Slashdot Mirror
Matrix Sequels To Get the IMAX Treatment
hondo77 writes "As if the two sequels to "The Matrix" weren't a big enough event already, it has been announced that both films will also be showing in IMAX theaters. "Although "The Matrix Reloaded" will open in Imax theaters two or three weeks after its general release May 15, "The Matrix Revolutions" will open Nov. 5 in both conventional and Imax cinemas..."."
...a technology that upgrades live-action 35mm films into the Imax experience.
I don't know if I could call it an upgrade when you have to use Pan & Scan. Sure it's bigger, and more exciting, but you're missing pieces.
Here's a mirror to the article:
Link 1
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
The new Matrix films, awesome...
The new Matrix films in IMAX... whoa... oooh... ahh...
Uh oh.. underwear check.
"there are no visible pixels"
Wow, that'd make Carrie Ann Moss' shoulder-blades big enough to sling a hammock... on...
(slips in to geek catatonia)
Whoa.
Now this is how I'd like to have Trinity. Larger than life and all around me.
I only have one thing to say...
Whoa...
...I mean....100-foot whoa.... =P
"As if the two sequels to "The Matrix" weren't a big enough event already, it has been announced that both films will also be showing in IMAX theaters."
The more these guys try to hype the Matrix, the more I want to distance myself from it. Anybody else worried they're over-marketing it?
"Derp de derp."
Bullet time with the bullets bigger then YOU!
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
Now I can get motion sickness from watching the Matrix too!
- Danny
Is the sound of 10,000 geeks' heads exploding as they achieve pure nirvana....
So there's the blue pill, the red pill, and what color is the Dramamine pill I'd need to stomach a 5-story high Wachovski brothers film?
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
Great. He just made a prequal.
"Derp de derp."
Like the subject says, I don't want film, I want digital. Having seen several films (Akira (twice digital, once on film), Monster's Inc. (1+1), SW: TPM (1+1), etc.) on DLP and on film, I can say that the film going experience is a full order of magnitude better on DLP. The blacks are black. The edges are sharper, the film "jitter" is gone and the whole image simply kicks ass. Yes, I know that film is theoretically better. But the print you see in the theatre is 4 generations old if you're lucky and 6 or 7 if you're not. So forget nausea inducing IMAX, bring it in DLP and I'll go to see it 5 times.
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
-Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
Eventually when 'The Matrix 5' comes out, we'll actually be able to have the movie plugged into the back of our head. The phrase 'The Future is now!' will finally be true!
I am a filthy pirate.
i guess i'll see TMR 3 times. once by myself on may 15, once with my friends just for fun, and once in the imax theatres. please don't screw this up, village roadshow...
IMAX could actually make her boobs an ok size.
With Star Wars II film with a camera that had a resulation less than 35mm film. All three verisons of the film 35mm, digital, and IMax, looked bad and blocky.
If they did that here too... IMax and most big screen would be a waste of space.
I've been waiting years for feature length films to show up in IMAX. Now that they've overcome the technical difficulties of it all, people can start to enjoy films that are worth the $10+ we shell out to see them on BIG screens.
I bet this won't be part of the Museum of Civilation IMAX in Hull though, where you can see all the IMAX movies shown in a year for only $35 Canadian.
Why slashdot? Why not?
"The Matrix Revolutions" will open Nov. 5 in both conventional and Imax cinemas.... Of what year Yahoo???!?!? Sheesh!
All the hype around the Matrix sequels leads me to only one conclusion:
These movies are going to suck.
This space intentionally left blank.
Are they going to change the length of the movie? I think IMAX has something like a 95 minute limit, and Reloaded is supposedly > 2 hours. Are they going to pull an Episode 2 cut out a bunch?
True this will be "upgraded" but I can't imagine that wouldn't be anything more than Pan&Scan, which on a 5 story screen would probably make me sick anyway. When filmed for the IMAX screen the movie experience can be amazing, however this does not seem like anything more than a gimmick.
Sounds like something we joke about: getting to see Carrie Anne Moss in that dashingly dirty and hormone punishing leather outfit, stretching out in a leaping attack in slow and glorious "in bullet time".
And if I gave a shit, I'd probably spend some time thinking of it.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Will the Matrix sequels also be shown in digital theaters? Seeing Star Wars: The Attack of the Clones in an all digital theater was awesome (albeit the movie sucked), and it would be cool to see these movies in digital too.
This page was generated by a Barrel of Circus Midgets, and that is the way I like it!!!
The problem is, the only IMAX theatre in my area is the one at the zoo. I somehow doubt that they will be showing the Matrix up there.
