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Half in the Bag: Oppenheimer and The Hollywood Implosion

Happy Barbenheimer everyone! Watch at these two elderly losers stall for half the video before finally discussing what some are calling the best movie of the year: Oppenheimer! In addition to that, Mike and Jay discuss the ongoing writer and actor strikes as well as it's consequences on movies, theaters, streamers, and most importantly what effect it will have on David Zaslav. Won't someone please think of poor David Zaslav?!

Comments

Anonymous

Why on Earth would a grown man watch the Barbie movie?

Rhea

Because some men (those who watch) are men, Stan, and some men (those who turn away) are cowards.

Bort Ward

27:40. Gen Z'ers. Willing to accept sex from strangers on the Internet, post racy pictures on social media but unwilling to accept nudity in movies?

Marvin Falz

Love the sort of behind-the-scenes moment (I know, the context is different), where you zoom out into DaVinci Resolve and it reminded me that I'm watching an illusion.

Marvin Falz

I also love the 12 Angry Men edit. Besides being well edited, if that's how Oppenheimer sounds like, I'd not want to watch it.

Anonymous

Hi, ex-projectionist with about 10 years experience here. I'll try and explain in the most nerdy way possible what I think happened with your aspect ratio fuckup. Found a very detailed list here of all the formats Oppenheimer has been release in. https://www.oppenheimermovie.com/tickets/formats/ I'm assuming you saw in a digital presentation, because it'd be impossible for this to happen with film. According to the website, it seems the 4K digital version "Digital Cinema Packages are available in an aspect ratio of 2.2:1 in both Flat and Scope containers" This means the actual aspect ratio of the digital version of the film is 2.2:1 (this aspect ratio is becoming more common for digital DCP releases, supposedly because it's a happy medium between 2.35:1 or 2.39:1 (aka cinemascope), and 16:9 (known in projectionist terms as 1.78:1, the format of most television screens and computer monitors). When it says this comes in both Flat and Scope containers, this means the actual encoding of the space surrounding the image. So you can either select a 2.2:1 image surrounded by a Flat (1.85:1, old school widescreen format) or Scope (2.39:1) framing. As Jay mentioned, the trailer was framed up in perfect 1.85:1, so that means the screen was 1.85:1, and also the lens position of the projector was the same. Having letterboxing and pillarboxing at the same time, suggests there were 3 aspect ratios going on there at the same time. The dark black letterbox bars are the masking on the digital image, and the grey bars around the edge are where there is actually no digital information being sent from the projector to that section of the screen, but it is not properly masked up either. Despite what cinema chain executives would like to believe, film projection does not just miraculously appear on the screen at the touch of a button, generally someone has to program the projector with a series of instructions telling it which DCP file to play, when, and how. We call this a "script". It seems to me that whoever scripted this show, told the projector to play the version of Oppenheimer in the Scope container, not the flat one. To get it to play the Scope version correctly, they would have had to program in a new lens position (in film projecting we just swap the lenses out, but with digital the lens needs to zoomed in to fit the screen. This means a digital scope projection is actually showing less detail than a flat projection, which is the opposite of with film, and kind of defeats the purpose of why anamorphic scope film was invented, but that's another story). As a projectionist it grinds my gears that this has happened to you guys at least twice. I would be interested if you could somehow actually contact Christopher Nolan, because I'm sure he'd be overjoyed his films are being shown like this. As digital film shows are encoded centrally on a server then sent out to numerous projectors I'm sure you're not the only people who this happened to. If I showed a film with this lack of attention to detail, especially a big tentpole movie like this, I would have had my ass kicked (well, not really, but I'd get a severe telling off). There was a reason it's referred to by projectionists as "theatrical presentation." Unfortunately, this is what happened when major cinema chains thought that they could just get rid of all the projectionists because "it's digital so the technology will just run itself." The quality of experience for the paying customer goes down the toilet. The importance of having someone in that little booth at the back checking what's going on in the cinema cannot be overstated. Overnight guys in well-paying, highly skilled roles were out of a job or demoted to minimum wage. Sound familiar, Hollywood actors? Anyway, guess that's just some more of that old 'Movie Magic'!

Anonymous

I made the mistake of watching the first episode of strange new worlds. The opening scene has pike on earth having breakfast, he soon after has a real time conversation with Spock on Vulcan (who's shagging a women he doesn't meet for another few years later) . Next scene has pike leaving earth by shuttle about 8 hours later only to beam aboard the enterprise, after they get the hero shot of the ship, and then is greeted by Spock on the ship. So within the first 10 minutes of the new series, they've ignored cannon and completely misunderstood the distances of objects in space, it gets worse after that. I didn't watch the second episode.

Paladin

Unrelated, sort of but Jack Quaid is the voice of Superman now animated by the Korean studio that animated Avatar the Last Airbender and it is really worth checking out. So much more true to the character, hopefully Rich Evans can give more insight! Edit: It is called “My Adventures with Superman” on Adult Swim, not paid by AS either!

Brian E. Lindstrand

My girlfriend and I finally got a chance to see OPPENHEIMER today and wow! I am in complete agreement with Mike, how could anyone been bored in that movie? It was seriously intense right from the start and that consisted of Cillian Murphy looking at drops of rain hitting the ground. We were able to see it in the "IMAX 2D Experience," so it seemed to be at the correct ratio for digital screenings and it was certainly LOUD. I really thought it was quite the experience.

Anonymous

Hello! I really enjoyed Oppenheimer, only just got to see it. I can recommend it! But I’m sure you’ve all seen it already, haha

Anonymous

People in the SAG-AFTRA strike do NOT want people to unsubscribe from streaming services. They’ve asked that people use them so that the companies can see how valuable their product is, thus how useful the workers are