Hamilton.ES@PARC-MAXC.ARPA (04/17/83)
Visually stunning... mind blowing... almost a redefinition of cinema...
it's hard to be intellectual coherent about such a visceral film... Some
of the most incredible editing, photography, dancing, and use of music
I've ever seen. The plot is, well, not exactly subtle, but touching,
with a lot of humor as well: girl welder in Pittsburg dances in local
bar nights and dreams of making it big in ballet.
"When you lose your dream, you die."
Director Adrian Lyne's vision of dance transcends style. He shows how
poetry in motion can occur on ice, in a bar, in a studio, or on a
streetcorner. Sweat and muscle. Light and life.
Jennifer Beals is a knockout in the lead role -- I see a big future for
this lady.
This picture could not have been made ten, or even five years ago. It's
one of those films that people will look back on and say, THIS PICTURE
IS 1983. If Coppola wants to remake the 50's ("The Outsiders" is almost
a total stylistic ripoff of "Rebel Without a Cause"), or Blake Edwards
wants to stay in 1962 forever, I guess that's their privilege, but I'm
not going to pay to see them, if I can avoid it.
Dance fans -- STALLONE and TRAVOLTA \together/ this summer in "Stayin'
Alive" -- could be dynamite -- although the trailer didn't blow me away
quite the way the trailer for \Flashdance/ (and the film itself) did, so
I'll withhold judgement.
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Digressions... WHY ARE THERE NO DOLBY PRINTS OF \Flashdance/ in LA???
It's billed as "Dolby stereo in selected theaters"... but no theaters
are selected! I saw it at the "Village", which is one of the two
showcase theaters playing \Flashdance/ in LA, and is equipped for Dolby.
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A couple of years ago I thought Dolby was becoming the standard, but
I've been disappointed by how few flicks are being recorded in Dolby.
Also, I'm still waiting for a real film to be shot in IMAX, which has at
least double the resolution of 70mm. Unfortunately, it requires a
special theater with a giant screen, so the only places I've seen it are
the Air & Space Museum in Washington and the Museum of Natural History
in the Big Apple, where they run a couple of short documentary
travelogue sorts of things.
Meanwhile, Hollywood seems to be preoccupied with nonsense like 3-D. At
least two major films, "Space Hunter" and "Jaws III" will come out this
summer in 3-D. There are at least four inherent problems with the
current 3-D systems: (1) They just don't seem to be able to get enough
lumens out of a projector, off a screen, and through the viewer's funny
glasses. (2) Unless both images are equally and fully illuminated to
their edges, it is extremely annoying. (3) Unless the print is
absolutely pristine, all the visual equivalent of snap, crackle, and pop
comes through in one particular visual plane, and so stands out far more
than on a non - 3-D print. (4) When an object is "comin' at ya", your
eyes must converge while remaining focused at infinity -- very tiring.
I say until holography is good enough to go outside the Haunted Mansion
at Disneyland, Hollywood should go with IMAX (perhaps a Cinerama version
thereof, with multiple screens) and 6-track Dolby or digital follow-on
thereto, and forget about 3-D.
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Another pet gripe -- WHY ARE ALL THESE LOUSY THEATERS LEAVING THE
OVERHEAD LIGHTS ON??? I've had to go to the ushers at supposedly
first-rate places like the AVCO in Westwood and tell them to TURN THE
@#$%~&* LIGHTS OFF! I tried this a week ago at the Mann Olde Towne and
they gave me some crap about "safety lights". Just what do the fire
codes say, anyway? Whatever happened to footlights? I can wear my
visor to keep from getting blinded, but that doesn't stop the night
scenes from washing out, or me from having to see more of the audience
than the picture.
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Some day when I'm rich and famous I'm gonna build me a private movie
house. NO food or drinks or smoking. Huge seats and aisles. Almost as
many ushers as patrons. Pristine prints. No obnoxious theater chain
jingles. No obnoxious LA Times ads. Anybody who talks, whispers, or
otherwise creates a disturbance during the picture gets thrown out on
his ass, no questions asked. Probably the Norris at USC is the closest
I've seen to this ideal.
The other thing I'm gonna do is set up an institute for the restoration
of old films. We're gonna use digital image enhancement. We're gonna
equalize the frame-to-frame light levels on old silents. We're gonna
rerecord soundtracks in holographic digital, except for the voices of
the actors, which will be carefully enhanced.
Dream on...
SPEAK UP OUT THERE. This list's been awfully quiet.
--BruceSchwartz.pa@PARC-MAXC.ARPA (04/20/83)
Don, The solution planned is to use this 3D technique ONLY for movies which are SO BAD that the headache caused by the 3D technique is in the background noise (so to speak). Victor Schwartz