Let's see- coming up next is Dolphins Unleashed, then The World of Rainforests, then Monkeys on the Move, and then, ooh the Matrix! Mommy I want to see that one!
I already made arrangements to take the afternoon off to see Matrix Reloaded on opening day, now I'm gonna have to take another afternoon off to see it in IMAX? Life sucks.
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
Most IMAX movies aren't 2 hour features, because most people can't sit through that much sensory stimulation. You tend to get nauseous after 20-30 minutes or so. That, and judging by the way the original matrix was filmed (lots of scene changes and things that require eye movement around the screen), this would be just too much for your average viewer.
The other problem is that, since the master is on 35 mm film and IMax uses 70mm film at twice the framerate, there won't be any visual improvement quality wise over the regular theatre version. Now, IMAX films that use IMAX masters are something else to see, but this is just Matrix on a bigger screen and sound system.
Is the IMAX version actually shot for an IMAX theatre, or are they just blowing up the standard flick for an IMAX screen? I wish they'd make a normal movie with the IMAX setup in mind..i.e. put more subjects in a frame cause it will fit on the screen at a normal size...otherwise it's just the same movie, only with Keanu's empty head 5x larger (and therefore 5x emptier).
Underwear Boy: Do not try and check the underwear. That's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Underwear Boy: There is no underwear.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Now if only it was 3D as well... whoa.
you have no idea what you're talking about, we do the whole human mining thing for very specific reasons.
unfortunately, they're classified.
-Agent 406
I remember seeing a movie on a huge roundish screen once when I was younger. It was awesome. It curved to the side and also above, like part of a sphere or something. I thought it was IMAX. I want to say that it was in Detroit somewhere, but I don't remember. It was at some Museum. Anyway, it rocked.
And then I saw "Beauty and the Beast" on IMAX at Chicago's Navy Pier. (Hey, my girlfriend wanted to see it. Lay off.) I was incredibly disappointed. Does the Navy Pier setup just suck, or is that indicative of IMAX in general? It was like a huge normal screen that I was seated too close to. None of that immersive experience I remember from when I was 8.
Is that all IMAX really is? Do I just suck?
-Grant
My stupid web site
Wrong.
Unlike the Imax DMR releases last year of "Apollo 13" and "Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones," "The Matrix" films won't have to be shortened, as Imax reel units can now support film lengths of 150 minutes.
I read the press release. Did you?
For more information, click here.
Having seen Star Wars: Episode 2 in DLP, Imax and plain film, I'd greatly disagree. Imax was FAR superior in quality of the image, and overall cinematic experience than DLP.
Episode II was projected at 1280x1024, stretched to the normal aspect ratio by a 1.9X anamorphic lens to stretch the image back to its correct resolution...
Thats not a lot of pixels for a full-size screen. Pixelation was very noticable. Color saturation and consistancy was somewhat better, but not enough to say its superior to the Imax experience.
Given the choice I'd rather see any action movie in the Imax format, seconded with DLP, and then film... Dramatic movies, I'd probably swap DLP and Imax in favor of not pan-n-scanning, but one could just as easily use the 70mm IMAX frame with cropped images, or an anamorphic lens to get the full-size image as well.
Where is the special "Matrix" icon? The standard movie icon just isn't the same...
ASCII tastes bad dude.
Binary it is then.
RTFA, it says they won't have to cut it.
The problem is finding a projector with a brighter light than the Sun, or you will only get to show movies on New Moons, or have a reduced screen.
And think of the Priacy! Won't someone please think of the Pirates!
Why slashdot? Why not?
Many IMAX theaters have larger or extra platters they can use to extend runtime. This is what our local IMAX (San Antonio) did to allow for the large format version of Jurassic Park in 1994.
In the press release they said they fixed this problem and can now show 150 minute movies.
-m
RTFA:
Unlike the Imax DMR releases last year of "Apollo 13" and "Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones," "The Matrix" films won't have to be shortened, as Imax reel units can now support film lengths of 150 minutes.
See? Magic.
RTFA. They've upgraded the projectors and won't be cutting it at all.
The result was an annoying blast of light and sound that was extremely nauseating.
I hope with The Matrix they actually put some effort into a good IMAX presentation.
OK. The parent post is way off topic. . . but did you follow the links? This stuff is probably interesting to most of us nerds.
Neo follow the rabbit.
Neo: Hey you are not morpheus!
Hugh: I know... Welcome to my house Neo.
Neo: Look at the jugs on her WOW!
Hugh: Neo... you can choose the Red, Blue, or Green pill.
Hugh: If you take... WTF?
Neo: Shit... I'll take'm all.
