Apollo 11: Best "Found-Footage" Doc EVER

First of all, I was there for the real thing: July 20th, 1969, when Neil and Buzz of Apollo 11 walked on the moon. A moment in history never to be forgotten or repeated, the day the cold, lifeless universe began to yield to humanity's will. I did not think in such grandiose terms at the time, of course, being seven years old-- but nothing could have pried me away from our Motorola console TV that day, not for all the candy in the world (and the candy was very good in 1969).

We had relatives over and everyone watched with wonder-- except my uncle Jim, who had a big lunch and was passed out in dad's Barcalounger, snoring through the whole thing. I was annoyed with him at the time, but now I realize he had a half-good reason to be zonked out: For such a momentous event in world history it was not a particularly interesting one to watch. Neil's step onto the lunar surface was carried live, but it was a super-contrasty monochrome image. The networks carrying the moon landing used a lot of cheesy animation, simulations and talking heads to pad out the low-res NASA video feed. The astronauts had to return to the earth, with it's plentiful film processing facilities, with magazines of exposed 16mm movie film and 70mm still images to give us the iconic imagery we associate with the era.

Live video of Armstrong on the moon looked like this.

The media status for early manned spaceflight hasn't changed that much: Grainy 16mm and low-res video (some in color), backed up by more 16mm TV coverage. When documentary filmmaker Todd Douglas Miller set out to make a 50th anniversary tribute of the Apollo 11 mission, he started out with the same resources everyone else had since the Nixon era: The familiar stills and grainy news footage, the same warbling audio.

Then two remarkable archives of previously unseen and rarely heard content were discovered.

The Mitchell AP65, very likely one of the cameras used
to document the Apollo missions.

The first discovery was the identification, deep in the vaults of the National Archives, of 165 reels of well-preserved Todd-AO 65mm film negative documenting the Apollo missions, from 8 to 14. These had been stored-- unseen-- since they were shot. Nobody even knew WHY this incredible trove of film existed: There was a tenuous connection to a failed co-production between NASA and MGM pictures, and this precious footage may have been outtakes from this effort. It is more likely that some unknown Public Affairs Officer at NASA wanted a definitive archive document for this extraordinary moment in human history, in the highest fidelity possible. In terms of capturing detailed, realistic imagery, 65mm was about as good as you could get in the late 1960s-- The resolution is the equivalent of 13K digital, a DCP format that does not currently exist because it would melt the image processors.

From the opening sequence: the Crawler delivering the
Saturn v rocket to the launch pad.

The second discovery was the original 30-track audio recordings of  the Apollo missions. At Mission Control in Houston all the various departments (CAPCOM, FIDO, Guidance, etc.) had their own audio circuit loops so the various members of each team could talk to each other. Other departments could punch into these loops as needed: a lot of the cool buttons on the Mission Control consoles are simply audio patch switches. These archive tape reels were digitized, corrected for various imperfections (the “wow and flutter” of the original audio made a lot of the voices on these tracks sound tremulous and nervous: now they just sound normal) and time-coded.

The Saturn V taking off, in 65mm Todd-AO.

These new resources went into Apollo 11— and the results are nothing short of magnificent. You have never seen Apollo-era NASA footage like this before: It's crystal-clear, with vibrant, unfaded color, looking like it was shot yesterday. The vividness is startling, out of context and impossible-feeling, as if someone found super8 home movies taken during the Battle of Gettysburg. The 65mm footage in concentrated in the beginning and end of the film, the launch and all the hubbub around it, and the carrier recovery and processing afterward. There was one Todd-AO camera set up less than a mile from the launch pad (on remote control, if they were smart) and the result is the most insanely detailed look at a Saturn V taking off ever seen. It puts the digital simulations of Apollo 13 (1995) and First Man (2018) to shame.

Johnny Carson, watching the launch from the VIP stands.
He is wearing a give-away paper baseball cap provided
courtesy of RCA. This was 1969: wearing hats went out with
john Kennedy, and only little boys went out in public
wearing baseball caps.

The 65mm camera operators covering the launch did something remarkable: they turned the cameras away from the NASA gear and into the crowds. Some of the best footage is of people milling around that hot morning in Florida, chatting, grabbing snacks, setting up cameras. Warm-weather casual fashion was on display everywhere: and what struck me is 100% of the adult men in attendance at Cape Kennedy or watching nearby wore shirts with buttons and collars. In 1969 T-shirts were underwear, or just for boys.

They let the 65mm camera into the Launch Control Center
at Kennedy, probably because all the windows would provide
enough light to get good shots. Mission Control in Houston
is windowless and all the footage is low-light 16mm.

The middle of the film relies mostly on older 16mm film archives, but the addition of the recovered 30-track audio elements adds something new: when we see Gene Krantz or Charlie Duke talking on those black headsets, the audio is in perfect sync. Before the new audio was available, filmmakers didn't even try to sync the audio.

