Soar with The Eagle
Rudolph Valentino’s penultimate film The Eagle screens Sunday at the Earl Smith Strand Theatre in Marietta. There will be organ-playing.
- http://clatl.com/atlanta/ImageArchives?by=1223504
- Be My Valentino
By now, you should know the drill.
Celluloid is dying, and all that.
So just about every time someplace like the Strand or the Fox or the High hops into the ‘ol Delorean and sets the flux capacitor to the silent cinema era, count us in.
As theaters convert to Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI) Compliant systems, they are scrapping their 35mm equipment. The irony of the DCI conversion could not have been more evident this past Oscar season as The Weinstein Company’s anachronistic The Artist, a near note perfect homage to a silent era film (down to its 1.37:1 Academy Ratio frame) screened digitally in multi-plexes in suburbs near and far. Ill equipped to properly frame the film, most venues left the masking open. That the film screened digitally in most theatres passed largely without comment. But it is worth noting that a digital image cannot replicate true black and white. What you see with any digitially projected black and white film is an approximation.
Couple this with the live “pre-show”, as practiced at the Strand, complete with a sing-a-long, and you’ve got an opportunity not only to “see” a silent film, but also to experience it. Back in the day, this is what they used to call going to the movies. Now we call it an “interactive experience.”
“Like” it!
(complete Strand Press release after the jump)