Neo passes out.
Hugh: Girls remain calm, this is the first time someone has swallowed Viagra, XTC, and Spanish Fly all at the same time.
Bunny1: He is mine.
Bunny2: No, mine.
Neo wakes up:
Neo: Where am I, and why am I so f#@*en sticky?
Hugh: Neo... Welcome to the Playtrix.
Trinity: Wake up Neo, were under attack!
Neo wakes up and realizes it was a wet dream and has white stains all over himself.
Neo: Not again.
Reloaded the movie starts.
He obviously didn't read the article. The only way we'll get people to read the articles before posting is if moderators punish them harshly.
this is totally pie in the sky, but has anyone heard anything about the original? I would love to see the whole series on IMAX, and would probably go to see the films multiple times which is highly rare for me to do... (i'm lucky enough to live about two blocks from one of their theaters, at the texas state history museum here in Austin)
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
The only way we'll get people to read the articles before posting is if moderators punish them harshly.
Last fall, a local (Portland, Oregon) science museum advertised a super-large screen version of Attack of the Clones. WOW! I wanted to see the movie again, and here it was being presented in 70mm format on a BIG SCREEN! Golly, how could I lose? I gladly paid the ten dollars and . . .
Cripes . . .
It turns out that the Portland OMSI theater had an OMNIMAX screen. Not IMAX. The latter is a gently curved, huge, conventional movie screen. The former is basically hemispherical.
There was NO correction for the curvature. Everything was BENT. Ships travelled in curved lines.
It was SUCKY experience. To rub things in, it was a CUT version of the film. Nothing crucial was cut, but it was noticiable.
My experience might have been totally different in an IMAX theater.
So . . . beware.
Stefan
I saw Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones on an IMAX screen and they had to cut out about 20 minutes of footage because the imax films can only be 2 hours long. If the 35mm prints go over 2 hours, they'll have to do some editing as well, and you won't be seeing the full version, even if the it looks and sounds great on the imax screen.
Agent 406, this is control. Report to reprogramming immediately, you have a memory leak in block 6. Releasing classified information is punishable by purge.
--Agent 001
Stupid hollywood bullshit!
The matrix is nowhere near as believable as skynet!
I saw Ep 2 on DLP. I won't be seeing any digital movies again any time too.
The blacks were terrible (google for DLP black level and make your black comment again) but most of all, anything that was bright or contrasty was blocky.
It was sad. In some rooms in Ep 2, the floors have beautiful rugs with patterns. They were beaufiful. Solid colors, perfect patterns. But then, on the other hand remember when the subtitles came up on the scene where they are sneaking around outside (around the assassination time)? The black parts of the scene were even, the bright parts were blocky.
It didn't turn me off of DLP as much as the compressions we have right now.
On the other hand, I've seen normal movies on IMAX and they look like crap too. Too blotchy on that huge screen. Bigger isn't always better.
I do understand they cut many of the crappy plot scenes out of the IMAX version of Ep2 because of the restriction on max length of an IMAX film. That movie would have been better without the "Sound of Music" scene.
I saw the star wars 1: phantom menace on an IMAX screen and it hurt my eyes. You couldn't see all the action. You weren't immersed, just overwhelmed.
Looking back and forth the whole movie to catch all the action going on on-screen wasn't my idea of fun.
Mods, punish this no-article-readin' bastard
Maybe I'm too picky, but my biggest complaint about upconverting 35mm movies to IMAX is the mismatched cinematography, not the technical gotchas. The whole idea behind an IMAX film is to give the audience a window into a different world. Think about the "native" IMAX films you've seen... rather than use a mixture of camera angles to project a story on a screen, an IMAX film treats the audience as a camera and the screen as window. Slow, wide pans... a large, detailed screen... conservative transitions. IMAX filmmakers want you to feel as though you're truly inside the new environment, actually being positioned to see the action in front of you... not just watching a story on a glorifed TV. A good, native IMAX movie does this -- it makes the audience feel as though they're truly hovering around the subject matter. A bad IMAX movie makes the audience tired, confused, or sick.
My other beef is with the public's misconception of the IMAX film format. Traditional (non-dome) IMAX uses 15/70 film. That is, 70mm film with 15 sprockets per frame. This is not plain "70mm film, which dedicates only 5 sprockets per frame. 15/70 IMAX has 3x as much film surface area as plain 70mm and nearly 10x as much as plain 35mm. (Plus other benefits, such as double the framerate and generally better audio. Though 35mm is catching up with some recent films being available in 48fps and new 7.1 channel audio from Sony SDDS and DTS).
