.” But the demands and costs of constant technological upgrades aren’t the only issue with the industry moving exclusively to digital. “In the digital realm, the archivist’s mantra, “Store and ignore,” fails. If you don’t “refresh,” or occasionally turn on a hard drive, it stops working. You can’t just stick it on a shelf and forget about it. As restorationist Ross Lipman says, ‘You’re shifting from a model focused on a physical object to data. And where the data lives will be constantly changing.'” What’s saddest is that there isn’t an easy solution to be offered other than appealing to the studios (and, it’s worth noting, the vast majority of allied theater chains represented by the National Association of Theater Owners) to leave room for niche 35mm film culture to live on while their charge into the digital future continues. Major changes are in store for everyone — not just the studios, or the theater owners, or the increasingly obsolete ranks of actual trained projectionists, or the ticket-buyers. So yes, a storm’s coming. What can be done about it? Discuss. [ LA Weekly ] Photo: Julia Marchese of the New Beverly Cinema, Jennie Warren for LA Weekly
Director Mark Romanek ‘s dystopian sci-fi romance Never Let Me Go never seemed to quite receive its due when it was released in 2010 and subsequently written off as a commercial disappointment. But many found the restrained Kazuo Ishiguro novel adaptation gorgeous and hauntingly heartbreaking, among them New Beverly Cinema programmer Julia Marchese, who recently wrote about her quest to bring Romanek and his film to screen in Los Angeles for a two-night engagement that starts Wednesday, January 11. For Marchese and fans of the film, the booking is more of a coup than it may seem at first glance; deemed an underperformer weeks into its original domestic limited run, Never Let Me Go wound up floundering in subsequent weeks despite its built-in literary audience and roster or rising stars (Andrew Garfield, Carey Mulligan, and Keira Knightley), to the dismay of distributor Fox Searchlight. (The film exited theaters with a $2.4M domestic total, though it tallied another $7M worldwide.) Still, it’s a bit of a shock to hear of the difficulties Marchese encountered when she tried to book a print of the film for the New Beverly (which, recall, remains dedicated to screening 35mm ) only a little over a year after its initial release. From Marchese’s blog : I have been championing the film since its release, begging friends and neighbors to see it. I wanted to play it at the New Beverly as soon as possible, but Fox Searchlight told me that out of all of the hundreds of prints made, only two remained. One was irreparably damaged, and the other on long-term loan to a cruise ship. Whether they were telling the truth or not, I can’t say, but I will say that I am completely overjoyed that we will finally be showing it at the New Bev on January 11th and 12th with (schedule permitting) director Mark Romanek in attendance both nights. Fox at large is one of the studios pioneering the obsolescence of film prints in favor of digital, but the reality is still startling. Two remaining prints, and one damaged beyond repair, for a film shot deliberately on film that possesses such a romantic visual world, even in its careful austerity. Luckily, it seems that only intact print has finally departed its cruise ship confines and will screen Wednesday and Thursday (Jan. 11-12) with Romanek in person. Romanek, meanwhile, has chosen another ascetic but moving sci-fi romance to play in a double feature with his film: François Truffaut’s 1966 film Fahrenheit 451 . A great pairing if you ask me, and with Romanek in person there should be ample opportunity to ask how much he sees in the juxtaposition of not only the films’ surface commonalities but in the idea that to some devotees, the phasing out of celluloid might be only a few shades removed from the burning of books. Visit the New Beverly website for more information; for Julia Marchese’s full blog entry, head here . Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter . [ Julia Marchese’s Blog , New Beverly Cinema ]
