At the Metreon, unlike the Castro, this phenomenon had to be explained.
Like most big roadshow films of the 1960s, 2001 starts with a musical overture, intended to be played while the curtain is sill closed. In dark scenes you could ignore it, but in bright scenes, it looked like insects scurrying on the walls. Something – I suspect it was dust on the film gate – wiggled on the screen. The first row in IMAX is too overwhelming even for me.Īnother advantage: The IMAX theater used the original six-track sound mix, which emphasized the width of the image.īut it wasn’t a perfect experience. I felt myself moving in space (and no, I wasn’t on drugs).Īt the Metreon, I sat fifth-row center. The IMAX screen isn’t as curved as Cinerama, but it’s curved enough to create something like Cinerama’s peripheral-vision experience. In September, I saw one of those prints in the Metreon’s IMAX theater. Warner Brothers made a handful of IMAX prints from Nolan’s version. The screen is massively huge and slightly curved. The frame is almost four times the size of standard 70mm. IMAX is the closest thing we have to Cinerama in the Bay Area. So, I heard the film in the modern 5.1 mix.
What’s more, the screen is flat.Īnd then there’s the audio. The Castro has a very big screen, but not a huge one. It looked grainier than I’d expect for the format it was shot and shown in, but I assumed that was from the multiple generations.Īs much as I loved the movie, I knew that something was missing. I’m in no position to compare this with a 1968 print, but it looked very, very good. And sitting there, I fell in love with 2001 all over again. I sat in what I felt was the best seat in the house for this particular movie: front-row center. I attended a 70mm screening of Nolan’s “unrestored” at the Castro in June. It can’t quite present 2001 properly, but it comes reasonably close. The Castro Experienceįor most movies, whether in 35mm, 70mm, or digital, the Castro is just about perfect. The first two of my recent 2001 experiences came from Nolan’s “unrestored” 70mm prints. A wise move: The six-track version is the original, but few theaters can play it. The audio is digital and has options for either the original six-track and the modern 5.1 soundtracks. And, as with any restoration, this “unrestoration” involved guesswork, requiring, according to the New York Times, “some imagining of what Kubrick would want, with prompting from the faded source material.”Ĭourtesy of Christopher Nolan and Variety The new prints are three generations away: interpositive, internegative, and release print. The 1968 prints were made directly from that negative. With analog film, image quality gets worse with each generation from the original camera negative. Consider his use of 70mm IMAX in THE DARK KNIGHT, INTERSTELLAR, and DUNKIRK.Įarlier this year, Nolan and Warner Brothers released “unrestored” 70mm prints of 2001 that claim to be the film as it looked in its original Cinerama release. He loves physical film, and the bigger the format, the better. The analog “unrestored” versionĬhristopher Nolan doesn’t like digital cinema.
#2001 overture and intermission music tv
That probably sounded better on a TV (especially a 4×3 TV), but it lost something on a giant screen. When MGM rereleased the film on DVD in 1997, they created a more modern 5.1 digital mix – presumably with Kubrick’s blessing. When Bowman and Poole talk in the pod, their voices come from the left-center and right-center speakers.
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