For more information on the IMAX format, check these out:
http://www.superspeedway.com/eng/imax1.html
http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/imax1.htm
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I just hope they aren't jerks about it like Lucas was for StarWars.
The Imax Theater near me couldn't show Star Wars because to show SW, you had to show ONLY SW - and they could not accept that - they wanted to show their other films as well.
That said, I just wonder how they deal with a 2 hour movie, given the size of the reel for a 40 minute movie....
(I cannot wait until DLPs are beefy enough to use them to feed Imax/Omnimax screens - Imax at 60 Hz would be quite nice.)
www.eFax.com are spammers
"What is the Matrix?"
Is it something you can show me, or do I have to experience it for myself?
I can't focus on things that big, especially when there's lots of fast action going on. It's like sitting too close to the front of the theater. It just ruins the whole experience. I've disliked most of the "Bigger Than God" screens that I've been at, and actively avoid them now. The standard screen size that the big theaters in the area use is perfect; it occupies my whole field of vision and I can still make out what's happening when things are going quickly. So I say, "Bah!" to IMAX! Take that!
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
Only if they could get DLP on IMAX screen. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Why not check out some talented brothers?
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
All I want is a Dome IMAX in San Francisco. I used to watch IMAX movies in Boston's Museum of Science years ago and the flat screen IMAX just can not compare to the Dooooome.
What an immersive experience.
Sniff. I miss it.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
I was discussing this with an old time video guy at work and he said that films are already displayed multiple times per frame. They just flash the picture across the projection light multiple times. Is this true? He's pretty old, may be senile.
A 2-hour movie shot at the costs you are citing would be over 12 million dollars for film alone. Thats with no cuts, and using every piece of the film. It's just not adding up. I don't think IMAX movies have budgets that large.
Matrix Reloaded, Return of the King, Spiderman 2, Star Wars Ep 3, Doom 3, Halflife 2, etc etc etc.
Has anyone noticed that almost everything we are looking forward to this year (or early next) is a sequel?
I thought we were supposed to be the intelligent ones? The nerds, the intellectual elite? Can we really be satisfied by all these re-hashes of the same old ideas? Don't we crave something new to feed our minds?
Obviously not. But wouldn't you like to think so?
That's not a truth *I'D* want to see. Underwear check with no underwear? Nope. Don't want to know.
Inconceivable!
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Database theorist Edgar Franks Codd was found dead in his Florida home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to computer science. Truly an American icon.
From the article: "The Matrix" films won't have to be shortened, as Imax reel units can now support film lengths of 150 minutes.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I've seen formats like imax, omnimax, imax dome, imax hd, imax magic carpet... can someone give a rundown of all the different formats and which are compatible with which screens. In Pittsburgh we have an imax dome type theater, which is advertised as an omnimax theater.
I know you're joking, but I just have to take a stand.
'An ok size' is in the eyes of the (be)holder. I love little breasts! Less endowed ladies, you can reach me at...
but they just don't know it yet.
The projection system that does all the work is costly and as indicated in several postings on here, has their limitations and disadvantages in both pre- and post-processing of the film.
The projector itself can be replaced by several digital LCD projectors operated by a stagemaster system designed to keep the individual units in sync, showing digital quality movies that were either converted from the standard format, letterbox, or IMAX/Omnimax format to a DVD or similiar format that would go thru a electronic lens program designed to "shape" the projection for maximum effect and quality for the curved screen.
The added onus to this is the ability to hold massive teleconferences with several different locations, or showing events from several different areas at once.
The advantages of this setup is next to no upkeep at all by a trained operator, aside from a system admin that is really there just to keep the system in tune or to replace any parts on the projectors that fail, most often it would be the bulbs.
Just my 2 cents worth..
Oh, and if anyone from the IMAX consortium is reading this, contact me.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
No way. Excellent!
Open source- the greatest equalizer mankind has ever seen.
The award-winning computer generated graphics for The Matrix was rendered with a cluster of FreeBSD computers. FreeBSD makes great clusters.
I watched the high-bandwidth quicktime and it didn't look nearly as good as I was hoping (certainly considering all the hype). The "burly-man" scenes looked bad - well the clothing was done better than most CGI, but my eyes still picked it out immediately as fake (plastic-looking). The worst was the trinity on the motorcycle scenes. The semi trucks looked like poorly texture-mapped cubes. If this is state of the art(not convinced it is), then we are indeed still aways from being able to fool the human eye. After seeing the trailers I've gone back to just hoping the effects are good enough to allow for a little suspension of dis-belief...
I'll pick blurred consistent lines any day.
Very simply, analogue scales much better than digital.
