The Fox snipe has no matted line but the Dreamworks does, as an example.

BTW, both my Fox snipe AND my Dreamworks snipe look like the neg. has been water damaged. You'd think a director of Spielberg's quality would never allow a negative out of his control with those sort of obvious faults.

Just goes to show, eh?

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Too much of the rest of the film is given over to a romance between Padme and Anakin in which they're incapable of uttering anything other than the most basic and weary romantic cliches, while regarding each other as if love was something to be endured rather than cherished. There is not a romantic word they exchange that has not long since been reduced to cliche.

No, wait: Anakin tells Padme at one point: "I don't like the sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating--not like you. You're soft and smooth." I hadn't heard that before.

quote:

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BTW, both my Fox snipe AND my Dreamworks snipe look like the neg. has been water damaged. You'd think a director of Spielberg's quality would never allow a negative out of his control with those sort of obvious faults.

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AFAIK, a majority of "scope" features today are shot in "Super 35". Here is what a quick search of the imdb yielded:
http://us.imdb.com/SearchTechnical?PCS%3ASuper+35
http://us.imdb.com/SearchTechnical?for=PCS%3ASuper+35&skip=200

Some pretty good (as well as bad) looking pictures on that long list. For example, both "American Beauty" and "Titanic" won Academy Awards for Best Cinematography.

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
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As for AMERICAN BEAUTY, This was the first time that I remember noticing the excessive graininess of Super 35. Actually, I also remember reading an interview with Conrad Hall somewhere where he talked about how he did something like underexpose the film a bit in order to intentionally get a grainy look, but forgot about how much grain was naturally in the Super 35 process, and wished that he would have given the film a bit more exposure.

"Awarded to Michael Broesamle, Uwe Braehler, Volker Massmann and Wolfgang Steinebach of Philips Digital Video Systems and Arthur J. Cosgrove, Andrew F. Kurtz, Roger T. Lees and Leslie G. Moore of Eastman Kodak for the design and manufacture of the industry-standard high-definition digital telecine.

The Spirit DataCine Film Scanner is a joint development between Philips Digital Video Systems and Eastman Kodak. The combination of the Advanced Imaging Head from Eastman, and the precision transport mechanisms and high-speed digital signal processing developed by Philips, has resulted in a new benchmark for high-quality film transfers in both standard-definition and high-definition video standards and high-speed data scanning."
______________________________________________________________________

A "grainy" look can be an artistic choice --- using very high speed stocks and underexposure are "tools" to achieve that "look". But Super 35 can be very sharp and fine grained too.

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
e-mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

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Mitchell,
I totally agree with everything you said about MINORITY REPORT.
Can you think of anything more recent than TITANIC? I didn't have a very good eye for things like this at that point. Could you give an example of something from, say, the past 2 years? If not, then doesn't that say something about the quality of Super 35 in general? Also, how much of "Super 35 done right" falls on the filmmaker's shoulders as opposed to other factors, like the lab, money, etc.? From that Cameron interview, it seemed like he had a bit more control over the process than most people, but he was also taking greater care to ensure that it would turn out OK. Thanks.

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Super 35 films:

Harry Potter
Lord of The Rings
Panic Room
The Musketeer

THE LORD OF THE RINGS, which looked awful, grainy as hell ( especially the outdoor greeny scenes, with that city in the moutains and of course the beginning )

BLADE is also superb, I always thought it was shot in Panavision but it's not

HEAT was shot in Panavision and looks a bit too grainy...

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Charlie's Angels
Ocean's Eleven (Las Vegas dark)
In The Bedroom
Proof Of Life

Others have been made, but due to CGI or what I consider may have been the director's vision (e.g., "Minority Report"), they have not been named for comparison.

You're right, CHARLIE'S ANGELS did look good. Interestingly, it had the same D.P. as TITANIC, Russell Carpenter. IN THE BEDROOM looked OK too. But OCEAN'S ELEVEN was super grainy. I was just watching the DVD, and you can even see the grain on there.