Search Results

PostScript: Special Affx

Garrett Stewart

in Cinemachines: An Essay on Media and Method

A return to opening reflections on our bodily response to film, rather than to the “body” or “flesh” of the screen image, accompanies a further consideration of screen “affect” in connection with ... More

A return to opening reflections on our bodily response to film, rather than to the “body” or “flesh” of the screen image, accompanies a further consideration of screen “affect” in connection with divergent instances of its technological bravura. Traced back to his own teenage experience with rudimentary 3-D, a personal rehearsal of the author’s nervous sensitivity to trick effects on screen—but one in which he finds himself not alone among film buffs—lends context to a final extensive look at digital knowingness in Denis Villeneuve’s 2018 sequel Blade Runner 2049. This is a film in which, among other CGI wrinkles, a perceptible technical difference in cinemachination for one pivotal scene—a difference between its 70mm IMAX and 35mm 3-D release prints—bears in multiple ways on the question of digital holography in regard to humanoid incarnation.Less

Coda

Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece

in The Optical Vacuum: Spectatorship and Modernized American Theater Architecture

This coda briefly describes the end of Schlanger’s life and the loss of his personal archives. It then points to later examples of neutralization’s impact in screen technologies such as IMAX of the ... More

This coda briefly describes the end of Schlanger’s life and the loss of his personal archives. It then points to later examples of neutralization’s impact in screen technologies such as IMAX of the early 1980s. Finally, it argues that neutralization helped shape not only the movie theater at mid-century, but an entire dimension of twenty-first-century spectatorship that insists on a disappearing space to privilege a screen. The coda gestures toward the abiding relevance of Schlanger’s theatrical ideals and the aporia of the optical vacuum they present: at once an every space, everywhere, and a no space, nowhere. To make a house for this still confusing and new thing of the cinema meant also imagining its eventual demise.Less

Speeding into 3-D

Ray Zone

in 3-D Revolution: The History of Modern Stereoscopic Cinema

The making of the IMAX film, Nascar 3D, is analysed. Director Simon Wincer and director of photography James Neihouse discuss the technology and artistic choices made when producing the film.

The Polar Express in IMAX 3-D

Ray Zone

in 3-D Revolution: The History of Modern Stereoscopic Cinema

The IMAX 3D version of The Polar Express is discussed in the context of theatrical exhibition and stereoscopic cinema. Techniques for digital “repurposing” of 2D material are analysed and comments by ... More

The IMAX 3D version of The Polar Express is discussed in the context of theatrical exhibition and stereoscopic cinema. Techniques for digital “repurposing” of 2D material are analysed and comments by Hugh Murray, IMAX 3D expert, and an interview with David Keighley about distribution of the film are included.Less

Conclusion

Sean Dinces

in Bulls Markets: Chicago's Basketball Business and the New Inequality

The Conclusion posits that the types of pro-inequality business practices engaged by the Bulls in recent decades, as well as the government's tolerance of such practices, continue to expand and ... More

The Conclusion posits that the types of pro-inequality business practices engaged by the Bulls in recent decades, as well as the government's tolerance of such practices, continue to expand and intensify in the twenty-first century. This story transcends the sports business, as evidenced by the election of Donald Trump (one of the most notorious tax evaders in recent American history) and increasingly frequent stories of gargantuan amounts of corporate welfare handed to already profitable firms like Amazon. The conclusion also catalogs a variety of potential policy solutions in the context of the sports business, ranging from more proactive antitrust enforcement to public ownership of major-league franchises. However, it warns that the best way to solve the problems of the sports business would be to effect systemic political and economic change--for example, serious campaign finance reform, as well as more progressive local and national tax policy.Less

A Promise of Eternity

Jonathan R. Eller

in Bradbury Beyond Apollo

In 1994 Bradbury placed six stories, more than he had in a number of years, but his fiction continued to miss the major market magazines. Chapter 33 documents the film projects of the mid-1990s—a ... More

In 1994 Bradbury placed six stories, more than he had in a number of years, but his fiction continued to miss the major market magazines. Chapter 33 documents the film projects of the mid-1990s—a Fahrenheit 451 screenplay for Mel Gibson, and a script for The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit under consideration with Disney. A collaboration with NASA artist Robert McCall, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, and special effects master Douglas Trumbull centered on an IMAX Corporation film theater project titled The City in the Stars, but Bradbury’s storyboard narrative was never produced. The chapter also describes Ray and Maggie Bradbury’s 1994 and 1995 summer sojourns in Paris with American expatriate journalists, and Bradbury’s increasing loss of hearing from mastoiditis.Less

4-D and the Ride Film

Ray Zone

in 3-D Revolution: The History of Modern Stereoscopic Cinema

The enduring importance ride films in cinema history and their relationship to 3D movies is examined.

A Large-Format 3-D Journey

Ray Zone

in 3-D Revolution: The History of Modern Stereoscopic Cinema

The making of the IMAX 3-D film Cirque du Soleil: Journey of Man is analysed. Filmmakers Keith Melton, Reed Smoot, Peter Anderson and John Hora, who worked on the film are interviewed about aspects ... More

The making of the IMAX 3-D film Cirque du Soleil: Journey of Man is analysed. Filmmakers Keith Melton, Reed Smoot, Peter Anderson and John Hora, who worked on the film are interviewed about aspects of producing the film.Less

An Interview with Rob Engle

Ray Zone

in 3-D Revolution: The History of Modern Stereoscopic Cinema

A survey of the eight 3D productions he supervised (up to 2009) is given with an extensive interview with Rob Engle, Stereoscopic Supervisor at Sony Imageworks.

The Creative Treatment of Alterity: Nanook as the North

Scott MacKenzie

in Films on Ice: Cinemas of the Arctic

This chapter examines the many re-iterations of Robert Flaherty’s influential film Nanook of the North (1922) to show how this key documentary film has been re-imagined and re-articulated in ... More

This chapter examines the many re-iterations of Robert Flaherty’s influential film Nanook of the North (1922) to show how this key documentary film has been re-imagined and re-articulated in documentaries such as Claude Massot’s Nanook Revisited (1990), feature length fictional accounts of Flaherty’s journey north such as Massot’s Kabloonak (1994), indigenous media such as the National Film Board of Canada’s Netsilik series (1967), IMAX films like To the Arctic (2012) and experimental cinema such as Philip Hoffman and Sami van Ingen’s Sweep (1995). Through the analysis of these varied works, MacKenzie delineates how the continual re-iterations of Nanook of the North play and complex and conflicted role in the popular imagination of the Arctic.Less