Karma: Non-Heinous
The new Matrix films, awesome...
The new Matrix films in IMAX... whoa... oooh... ahh...
I don't know, personally I wish films like this were given a chance to breath first. Hollywood puts so much wieght into financial success at the box office, it's almost like insider trading now. Bet on the success of whichever movie has the best marketing crew, and you'll get good returns on your money.
When the matrix first came out, it had very little fanfare. The experience of seeing the film itself is what drove people to tell thier friends and families. Word of mouth has always been the sincere means of measuring the value of a movie. The best thing to do with a film like this is wait. Maybe it doesn't belong on an IMAX screen because it's not worth seeing period. Or maybe, it's even better than the original. There's no way to know.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
... linux kernal [sic] 102.3.4 (emphasis mine)
c'mon, who would use a development kernel on something as mission-critical as The Matrix? [/troll]
The previous sig has been removed due to
take the Monorail to the Pacific Science Center next to the Space Needle that a certain hot Jessica Albo and strange Dr. Evil used to hang out at, and watch The Matrix sequels in ultra-high definition!
Life is sweet!
> --- All Of The Above --- >
Not squared, cubed.
Most people have three dimensional heads. Except cartoon people, in which case you might be right.
So it's 125x emptier. Although, because emptiness is based on ratios, It's probably just as empty
The timing of the movie releases makes me wonder - will The Matrix be the Opening Night Movie for the Seattle International Film Fest which is this May? Especially since it doesn't open to general release until the fall, and prior SIFF opening or closing night films have involved the use of the Space Needle or Seattle Monorail - the IMAX theatre is just a few feet away at the Pacific Science Center, so maybe you can get to see it in ultra-high definition if you buy the Opening or Closing Night film add-ons for the Film Fest?
...
It wouldn't surprise me - after all, Paul Allen donates the use of his Cinerama theatre to the Film Fest for an entire week each year
Sweet!
> --- All Of The Above --- >
Hey! Look at your UID! You're the ONE!
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
What did I win?
-
Inventor of the term 'pardon my French'.
* replace 'lose' with 'regain'
Karma: Excellent (fuck, even in the future moderation doesn't work!)
Please try to keep your posts coherent. Thank you.
Considering the subject matter of The Matrix Reloaded, it's highly doubtful if you could handle seeing it in 3D.
Talk about your out-of-body experiences!
> --- All Of The Above --- >
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) -- hailed as an even greater spectacle than Fellowship of the Ring.
Toy Story 2 (1999) -- hailed as a leap in computer animation over the original Toy Story.
Forrest Gump (1994) -- hailed as a glorious tale of Americana.
These were all hyped before release and turned out to exceed expectations.
anyone up to see it? anyone? it'd be very 1338 if there were more than just one of us seeing it - who knows if it's actually playing? email at the music god 1 at crypto mail dot com :)
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
A friend and I once had what tycoons describe as a shining glimpse of outrageous fortune:
IMAX Porn
"Like-you're-there", motion enhanced nakedness. The perfect format, the only route porn can take other than virtual reality. Theaters all across the country and after a tricky patent, the profits in hand. One might say with the gnomes:
1. Invent IMAX Porn.
2. Profit.
3. Profit.
4. Profit.
No question marks needed. But I have come to realize that the gains would be ill-gotten, so I hand the idea to you, oh world.
It's the Paul Allen-owned theatre in Seattle that has real Cinerama projectors, as well as DLP and 70mm projectors.
If you're anywhere near Seattle, I highly recommend seeing the Matrix sequels there - I saw the original movie there and it literally blew me away.
> --- All Of The Above --- >
Seeing that on an IMAX screen is like polishing a turd.
---
but I just wonder about sound. They would have to have some big-assed speakers.
IMAX could actually make her boobs an ok size
You've been playing way too many video games and reading way too many "adult entertainment" magazines.
Those are normal size. You've just lost your scale of reference.
Hit the Reset button and you'll be fine.
> --- All Of The Above --- >
Now I'm wondering how I saw Pearl Harbor (3+ hours) on IMAX when it was released?! And after that was over, I was so dizzy I had more trouble driving home than if I drank my ass off.
I wonder howthe Wachowski brothers got talked into doing this with their movie? It totally will distort the experience and create two opposite sets of fans (movie-goers; IMAX viewers v. regular viewers) who will debate which is better for the contect of the movie. From what I know, the Wachowski bros. are very much into fantasy and all that cool stuff, but don't they think that IMAX will distort or at least transform their production...entirely. Who wants to enjoy a dramatic moment of two people's faces on IMAX (compared with the usual fast-moving landscape)!?