Overall, it’s a tidy (93 minutes), Cinéma vérité style doc, long on reproducing the sights and sounds of the Apollo 11 mission with a minimum of explanation and no narration. If bringing the past back to life is the goal of any documentary, the startling new video and audio of Apollo 11 sets the highest standard I’ve ever seen.

Neil, Mike and Buzz, about to board the Airstream to the stars!

Any new documentary about American manned spaceflight is an exercise in somewhat wistful nostalgia: they document an era when we used to take on huge, improbable projects like this, apply the best minds on earth to the task, and make human history. There was a recent interview with a retired NASA official where he said that if the funding for space exploration had continued at the same pace as the Apollo program, humans would have landed on Mars by 1985. Alas.

La La Land Successfully Updates A Genre

La La Land is a rare bird, a genre musical film— refreshing and uplifting, sincere and happy and melancholy, a much-needed anodyne for the darkness and cynicism of late cinema. It tells the story of the meeting of two young people, Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) the musician and Mia (Emma Stone) the struggling actress. Both are working marginal jobs, waiting for their moment to break into the careers they dream of. When they meet (after a few hilarious missteps) love begins to bloom— and in true musical manner, their emotions soar in the form of song and dance. This is what is wonderful about musicals: in their universe emotions cannot be contained by prosaic reality. They require the characters spontaneously burst into song. Narrative reality breaks loose and people levitate into a magical space where people dance in the middle of traffic jams and fly into the stars of a planetarium.

But it’s not all just a cinematic heaven of singing and lyrical passages of fancy: the eternal rival of romance and career soon takes over.  Mia and Seb inspire each other to take risks, work hard and strive to make their personal dreams come true. The cost of pushing career first soon becomes the central conflict of La La Land, which leads to one of the most soaring and beautiful and melancholy and moving conclusions I have seen in a modern film.

The third character own this film— the namesake— is it’s wonderful, make-believe Los Angeles: Angel’s Flight, Mulholland Drive, Griffith Park, palm trees and stately SoCal architecture under an endless blue sky or deep blue night. It’s a fun, vibrant place full of artist, actors, strivers and dreamers. It’s been too easy in films of late to see LA as some of late-capitalist hellscape (see Training Day): It’s refreshing to remind all of us that LA is a place where people still go to try to make their dreams come true.

Director Damien Chazelle’s last film was Whiplash, a sort of crazy stalker film set in the world of jazz music about an earnest drummer and his insane instructor (J. K. Simmons, who has a lovely cameo in this film).  Jazz plays heavily and strangely in La La Land as well: Sebastian is a young man obsessed with the world of jazz: he has posters of jazz greats in his apartments, Hoagy Carmichael’s piano stool and longs to open a real jazz club in Los Angeles. There are plenty of kids these days who passionately love alls sorts of dead or marginal forms of music: it never becomes clear of Seb is sincere or just really good at affecting his love of the genre.

"A Lovely Night" on location.

The most remarkable number— a real masterpiece of a shot— is “A Lovely Night,” which occurs near the beginning of the film. After a party in the Hollywood Hills where they accident meet up, Seb is helping Mia look for her car. They break into song and dance at a scenic overlook, the wash of lights in the LA basin below. The scene, which goes from real-world to singing to dance to tap-dance (!) is shot at the real location and very specific time: PAST “Magic Hour,” just after sunset, when the warm glow of the sunset underscores a deepening dark blue sky. The set lighting is low as to illuminate the actors and still leave the sunset and sky bright. This scene not only highlights the considerable singing acting talents of of Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, it shows off cutting-edge film technology: fine-grained, fast film stock (La La Land was mostly shot on 35mm film), fast anamorphic lenses and the latest light, agile camera packages. Were this a Golden Age musical, this shot would have happened on a soundstage. But instead, it is one long, six-minute shot at a very narrow, specific time of day. This makes it breathtaking on several levels.

Another nice PAST-magic hour shot.

La La Land is in many ways an updated classic movie, a pastiche of the conventions, narratives and styles of Hollywood musicals. It is not a breakthrough in and of itself: this isn’t pure storytelling and cinematic innovation like Mad Max: Fury Road was. It takes the best elements of a great genre, updates the sensibilities to contemporary morés and makes it all fresh and unexpected again. There’s a little Vincente Minelli here, some Gene Kelley there, a little Jaques Demy, Even a bit of Ross Hunter/ Doris Day and Paul Thomas Anderson.

Another girl in magical old Los Angeles, dreaming
of acting fame. Naomi Watts in Mulholland Dr.

Given all these obvious movie-history references it was then very, very strange that while La La Land played, the place I kept going to for a visual and stylistic reference was… David Lynch. I COULD NOT STOP thinking: “This is a light-hearted musical version of Mulholland Dr. (2001).” It shares a lot of the same qualities as Lynch’s masterpiece: striking cinematography filled with shots of strong primary colors; an abiding love of Los Angeles locations, show business, actors and the mechanics of filmmaking; flights of surrealism; and intimate close-ups, bursting with emotion. These films are on entirely different missions— light, uplifting musical surrealism versus a surreal dive into the darkest parts of the id— but there is a common thread as well, in look and feel.

