Sony G90 - Manual (Page 4)

Let it be said, at this the half-way point of summer
(as of the writing), the neighborhood multiplexes
find themselves wishing they could either get rid of
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace
or at least move
a surviving copy of it to one of their lesser screens.
Most of you probably know the terms that George
Lucas stuck the exhibitors with: (a) a 12-week min-
imum run and (b) on their biggest screens. It is even said that
Lucasfilm is demanding 90 percent of the box-office gross for
the entire 12 weeks. Unheard of terms. And not soon likely to
be repeated.
Instead of being a Titanic-buster, as the marshmallow-
cloud prognosticators foresaw, the fourth Star Wars install-
ment looks a bit more like Dennis the Menace in its measur-
ing up to the Cameron box-office juggernaut. And so we have
the lovely irony wherein the biggest venues in the local plex
may be less than half full, while across the hall, in a smaller
theater, folks are getting turned away from the likes of Wild,
Wild West, Austin Powers, Big Daddy,
and other such intel-
lectually stimulating and spiritually instructive treats. Me, I’m
just glad that Lucas hasn’t cornered the popcorn concession,
demanding a cut there as well.
I had hoped to have a few “real” films under Current
Attractions in this issue and was prepared to review one for-
eign flick no longer much about (The Dream Life of Angels)
and even an artistic failure with plenty of meat on the bones
(Mike Figgis’ The Loss of Sexual Innocence). Eyes Wide Shut
opened just in time for me to squeeze in a few observations.
But I was able to catch Run, Lola, Run, which is an exhil-
arating film, as full of energy as any dozen others and perhaps
a significator of where film is going at the end of the century.
When I walked out of the theater, mind abuzz with the images
I had just encountered, I felt almost a guilty pleasure, know-
ing that Lola marks the end of film as we know it. Well, maybe
that’s an exaggeration; but still, for some time movies have
been abandoning traditional narrative formats for the hyped-
up visual experience and Lola takes that hyped-up energy to
the edge. And when you metaphorically peer over that edge
into the abyss, you’ll have to ask yourself, “Just where do the
movies go from here?” Will they all become machine-gun fire
multi-media collages, going even further than Lola, which is a
multi-media treat (animation, live action, stupendously well-
employed Dolby Digital, wall-to-wall-papered rock)?
I can’t imagine this German import not becoming one of
the most successful foreign/art-house films ever. Yes, it has
subtitles (oh horrors!), but you hardly need them to keep up
with the action, which has the virtue of being pure movement
(cinema’s forte) once Lola sets out on her run, repeated three
times over with a different outcome each time. At issue is sav-
ing her dope-dealing boyfriend’s life, which means she has to
come up with $100,000 (Deutsche Marks) within 20 minutes
or else. There is a cast of characters whose paths she crosses
(or doesn’t) during each run, and as the camera pauses to con-
template each, you see a rat-a-tat barrage of still photographs
of each’s future, which changes according to the circum-
stances of the encounter with Lola. There are, additionally,
two beautifully done bridge passages after the first and sec-
ond runs, which show, slyly, why she gets another chance at
changing the outcome. There is a surprising amount of heft,
emotional meat on the bones, in this seemingly slight virtuoso
exercise in the craft of film, and buried within its telegraphed
shorthand staccato outbursts, a reservoir of deep feeling. And
such mordant, dry, macabre humor to keep the tone ironic
and post-modern. All this is in vivid, day-glo color, filmed in
almost every medium one can think of, but done in such a way
that it all coheres and makes perfect artistic sense (unlike,
say, Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, where Stone is
showboating with technique, failing to relate it to content).
Like I said, it may well make you feel as high as a kite, but
what in the world do you do for an encore?
Barco Vision Watch
In the first chapter of our adventure, Projector Installation:
The Real Menace, I took a shot at Barco’s official Long Island
installation folks at Gavi. That was written on deadline.
Between then and the time the folks at Gavi saw the unfavor-
able mention in the last issue, the company sent its men back
again and again in an effort to get the 708 data-grade projec-
tor working at the level I needed in order to make solid and
sound judgments about everything from laserdiscs and DVDs,
enhanced and non, to HDTV when it finally arrives at the Sea
Cliff studios.
Part of the problem the first time out was that Gavi’s folk
did not remount the Barco so that it was correctly distanced
from the 8-foot Stewart screen. Instead, they used the ceiling-
mounted plate Sony had installed for their projector. Thus, I
couldn’t get an accurately sized 4:3 picture, which meant I
couldn’t watch full-screen discs (this means anything before
l954 and Latter Day stuff either made for TV or not – IMAX,
e.g.). Then on a subsequent visit, I found the team had put in
an anamorphic widescreen setting without supplying another
for standard widescreen discs. So non-anamorphic DVDs and
laserdiscs looked really weird, being squeezed as they were
into aspects that ranged up to 3:1 for a 2:35.1 disc. There have
been more visits and now I am waiting for Gavi to get its color
analyzer back (it’s in California) so that we can check the
grayscale and color temperature. I’m not satisfied with the
colors as rendered – for one thing, the whites aren’t as pure as
I’d like, and either some transfers (mostly of foreign films) are
a bit “pink” or the set isn’t fully dialed in just yet.
Meaning? The installation of a front projector is tricky
business, especially with the advent of anamorphically
enhanced DVDs and of HDTV. And we shall be addressing the
topic in detail sufficient unto the day.
HARRY PEARSON
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
E D I T O R I A L
Follies & Frolics
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