Excellent
I bet you just love kids then don't you?
I think while Maxivision with its 48 frames per second projection is a major improvement over the current 24 frames per second used in movie projection, there are a bunch of problems to deal with:
1. The cost in terms of film is going to be exorbitant. Maxivision requires 50% more film stock on a per hour basis compared to regular film, and the shipping cost for a single print of a movie with 50% more film stock gets very expensive really fast.
2. Maxivision requires that the movie camera run at twice the speed of current cameras. We're not talking special-effects cameras that run at high speed for short periods of time, but a camera that records at twice the speed of current cameras for long periods of time. That will require better-quality mechanical components inside the camera, which of course will get expensive quite fast.
3. Maxivision requires film-handling equipment that runs at twice the speed of current projectors. That means the projector will have be built to higher mechanical standards, have to be maintained to higher standards, and will need much larger feed and takeup platters. Cheap it won't be.
4. Maxivision still has all the downsides of regular movie film, namely the issue of general wear and tear on the film itself. It doesn't solve the issues of film breakage, scratches, etc.
I've just got to chime in here for the sake of all the younger Slashdot readers.
Everyone who had told you not to judge the book by the cover has lied. Its like 80% accurate. Go for it.
Quack, quack.
IMHO, the worst part was C3PO trying to be more stupid than jar-jar... and succeeding :(
True warriors use the Klingon Google
If you like rampant pixelization. It was very obvious and distraction throughout the movie.
A digital version with the *SAME* resolution as film would be better than film but that's not the situation right now.
"When the matrix first came out, it had very little fanfare."
erm... so a superbowl ad doesn't qualify as a major advertisement? heh.
I can't wait. We've got about a dozen people going to the midnight showing when it's released. Should be awesome!!!
We have both...
OmnniMax at Science World and IMAX at Canada Place.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Either you recorded in IMAX format (or better),
or any attempt to appear "IMAX friendy" will fall flat on it's face.
Second, Optics are a bitch. Try projecting that far with no distortion to the picture.
Third, from an average vantage point the moon appears to be about the size of a quarter. Not great for detail.
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Someone asked.
It's been a few months.
The one scene I recall being cut was where Obi-Wan visits the archives. (I think they may have PLANNED this to be cut; the next scene, where Obi-Wan visits Yoda in the training room, goes over much the same material.)
Ah, yes: The introduction of Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen was also cut. So, while they're there in the Tatooine farm scenes, we don't really know there names!
Perhaps 2-3 other bits like that were missing.
Stefan
Is it just me, or is IMAX's press release a little confusing?
From what I understand, Warner Brothers spent a fair chunk of change buying a fat pipe from Australia to the U.S. to move captured video back and forth. Also, thematrix.com releases hi-res trailers which they say come directly from the digital source.
So why is IMAX trumpeting their 35mm-to-IMAX technology? Isn't the movie already digital in format?
I know that things like LOTR and Star Wars never made to our Imax here in Melbourne, Australia. Does anyone know if we will get the Matrix sequels?????
Why is this flamebait? I think I'll log in and meta-mod this...(If only I could choose to meta-mod something)
Ah! Not so! While the height of Keanu's head would be 5x larger the VOLUME would increase by a factor of 125! So, we see that IMAX Keanu would have a 12,500% increase in vacuousness.
You can't get a blue screen on a black and white monitor.
Each frame is shown twice (double-shuttered). This reduces flicker significantly. I have no doubt Maxivision is even better, it seems like a great idea.
As to scratches and jitter, the best solution is a rolling-loop projection system like IMAX uses. The patents should be up soon (IMAX is 19 years old I think). Of course, good luck getting theaters to replace their projectors.
Man, i just can't believe that i am now waiting for RoTK....
I saw Star Wars II on IMAX and I have to admit, it wasn't all that impressive. My main issues with this process of converting 16x9 movies to IMAX's 4:3 (or whatever it is);
- the films are basically getting blown up to Pan & Scan, like on TV, so you are missing a lot of the picture
- I guess the process is digital (or perhaps it was the Star Wars source material) so I saw a LOT of pixelization, to the point of distraction. Fleshtones and large swaths of color looked HORRIBLE depending on the lighting. It was like watching a poorly compressed MPEG--4 stories high.
- the films are not DIRECTED to be IMAX films. IMAX films tend to really immersive, one is often floating in water, in space, walking around the desert or the snow--the films use the format to create an experience, a realistic and true environment, where your eyes are tricked to see things "life size". Regular films are directed to be stories, the camera is usually an observer, not a participant.
