Properly Screened

  Seeing this seminal piece of science fiction in a theater, especially with booming Dolby Atmos sound on a pristine 70mm print, is nothing like streaming it at home. And I don't care how good your home theater is. I had forgotten that the film begins with an overture. About three minutes of atmospheric music plays over a black screen before any images appear. As the lights dim and the curtains remain closed, the music feels ceremonial and unnerving. At home, it’s easy to overlook. But in the theater, it signals that the audience is entering something. Then the first thunderous blast of Strauss’s “Also sprach Zarathustra” hits. The brass and timpani explode as the sun rises over the earth and moon and the title of the film appears. It’s not background music. It’s an announcement. Strauss's “The Blue Danube”  turns a jump cut from bone tossed into the air to spacecraft floating in the galaxy into one of the most famous edits in film history. The docking sequence turns into a ...

I hadn’t seen this film in almost thirty years, but it was one of the screenings I’d been looking forward to the most, mostly for sentimental reasons. I was introduced to it in high school video arts by Mr. Weesner, who used the crop-duster scene to teach us about Hitchcock’s obsession with storyboarding and visual control. I can still picture him pressing pause on the classroom VCR, pointing at the leading lines and emptiness around Cary Grant, explaining how none of it was accidental. That sequence was conceived almost entirely in advance, planned shot by shot. The suspense doesn’t come from dialogue or music but from the composition of each frame. Hitchcock uses vast negative space --- Cary Grant stranded in an empty, sunlit field --- to heighten tension, subverting expectations of danger lurking in shadows. Each visual beat escalates with architectural precision. When the Mount Rushmore finale hit, I realized I had completely forgotten that the movie ends with Thornhill and Eve d...

  I tried to watch The Conversation (1974) twice on streaming, but fell asleep both times before the protagonist, played by Gene Hackman, even meets with Harrison Ford, his client's representative. At a friend's insistence, this was not a film to be missed. This was one of the most under appreciated films of all time, he said, by Francis Ford Coppola. It's set in San Francisco, he said. Analog technology has never been better captured in a movie, he said. Try it again, he said.  In spring 2025, after Hackman's passing, American Cinematheque hosted a tribute highlighting many of his most iconic performances, including his breakout role as a lonely wiretapper in The Conversation . And they were showing it at the Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles, home of the world's first film premier. This was my opportunity to try again, but on the big screen. Hackman steals the show in a tense character study about the effect of spying on the spy. An analog sound hacker is convinced ...