List of theatres with digital Sith?

May 18, 2005 12:29 PM

There has to be a list somewhere of the U.S. theatres showing The Revenge of the Sith in digital projection or IMAX, but I'm d*mned if my weak-ass google-fu can turn it up. Help me.... No. Must. Resist.
posted by mojohand to media & arts (21 comments total)

But of course... from dlp.com

I remember finding this site to answer this question about the last Star Wars.
posted by dirtylittlemonkey at 12:32 PM on May 18, 2005

Ah. You're right, that's where I found it last time. And just about the same number of dlp theatres as before - progress waddles on. And using the same logic, there doesn't seem to be a IMAX version of Sith. Bah!
posted by mojohand at 12:42 PM on May 18, 2005

Now that the question has been answered, I'll present a tangent:

I saw the last Star Wars movie digitally projected in a theater in Denver, and I thought it looked wretched. Chunky pixels were evident, especially in diagonal lines; the black areas were merely charcoal grey; the white areas were outlined in fuzzy greenish glow; the colors in general were desaturated; and there were a few instances of "banding" that were readily apparent. The sound, however, was excellent.
Granted, I'm a fussy movie viewer, but this looked terrible. Perhaps they've made advances since then - I don't know. Just a heads-up in case you're a persnickety film dork like me.
posted by Dr. Wu at 12:49 PM on May 18, 2005

Dr Wu - I agree! I thought the digital projection looked more like a TV picture - flat, with garish colors, while the film version looked much softer and with more depth.
posted by jasper411 at 1:08 PM on May 18, 2005

I saw Episode II in digital and the only difference I saw was there were no film artifacts (blobs, scratches, etc.). It was like watching a giant DVD. But other than that, I didn't really see any other benefits.

Xeni from Boing Boing says Episode III is worth it in digital:

If you go see this movie, really -- go see it in a digital movie theater. Many of them around the country showing it with 2K digital projectors built around TI's DLP chip. Sweet. No crackles, no shift, no scratches, no out of sync sound. Bright brights, deep darks, color gamut that pops. This is exactly how movies should feel.

posted by exhilaration at 1:23 PM on May 18, 2005

I agree as well, but for a contrast, watching digital animation films (Toy Story 2, Shrek) on big screen DLP is amazing.
posted by dirtylittlemonkey at 1:23 PM on May 18, 2005

By the way, I'm going to see it in Digital on Friday. :)
posted by exhilaration at 1:24 PM on May 18, 2005

If you're tired of getting null results on the DLP site, here's a state by state listing (which shows zero theaters in Oregon, sadly).
posted by mathowie at 1:49 PM on May 18, 2005

As far as I know, you won't get the movie in IMAX because it has to be filmed on special IMAX film.
posted by tracicle at 2:00 PM on May 18, 2005

Not anymore... they can blow it up to IMAX size. The last Star Wars was shown on IMAX, though they can only do 120 minutes total, so it had to be cut quite a bit.
posted by smackfu at 2:09 PM on May 18, 2005

Another backup, TheForce.Net has a list of US theaters with digital screens.
posted by scazza at 2:43 PM on May 18, 2005

So, a few comments about this.

The digital version is supposed to be more refined and slightly longer, because they can work on it right up until it's shown, where the film version has to be locked down in time to distribute.

Also, if I'm not mistaken, the movie itself was shot in digital, and the film version is actually just a film reshoot of the digital version, for backward compatibility only... It can't possibly be better than the digital source.
posted by Caviar at 3:18 PM on May 18, 2005

The cut of Attack of the Clones shown in IMAX was, in many ways, better than the original version because they mostly cut out the horrible courtship dialogue. The compression artifacts, sadly, were visable. And they were too aggressive in removing the grain, so some parts of it were overly smooth looking.

Caviar: a given film version could look better if the digital projector at a theatre is messed up somehow but the film projector at the theatre down the street is in perfect working order.
posted by skynxnex at 3:48 PM on May 18, 2005

I dunno, Attack of the Clones on the DLP at the Metreon in San Francisco was pretty sweet. No pixelation that I could see, the blacks were devoid of color, and the colors themselves were brilliant (although the blues were a bit too bright for my tastes). Looking forward to seeing Episode III there.
posted by DakotaPaul at 3:58 PM on May 18, 2005

Hmmm, digital presentation at the Ziegfeld -- I may have to see it twice now.
posted by Zonker at 5:23 PM on May 18, 2005

Maybe digital projection technology has improved in the last couple of years, but when I saw Attack of the Clones at the Cinerama, the screen-door effect was clearly visible and very distracting. The resolution just wasn't high enough for the size of the screen. Distracting as film dust and scratches may be, they don't affect every high-contrast detail on every frame of the entire film.
posted by Mars Saxman at 6:10 PM on May 18, 2005

Strange - the word "ass" (in the "backside" sense, rather than the animal) is, in my experience, more of a naughty word than "damned". Odd choice of censorship.

Oh - and for all you peeps who have access to IMax cinemas... I hate you all! :-)
/me only has one small, cramped, crappy cinema available...
posted by Chunder at 5:25 AM on May 19, 2005

Start The Revolution Without Digital

A fairly thoughtful (although thumbs-down) essay about digital projection (circa Phantom Menace, by Roger Ebert.
posted by anastasiav at 4:45 AM on May 20, 2005

As a follow-up, I saw Sith in digital tonight. No problems with pixelation or such, but the blacks were really not very good at all. The wall the screen was on was much darker. Given how many shadows there are in this film, it was really distracting.
posted by smackfu at 7:06 PM on May 22, 2005

I was too distracted by the trucks driving through the plot and characterization holes to notice.
posted by Caviar at 9:08 AM on May 24, 2005

I too just saw a couple of movies at my local (10009) DLP cinema. Some made-from-film, some digital. The pixellation and staircase jaggies were annoying and reminded me of bad FMV CDi and CD-ROM games from the early 90s. I think the whole digital thing is a scam - it's not about the consumer experience, it's about lowering the production and distribution costs for the studios, and putting the cinemas more in hock to them through expensive upgrades. In future I am considering actively avoiding DLP. Maybe in another decade or so it will be ready?
posted by meehawl at 11:52 AM on June 5, 2005