- Your eyes adjust really, really quickly--the first few minutes of Star Wars were cool, but the whole IMAX effect kind of disappeared, again (I think), because the films are not designed to be IMAX films. Only a few other scenes (the meteor scene in particular) made me go, "oh, right! this is IMAX."
- The sound IS dope, but one must remember that the films need to be remixed--the vast majority of the sound comes from 2 speakers above and behind the viewers (they're super massive, though).
- One good thing, at least for Star Wars, is that the film apparently cannot be longer than 2 hours, so "Clones" was actually a LOT better in IMAX--a lot of the lamer scenes were cut and it felt like a much tighter film.
This will be cool, but mostly as a supplement to first seeing it in the regular theatre...
---mike
think about it, most of the movie was built digitally in a render-farm anyway... why would they not have filmed the rest of it in hi-resolution/digital/huge fps... and im am absolutely sure that they thought of all these issues anyway, i mean this really isnt some half-assed production... the brothers want to create an entire experience to envelope the viewer, why would they ruin it without thinking it thru...
Mr.Big
Name 3 movies in the last 20 years that recieved lots of hype before launch, and ended up deserving it.
Technically the third isn't out, but Lord of the Rings. Plenty of hype, living up to it, and doing a respectful job of portraying Tolkien's novel on the big screen.
I think the Matrix is going to be lightning strike number two. It's nice to have a couple of movies you look forward to seeing over and over again, again. Just like being a kid during the original Star Wars era.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Speaking of The Lion King, I saw this in IMAX, and it was mind blowingly beautiful. Luckily, all the animation in that movie was in Disney's vector-based computer animation format, so all they had to do was scale it up and clean it a little.
Also, it was shown in its proper aspect ratio; you could see "black bars" at the top and bottom of the huge IMAX screen. Of course, they're a lot less noticeable than black bars in a letterboxed DVD, since the image is already so huge it still fills your field of view.
Hopefully whatever process they use to blow up the Matrix movies to IMAX will look good, because they don't have vector-based drawings they can just render bigger. }:)
We were so underwhelmed by our IMAX cinema in Auckland that it closed after a few months.
So much marketing and hype, so little entertainment.
Retard. Just because you've been brainwashed by the media doesn't mean everyone who feels differently is a kiddie fiddler.
I suppose you also buy into those email messages that tell you you can't satisfy your woman without a foot long cock.
It does, it grows humans as crops and consumes their energy. Would it be possible to run a computer like the matrix off of human energy? Who knows, they even mention there is some sort of fusion going on, basically "future magic"", but as far as sci-fi plot holes go this is a very minor sin.
There are multiple reasons for this:
1) There are humans (children mainly) still inside the matrix they want to free.
2)Humans are at a serious disadvantage in the real world (as far as i've seen). They have to run and hide from 3 or 4 drones, let alone the entire machine army.
I think the real question is: How do they know the "real world" isn't just another abstraction to escape, and so on and so on.
Ellen Feiss switches to Windows 2000...
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
So you lose the right and left halfs of the screen, yet it's on a screen 30 meteres high, so I'm suppposed to be happy?
Jurassic Park? Seriously? A movie where a kid looks at an Apple desktop and says "This is a Unix system ... I know this!" to her brother?
Man, how as a card-carrying geek can you include a movie in which a kid describes a pre-OS X Apple Mac as a Unix system in your list?
(On the other hand, maybe this is where Steve Jobs and co got the idea for using Unix as the core to OS X from. But I kinda doubt it.)
Better choices for living up to the hype:
Terminator 2: Judgement Day - great special effects, consistent, well-told and well-paced story
Titanic - you knew it was going to sink, what you didn't know was how great it was going to look sinking
X-Men - immensly watchable from start to finish, even if the small budget meant a shorter than ideal film
Batman and Robin - I'm kidding. Can't you take a joke?
Minority Report - Wow. A great distopic view of the future that even Tom Cruise couldn't screw up.
There are others, but these four will suffice for now.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
These films are setting new standards thats for sure, hell, they set new standards with their 1000x size trailers.
Use you'r eyes, it's not friggin' leather.
I guarantee that it's worth seeing, period.
I saw FotR at an IMAX, and had the same experience. So... Somehow they can do more than 95 minutes or even 150...
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
We saw Star Wars:ATC in the Omnimax theater in Pittsburg. It sucked. I'm guessing that the problem stemmed from the fact that screen was curved and they didn't do anything to address it. Also, I've noticed alot of films that are Imax generally keep the focus on the center of the screen. A standard Hollywood film doesn't. We were sitting on the edge seats in the middle of the theater and you couldn't follow everything that was happening.
