Film Weekend

[Douglas Meltzer]

Graham,

I haven't seen that Bravia ad in years. It's brilliant. Thanks!

[Graham Ritchie]

Your welcome Doug.

[Graham Ritchie]

Watching "Terminator 2" on 3D, reminded me of the original 35mm trailer on this, one of my favorite bits and pieces reels .

[Graham Ritchie]

Running some 35mm trailers tonight. One thing I find watching them does make me think that I must watch the feature, here are a couple of screen shots from tonight running of the Ernemann 2 projector.




Enemy at the Gates

[Graham Ritchie]

Well spent part of the afternoon making up another trailer reel, its been a while since I have put the time into sorting through them, but enjoyed the other night with the trailers such as the ones above on a 2000ft reel. A couple more screen shots from some past films some we screened some we didn't.

Wallace and Gromit in "Curse Of The Were Rabbit" we ran that one at the cinema, brilliant film


My brother has a Austin A35 car years ago


"UP" another brilliant film we ran


"Fantasia 2000" now this is one film that Derann released full length, but you could buy the reels separate. I should have bought the last one, which included the original Sorcerer's Apprentice .


Now this is a trl of a film I have never seen as yet "Shiloh" from the 1990s.

[Graham Ritchie]

Some more from the above reel .

"Billie Elliot" this particular film did really well, I like the music from T-Rex on this trl.





And lastly after watching "Black Hawk Down" the other night, the trl for it.

[Ed Gordon]

Graham, I have Wallace and Gromit on DVD (Were-Rabbit and the Crackling Contraption collection). I have thoroughly enjoyed every Wallace and Gromit film I have seen!

There is a Wallace and Gromit YouTube channel at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXY...CrBpM32yaJpjRw

Here is a sample from Crackling Contraptions:

[Graham Ritchie]

Thanks Ed for that link, I have just subscribed to it.

[Ken Finch]

All of the them are available on dvd including the original Creature Comforts series created by Nick Park. They are all quite hilarious.Amazing what he has done using plasticine. Ken Finch.

[Graham Ritchie]

It certainly is haven't heard of any new Wallace and Gromit for a while now. I did come across this VHS tape at a sale still sealed years ago, it must have been made around the same time as DVDs were coming out. I did pick up this blu-ray a while back as well, but for me getting "A Grand Day Out" on Super8 from the Derann second hand list was the icing on the cake.




Some past Super8 screen shots . The print is a lot sharper than those two screen shots below show it

[Graham Ritchie]

A couple of more trl screen shots from that same above reel, One of them brings back memories of a film called "Australia". We were offered a print when it was first released out here. The problem was it was coming onto Christmas which is summer for us, most folk are into really the summer holiday mode, so to take it was going to be a problem as FOX wanted us to screen it four times a day, considering the long running time it was going to tie up one screen most of the day, so we turned it down.

Jump forward many months later, I got a phone call from the manager, simply saying....do I want "Australia" 2nd release and we can do anything we like with it, plus being 2nd release it was cheap.....mmmmm...ok. I was doing the weekly schedule at the time so I fitted it into a 12.30 pm and a 7.30pm time slot. My thinking was, the age of the folk that might come to see it, would most likely have lunch in the mall then go and watch it afterwards and still get away before the late afternoon traffic build up. The 7.30pm slot, was that folk would not want to come out later, as its a long film, but 7.30pm was a good time as folk would have had there evening meal by then.

So to my surprise "Australia" took of and we did very well out of it. I think the main reason it had been a flop when it came out, was folk had better thing to do in the summer months, as we were now we were getting into more "winter" weather there was a lot more interest in it.

Doing the weekly schedule was always a bit of a struggle with only three screens to make thing work for our customers, but for the most part we did ok....ah! memories .

"Australia" trailer..

plus one other on that same 2000ft reel



Saving Private Ryan....

[Graham Ritchie]

Just about finished Reel 15 of my bits and pieces, one trailer I did change with another yesterday, as it did not quite gel with the rest, was to put "RV" in its place .

"RV" was another film print we ran long ago, and with "Mr Bean Goes On Holiday", "RV" is another favorite film of mine. Robin Williams was just brilliant , anyway I did take a couple of screen shots of that 35mm "RV" film trailer after fitting it. Its a feature a would certainly recommend watching.

