Directed by Gore Verbinski. Written by Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio. Released by Walt Disney Pictures.
Since I sat through Pirates yesterday, I’ve started to view the body of disdain in the critical world the same way that Ned Flanders views the Bible; I agree with every word, even the stuff that contradicts other stuff. It’s long, boring, confusing, lackluster, cynical, stupid, monotonous, overwrought, insipid, crass, hateful, unfunny, tedious, interminable, tortuous, and finally, banausic* in the worst way, and I pledge here and now not to see any more POTC movies if they are made.
There, review finished. More of note to me personally was that I bit the bullet and saw it in DLP, the first time I’ve seen a mainstream release digitally projected in several years, and, in the interest of fairness, I’ve developed a list of pros and cons since I’ve badmouthed the practice quite a bit.
Pro: It is good to see a movie that is properly lit, or at least close to it. This falls under the heading of “Stuff That Should Not Be a Concern but Is”, and I wonder if digital projectors will be any better maintained than traditional projectors as they become more commonplace. But, it was nice.
Con: I continue to think that a digitally projected image lacks the depth of a film-based image. There’s just a certain flatness (for lack of a better word) to it that reminds me that I’m watching a digital movie. Granted, POTC is a bad example of this, because it’s almost entirely CGI and would look kind of flat anyway, but other recent digital movies I’ve seen (Bubble, The Architect) had the same issue. At the end of the day, I prefer film in this regard.
Pro: I didn’t notice any pixelation of the image, except during the end credits, and that’s a first for me.
Con: I’m not sure that the digital projector was capable of reproducing the same level of deatil that a properly focused film-based image can. There were a lot of shots of presumably non-CGI’d objects like tress or crowds that didn’t seem as sharp as film. To me, it was like the difference between watching a football game on Fox, which broadcasts in 720p, and CBS, which broadcasts in 1080i – you can see a lot more detail in the crowds and the field on the CBS broadcast.
So, it’s fair to say that I still prefer film. Digital has made some gains, though, and I’m a bit more open-minded about it than I used to be.
* – Thanks to thesaurus.com for that one.
Gone Elsewhere 
Casino Royale was the first non-CGI’d (for the most part) movie I saw digitally projected. It was deep, sharp, clear, detailed, etc… It convinced me that if there’s a movie playing that I want to see and I have the opportunity to catch it in digital, I’d better make plans to.
On the other hand I next saw the mostly-CGI’d 300 and it looked AWFUL on DLP. It was blurry and monotonous*. Everything looked like crap. I chalk that up to poor cgi, not poor projection, though. Like HD on TV, DLP can expose the good and bad of what you’re used to seeing.
*-Definition #2
Just saw Pirates last night. My review would have to be pretty much the opposite of the list of words above, but not to say it’ sa great movie. I enjoyed it and thought it was wonderful, but the sense of awe and wonder I felt with the first one only had fleeting moments here (mostly the Pearl vs Dutchman scene at the whirlpool).
I must have read too many reviews saying the bad things and so I was looking for them the whole time and not finding most. There weren’t 60 minutes to be cut out of the movie, maybe 4 or 5…. Chow Yun Fat is not an afterthought he’s a big part of the first half…. etc..
I stand by my irrational hatred. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. And I hated the whirlpool fight. “Awe and wonder?” More like “fifteen minutes of trying to figure out why the fuck any of this was happening.”
I, too, was thrown off course by DMC in theaters. I saw it last summer & received the DVD for Christmas but never opened it. Then this week, knowing I was going to see the 3rd over the weekend, I unwrapped the DVD and watched it. I was pleasantly surprised and actually enjoyed watching it a 2nd time. This no doubt contributed towards my warm feelings for AWE.
Can’t say it’s going to happen that way for everyone, but I’m pretty sure it helped sway my opinion.
I’ll think long and hard about upgrading when I have a 1080p TV. But I would think that playback in 1080i would cause very obvious problems – I know that when I don’t have the progressive scan turned on with my current DVD player (or if I get the occasional DVD that isn’t progressively encoded), it looks terrible.
It actually is surprising that there wasn’t much of a difference with King Kong, those issues aside. I doubt that Universal would cut corners on the transfer and encoding with that movie. Perhaps the CGI work wasn’t finely detailed enough for the improved resolution to make much of a difference?
On the other hand, when I’m watching HDNet Movies (which I believe is broadcast in 1080i), sometimes it’s a big improvement over DVD quality, and sometimes not. Who knows.