Or it could just be that Attack of the Clones was a LOUSY movie!
...because the IMAX theater near me, in Branson, often picks a mainstream movie (usually the one with the best special effects) to show on its big screen along with all its specialized IMAX films. Even if this hadn't been announced, I would have expected it to show up there sooner or later anyway.
:)
Seems like a lot of mainstream cinematographers are going more IMAX these days. James Cameron and Bill Paxton's recent IMAX documentary on the Titanic, for instance. (I can't help but think I'd find that documentary a little nervewracking, though. I mean, Bill Paxton in a submarine at crush depth in a James Cameron movie? I'd keep expecting him to die a horrible death about 3/4 of the way through the film.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Could someone please hurry up and create an SVCD bootleg screener for :-)
KAZAA? I'd really like to download that IMAX experience now
I don't really like big screens all that much. It's really kind of absurd. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten into an argument over someone who thinks console games are better than PC games because they can play them on their big screen TV. What the hell good is a big screen if all it succeeds in doing is lowering the visual clarity of what you're actually looking at?
Yeah -- and, you know, that's what we're worried about exactly. Good point.
Matrix Reloaded is going to be a superb product.
Unlike every other comparable sequel in the last 10 years? "Product" is the right word to use.
Don't be so cynical. Pretend you're 11 and this is Empire Strikes Back.
Empire Strikes Back was a great movie. We knew that when we saw it -- not before we saw it, based on the trailer. Hollywood didn't have its overhyping legs quite under it yet, back then. (We hadn't gone to see Batman or Pearl Harbor yet... And every kids' show on TV wasn't hand-in-hand with a line of action figures before it even aired.)
Take a look at all the releases this summer, and tell me we haven't reached a new nadir in movies. Everything's a sequel. Everything.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
a good number of modern movies.
Lawrence of Arabia, for example, is an absolutely incredible film in its original 70mm. Movies like Baraka were also shot in 70mm, and deserve to be seen that way. At least one of the Indiana Jones movies was shot at least in part in 70mm, and so was Titanic.
Just because you don't tend to see movies in 70mm doesn't mean they're not shot that way... Titanic, for example, showed in 70mm in less than ten theaters worldwide on its initial run, and eventually was shown in 70mm in a reasonable number of art houses in second run showings.
70mm is very cost-feasable for the resulting experience, the reason its not done more often is because there are so few theaters today as compared to thirty years ago equipped to show them. I'd bet that the increase in long-play IMAX-equipped theaters will cause a resurgance in filming in 70mm, since you can take advantage of that higher resolution in later IMAX presentations, as well as special 70mm engagements. The increase in frame size helps to reduce noise as a result of film grain in film eventually destined for 1080i, as well.
This site I found has a lot of good information about it.
Apollo 13 was also another great movie that went to IMAX.
But they cut out a LARGE number of scenes.
I'd have to say about 30 minutes to an hour worth of video was missing from the IMAX version.
I won't see it in IMAX if theres gonna be missing scenes.
It's happened to me. In at least one case, it was years before I had another chance to see the movie in some repetory theatre.
Er... isn't that what a zoom lens is for?
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
yeah, it was OT... but agreed it's interesting
Actually, there was at least one other film that was put through the DMR process, but not released widely. Amadeus.
I saw it in Toronto (where IMAX is based), but I think they did it as an experiment or something because it was not released more widely and it didnt look as good as Apollo 13.
It WAS letterboxed. IMAX and the studios have to make a decision on a movie by movie basis whether they want the impact of a full screen picture, or the fidelity of letterboxing. They will probably choose pan n scan in most cases - but they do have a choice.
I would like to encourage IMAX to keep the wide format. They will lose the use of some of the screen, but it will still be plenty big.
I think there are two big issues with Matrix on IMAX. The first is that the Apollo 13 makers shot real film of real objects and did not use much computer generated special effects. This allowed the incredible detail. I am worried that Matrix on IMAX will not have the detail that made Apollo 13 so great and realistic on IMAX. Because the filmmakers won't have created all that detail in the digital special effects it can't be projected. That makes Matrix on IMAX simply a big pan and scan picture, which for me loses a lot of its appeal. The second issue is if the Matrix was shot digitally. I don't care what reviewers say - I can see a big difference between digital "film" and real film. I have so far been very dissapointed with color depth and lack of detail and subtlety in digital films. If Matrix was shot 100% digital I am concerned that all I will see is a bigger bad image.
is you didn't get the movie and it went completely over your head.
gotcha
(opinion disclaimer)
possibly the best movie of the 90's / 2000 bar nothing.