[Graham Ritchie]

I have been giving the Epson VP a rest the last three nights, back to using the Ernemann 2 and platter. .

Monday night it was "The Last Starfighter" one of my favorite 80s films.
Tuesday night.........."2010" stunning in 35mm .
Wednesday night.......well instead of lifting and moving 2010 to one of the top decks, I thought why not run the film again to the top decks, so I did so it was another screening of "2010".

I sold the blu-ray of 2010 a few weeks ago as I don't think it comes close to the quality of both the picture and sound of the 35mm print. In fact the Dolby Stereo film track is miles better to listen to than the blu-ray.

Well that's what I have been up to film wise the last three nights

Here is a wee look at 2010 from a previous screening

[Ed Gordon]

...I sold the blu-ray of 2010 a few weeks ago as I don't think it comes close to the quality of both the picture and sound of the 35mm print. In fact the Dolby Stereo film track is miles better to listen to than the blu-ray.

Apparently, the 2010 Bluray released in 2009 by Warner was not particularly good.

Warner Home Video has made the odd decision to release '2010' on Blu-ray in 2009. You'd think they might wait a year to have a promotional tie-in with the movie's title date. I can't imagine there were really that many fans clamoring to see it on the format as soon as possible.

Like most Warner releases, the Blu-ray automatically begins movie playback without a main menu screen, and frustratingly defaults to the lossy Dolby Digital audio track. Although the case art references its longer promotional title, '2010: The Year We Make Contact', the movie's actual on-screen title in both the opening and ending credits has always been simply '2010'.

'2010' is not the revelation on Blu-ray that '2001: A Space Odyssey' was, but that has more to do with the nature of each movie than their respective high-def transfers. Unlike its predecessor, the majority of '2010' wasn't shot on 65mm film, just regular 35mm. Further, director Peter Hyams performs double-duty as cinematographer on all of his movies. His preferred visual style is dark and grainy. He favors source lighting and high-speed film stocks. You'll find a consistently drab appearance among most of his pictures ('Timecop', 'The Relic', 'End of Days', et al.).

The 1080p/VC-1 transfer is at the mercy of its source material. Presented in its theatrical 2.40:1 aspect ratio, the image is flat and hazy. Colors appear accurate, but aren't particularly noteworthy. Contrast wavers; a lot of shots had their exposure pushed in the lab, elevating black levels and grain.

Accepting that, the Blu-ray is certainly a substantial improvement over the DVD edition released with a cruddy non-anamorphic letterbox transfer back in 2000. Although fairly soft due to the lighting and use of photographic filters, the picture has a decent amount of detail and exhibits no signs of Digital Noise Reduction or artificial sharpening. The special effects footage (which was shot on 65mm by an entirely different crew than the live action scenes) looks terrific. The model shots are as sharp, clear, and well-lit as you could hope. If anything, the contrast between the two types of scene is a little jarring, but that's just the way the movie is.

The VC-1 encoding has a few minor issues. The grain isn't always well-compressed, and sometimes comes across noisy or blocky. I also noticed some color banding on the flat surface of the monolith. Still, overall, this transfer is about as good as I'd ever expect '2010' to look in high definition.

Source: https://bluray.highdefdigest.com/2013/2010.html

Unless it is re-scanned and released as a UHD, your 35mm print will remain the best way to see this movie.

[Graham Ritchie]

Thanks Ed

What surprised me with the blu-ray was the special effects in space, they did not look right, its hard to explain, but do you remember other space shots in some other early films where the effect, say an object moving across seemed to move in almost blocks across the front of the background, well 2010 has this optical effect, kind of 1970s Battlestar Galactica/ Buck Rogers sub standard effects.

I came across this more than once with the 2010 blu-ray, and started to think that the source material might have been from earlier in the production. The 35mm print shows none of this, its perfect, none of what is described above. 2010 really needs sorting out for blu-ray and given the full restoration treatment it deserves, especially in the optical special effects area.

PS...Just thinking about the past Super 8 Scope release, although I don't have it, but wish, I have the feeling there is a good chance the space special effects will be similar to the 35mm print, anyone here got it on Super 8 to verify?