You can tell when McQueen is driving and when it's the stunt driver because the angle of the rear-view mirror changes to not show the stunt driver on camera.

Hey you people who get bored easily who are going to start watching Bullit and turn it off before it gets "really good". Keep Watching. It's Totally Worth It.

I just saw that movie 2 weeks ago! I had forgotten about the car chase until the movie was on and then I clapped with glee.

Glee!

Steph! I saw Thor ! It was great! And, uh, yeah, that scene with shirtless Thor was...even I couldn't stop staring. In heterosexual news, Natalie Portman sure is pretty.

I think more than any Marvel movie so far, Thor requires the greatest suspension of disbelief. I mean, it needs a metric fuckton of it. The other movies require to you to buy that one man can become a superhero. This one introduces alien Norse gods and Frost Giants and other worlds into the thus-far fairly grounded universe. So mad props to Kenneth Branagh for making me buy it. Except I still cry, "WHY ARE THERE HORSES? WHERE DID THE HORSES COME FROM?"

I did not know about the random Hawkeye cameo! Nice! That, along with the references to Banner and Stark, pleased me greatly. I really love how Marvel is creating a movieverse. Really really love it. Has this been done before? A bunch of unrelated movies taking place in a shared universe? I racked my brain and came up with the View Askewniverse, but I'm sure there are others. Except this is maybe the first time it's been done with different filmmakers all playing in one sandbox?

You talked Sif up so much, Steph, that I was disappointed that she wasn't a huge part of the movie! She did do some pretty badass things, but she pretty much had me at "I did."

I find alien adavanced science no less plausible than a gamma invested energy-conservation defying Hulk.

Hardy is almost unrecognizable as Bane. He's a lot more imposing and scary-looking than we'd been expecting, actually. What do you think?

I think the people writing this article have not seen a lot of pictures of Tom Hardy.

They definitely are not familiar with Bronson and the marvelousness that is Pnut.

In heterosexual news, Natalie Portman sure is pretty.

Along those lines, I'll note that I felt like I got my money's worth for Pirates watching Penelope Cruz.

Holy shit, she's beautiful. And not in a perfect way. Better. And she's just a soulful actress, too.

So Emmett and I saw Pirates this afternoon and it was fun.

The scenes with the Mermaids were eerie, and beautiful and scary. Very much a vampire vibe and effective.

Many of the critiques of the movie are accurate but it was fine, and had the virtue of being shorter than the 2 and 3.

You talked Sif up so much, Steph, that I was disappointed that she wasn't a huge part of the movie!

Me, too! I would totally watch a movie that was just the Warriors Three and Sif.

I absolutely LOVE this LJ entry about Thor, comparing it to Henry IV, saying that Thor is Hotspur and Loki is John of Lancaster: [link] The descriptions of Sif and the Warriors Three as Thor's friends university were spot-on and cracked my shit up.

Because Sherlock couldn't stay away from Watson, Benedict Cumberbatch set to take a role in The Hobbit.

So that's why in some movies I've seen in 2-D, the screen was so dim....

[link]

As if rising ticket prices and chatterbox patrons weren’t enough, moviegoers in the Boston area are being left in the dark thanks to the regular misuse of the lenses on new digital projection equipment at many of the region’s major theater chains. But almost no one at the theaters or their corporate headquarters is willing to talk about it.

A walk through the AMC Loews Boston Common on Tremont Street one evening in mid-April illustrates the problem: gloomy, underlit images on eight of the multiplex’s 19 screens (theaters 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, and 18, to be specific). These are the auditoriums using new digital projectors that are transforming the movie exhibition business, machines that entirely do away with celluloid. The “film’’ comes in the form of a software file, and the projector pumps it onto the screen at high intensity.

Why, then, do so many of the movies look so terrible? This particular night “Limitless,’’ “Win Win,’’ and “Source Code’’ all seemed strikingly dim and drained of colors. “Jane Eyre,’’ a film shot using candles and other available light, appeared to be playing in a crypt. A visit to the Regal Fenway two weeks later turned up similar issues: “Water for Elephants’’ and “Madea’s Big Happy Family’’ were playing in brightly lit 35mm prints and, across the hall, in drastically darker digital versions.

The uniting factor is a fleet of 4K digital projectors made by Sony — or, rather, the 3-D lenses that many theater managers have made a practice of leaving on the projectors when playing a 2-D film. Though the issue is widespread, affecting screenings at AMC, National Amusements, and Regal cinemas, executives at all these major movie theater chains, and at the corporate offices of the projector’s manufacturer, have refused to directly acknowledge or comment on how and why it’s happening. Asked where his company stands on the matter, Dan Huerta, vice president of sight and sound for AMC, the second-biggest chain in the US, said only that “We don’t really have any official or unofficial policy to not change the lens.’’

A description of the problem comes from one of several Boston-area projectionists who spoke anonymously due to concerns about his job. We’ll call him Deep Focus. He explains that for 3-D showings a special lens is installed in front of a Sony digital projector that rapidly alternates the two polarized images needed for the 3-D effect to work.

“When you’re running a 2-D film, that polarization device has to be taken out of the image path. If they’re not doing that, it’s crazy, because you’ve got a big polarizer that absorbs 50 percent of the light.’’

...

So why aren’t theater personnel simply removing the 3-D lenses? The answer is that it takes time, it costs money, and it requires technical know-how above the level of the average multiplex employee. James Bond, a Chicago-based projection guru who serves as technical expert for Roger Ebert’s Ebertfest, said issues with the Sonys are more than mechanical. Opening the projector alone involves security clearances and Internet passwords, “and if you don’t do it right, the machine will shut down on you.’’ The result, in his view, is that often the lens change isn’t made and “audiences are getting shortchanged.’’