Michael Mann's Blackhat

Computer technologies, digital networks and interfaces, and mobile communications tend to intensify physical presence by paradoxically putting new emphasis on bodily knowing, communications, and tactile information. 

—Brandon LaBelle, Background Noise

Michael Mann has finally made a film about idealist individuals. Or at least a film about those who break the patterns of the streams they live in, as opposed to accept the inexplicable systems that form their societies. Clouds form abstract shapes above cities, where rigid and jagged materials form distinct lines. Even the streets of Hong Kong and its endless bazaars simply look like a grid from above. There is complex theory and there is chaos theory. Mann knows the world is the former, but he can’t help but shoot his camera up toward the latter—searching the heavens for freedom.

Blackhat is Mann’s first feature film since 2009’s Public Enemies, which was a film about a rebel in a world where systems of organization were developed into making him simply an anomaly to be targeted and erased. The protagonist of Blackhat, Chris Hemsworth’s Hathaway, has yet to be erased, but now simply acts as another cog in a guarded system—he’s a hacker doing time in prisons, spending his days reading up on Foucault. He knows that simply because he’s surrounded by walls doesn’t mean the outside world is anything but a prison without them. When he first steps out onto the runway of an airport, he can only see material of grays and blacks, out of focus and without dimension. It’s simply a mass.

Then a hand grabs his arm, and everything becomes tangibly real.

Screening Log: Ima Let You Finish Tarkovsky Edition

                This week’s screening log is not only late, but also shorter than ever. It’s been one of those weeks. I was all set to write it yesterday and then I couldn’t get into the headspace cause of some non-film things. I’m not really in the headspace now, but perhaps I can take that as a challenge. Of note, the three repertory films (and two current films) marks the first week in which everything was screening in digital. This is sad. If you haven’t, read my piece on the troubling aspects of the North By Northwest DCP.

-2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968: Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Digital 2K Projection at Film Forum.

-North By Northwest, 1959. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Digital 2K Projection at the Museum of the Moving Image.

-Stalker, 1979. Directed By Andrei Tarkovsky. Projected DVD at the New School.

                This was the third time I had seen Stalker, which was part of an event called Tarkovsky Interrupts, in which the film was intermittently paused for discussion by a series of six panelists, organized around Geoff Dyer, who just wrote a book on the film called Zona. I won’t give a full overview—someone more astute than me already did that much better than I can—but here are a few of the notes I took and my own thoughts on this film, which remains my favorite Tarkovsky. I was actually expecting them to stop the movie a couple more times or at least speak longer, but the screening went over length anyways (four hours were allotted).

Imperfections in a "Perfect" Transfer: Digital Cinema Complaints Part Two

Last week, I wrote about the coming age of “Digital Cinema Projection,” and the issues that still had to be worked out if we were to accept it as the replacement for 35mm. I noted that Dr. Strangelove, which showed at Film Forum, had chosen an odd technique of displaying film grain throughout, an often distracting but eventually adjustable choice by the Sony Pictures restoration group. Now I want to report on some of the work Warner Bros. has done.

            Of the six major studios, Warner Bros. has been the worst about allowing 35mm of their prints to be shown. They refuse to send film from their archives if they have a DCP available, and I’m afraid that only those with private collections or other archival access may be able to show 35mm for many of their greatest works.

            This week, I was able to see two different DCPs Warners has worked on, both projected in 2K. The first, Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. I haven’t seen the film in 35mm before, only on a poor quality DVD that might be over ten years old. Seeing the DCP though was a marvel. Ever color stood out perfectly. The lights aboard the spaceship shined like they had been captured on film. There was no grain to speak of. Part of this, is that 2001 is a film in which every color and composition is literally perfect. It’s a pristine, essentially immaculate film, and the DCP reflected this (though this inspired a few tweets by Richard Brody about films that deserve less than stellar transfers).

            I really, really wish I could say the same things about North By Northwest, the Alfred Hitchcock classic, which I saw as part of the "See it Big!" series at the Museum of the Moving Image. In fact, I can say that about 90% of the DCP looked amazing, better than I’ve ever seen the film. But we need to talk about that last 10%. The problem is that North By Northwest uses a lot of rear projections, which are difficult for restorers to figure out what to do when audiences seeing it in 35mm in 1959 probably would have been aware of the illusion. But whatever Warners did with it, they didn’t do it in every scene. The first problem I noted was in the shot below, as Cary enters the UN Embassy:

 

You can’t see the issue in the pictures, but what happened was the restorers seemed to try and create the flickering image of film. The result was that the area of the frame where the stairs are on the right appeared to have a mirage effect going on while the rest of the frame didn't. The colors seemed unstable, and I'm not an expert on this, but it did not look right and was frankly embarrassing. This happened in a few shots during the film, such as Grant and Marie Saint’s meeting in the woods, and in one of the finale sequences where one of the bad guys is in the area of Mount Rushmore with the room with a light underneath one of the faces (which appeared to be going haywire).

            There is nothing wrong with flickering, but when it only happens in some selective shots, and not in the entirety of the frame, I found myself distracted and confused what Warners was trying to do with these shots. I don’t own a DVD or Blu-Ray copy of the film, but if anyone can look specifically at the shot posted above and let me know if it has the same problem, that would be great (Update: See Glenn Kenny's comment below, which doesn't have the problem at all, making this issue even more absurd). And if you work at Warners in the restoration archive, please upload the DCP immediately and take a look at, and email me as to what you were trying to do.