THIS IS A CONTRIBUTION
TO THIS
MONTH'S
HOSTED ON THE LAMB
BY THE ALWAYS WONDERFUL
ME....
It's early on in Sam Fuller's THE BIG RED ONE when Mark Hamill says to Lee Marvin....
"I just can't murder."
Marvin's response...
"WE DON'T MURDER. WE KILL."
I always took this to mean that they weren't hunting people down maliciously. They just did what they had to. For the good of everybody. It was their duty to protect the things they loved.
Well ladies and gentleman. I'm here to tell you we have a duty as film lovers. I think it's time we killed film.
Yeah. I know. It's ridiculous. I love the medium too. But let's face it. It's already dying. We should just put it out of it's misery and just finish it off.
I went to see STAR TREK the other day (really enjoyed it, but that's beside the point). It was a digital projection. It wasn't stated on the schedule to be a digital projection. This, normally, would really upset me. Like the time I paid $10 to see 1931's DRACULA projected from DVD.
I, as a self proclaimed cinefile, always prefer to see a movie projected from the medium it was made on. I knew that the new STAR TREK film was shot on film so my proverbial panties got in a bit of bunch. But then I thought to myself quietly, as the production company logos started playing.
-All movies go through what's called a Digital Intermediate nowadays anyway. This means, the film is scanned into a computer, post-produced, then scanned back out to film. Isn't this pointless? The resolution is only going to as high as the original scan of the film, which in most cases is 2K, or roughly that of high definition. So, other than the flicker that supposedly puts us in a state of reverie rather than the hypnosis of video, I can't make an argument-
Then, the film started. And you know what. It looked pretty damn good. I'd seen movies projected digitally before, but most of them originated on a digital medium. This looked just as good, if not better.
Look, I'm not trying to start any fist fights here, okay? I still would pay $50 to see 2001 projected on 70mm. I get it. Film is beautiful. Film is great. But movies are lame nowadays and it's because lame people are in charge of movie studios.
Excuse me while I get on my digital soap box.
People with money are generally lame. Therefore, they greenlight lame projects. Think about all those creative people you know. Do they have cash? Enough cash to bankroll a feature film, shot on 35mm? Absolutely not.
Some people might have enough to shoot the actual film. Some might have even a little more to make a work print copy and even a final master print. That' s fine and wonderful. I'd love to see that persons movie. But how about enough to make 6,000 prints available for distribution? Wouldn't it be cheaper as a single file? Beamed from a satellite in outer space? Or a little hard drive that could be sent via UPS? Think about how many different kinds of movies can be shown in towns they never would play in, simply because it'd be cheaper.
Hell. They could be showing Gaspar Noe's new film in a small southern town right now! I'm sure they'd be thrilled..... (Seriously though, there is a kid in that town (or an adult perhaps) that's dying to see it. Why not make it happen?)
I understand it's drastic, but if we want to see new and interesting ideas come to light, it has to be on this young medium.
It's the only way people. As Nancy Sinatra would say, "Sorry 'bout that!"