I may well be mistaken and La La Land may have been released in the
original CinemaScope aspect ratio of 2.55:1. But that's not how I saw it
in Redwood City: they couldn't even manage to mask the screen right.

And, sorry to say, I have to disagree with both the opening title card and Dana Stevens’ review and report that La La Land is NOT in CinemaScope. That specific film format was proprietary for to 20th Century-Fox and Bausch and Lomb, who standardized the elements of anamorphic cinematography. CinemaScope lenses were not much used past 1960: these early models had distortion problems that caused actors’ faces to widen unnaturally: “CinemaScope Mumps,” they called it. Panavision fixed this problem by re-arranging lens elements to minimize distortion. This film is actually in Panavision: they used Series C lenses to shoot it. But this is a quibble: the widescreen compositions are so lovely and the mise-en-scene is so well developed and rich, it’s worth another viewing just to look for visual clues and symmetries.

If you love Hollywood genres old and new, this is a must-see.

Passengers is Spectacular, Immoral Sci-Fi

Caution: standard, “everyone has already given this away” •••spoilers••• ahead.

Having fallen in love with the Century Mountain View’s reclining cushy seats and large screens after seeing Rogue One there (the theater is a left-over from the domed auditorium days, refitted for pampered Silicon Valley kids) I decided to forgo useful endeavors and see Passengers in 3D.

The first impression is it is a very handsome film, as clean and smooth as a corporate vision of the future... Which this is. The film is set on the Avalon, a colonization ship making a 120-year interstellar voyage the scientifically factual way, without the assist of faster-than-light wishful thinking technology.

The Avalon is a wonder to behold, as interesting to comprehend as the handsome actors who clatter around in it. From the outside it resembles an immense Hobart industrial mixer blade. Inside, it is pure high-end hotel-resort: lovely cabins, swanky restaurants, all the amenities. The sheer amount of open-air space available detracts from the reality of the ship: If the Avalon is on a mission to create profit for it’s owners, they are wasting megatons of energy flying crystal chandeliers and huge swimming pools between stars. Sorry, it’s just a pure Sci-Fi quibble.

The Avalon, in all it's mixer-blade glory. You can see the
massive engine burning fuel from tanks that do not
seem to exist. Sorry, another pure Sci-Fi quibble.

The story begins when the Avalon encounters a field of asteroids deep in interstellar space. Some of them punch through the ship’s deflectors and do damage— which causes one hibernation pod to prematurely awaken its occupant, Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) who soon realizes that he is completely alone on a ship that is still 90 years from its destination. Unable to re-enter stasis, he has a number of unpleasant decisions he can take to relive himself of the prospect of dying alone…

To proceed with this review , I have to write about a •••spoiler•••. But it’s not really a “spoiler,” for two reasons: 1. It occurs at the end of Act I and propels the main narrative in Act II, and 2. many, many other reviewers have also revealed it. Hell, the trailers have revealed it. But it’s important to talk about this because it’s the moral dilemma at the center of both the narrative and the critical framework in which Passengers resides.

In space, no one can hear you flirt. (I wish I had thought
of that line, but it was some other reviewer.)

Jim’s decision is to wake up another passenger, Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence)-- and NOT tell her that he deliberately doomed her to die of old age with him well before the end of the journey. The movie makes it very clear that he is emotionally conflicted with this decision— his decision to not tell her hangs a huge lantern on his guilt. What makes it worse is he decides to wake Aurora, out of 5,000 other hibernating passengers, due to what can only be called her dating profile. She recorded an “all about me” profile before she left and Jim watches it obsessively. Stalker-like. He even hangs out next to her hibernation pod so he can gaze at her frozen body. He has thawed her out believing that she could be his soul mate. Being that there is nobody else on the ship, she eventually comes around and indeed becomes his reductio ad absurdum perfect mate.

Nonetheless, the huge tension in Act II is waiting to see how she is going to find out— and how unbelievably pissed off she is going to be when she does. As audience to this act of kidnapping and deception, for most of Act II I was pissed off for her. What he did is the ultimate violation, a slow murder. Aurora had plans and dreams and places to be: Jim selfishly destroys her entire life because he does not want to be alone. The fact that Jim does this awful thing to a woman makes it worse— and, in fact, it highlights how deeply sexist it is. Imagine if the genders were reversed and Aurora woke up Jim ninety years early and lied about it. The aftermath of the revelation would be short and violent. (This premise pissed off the editors of women-centric website Jezebel so much they spoiled the entire movie, end to end, so nobody has to pay to see it.)

Pissed.

A barely touched aspect of the survivor’s dilemma is one of class. Jim is basically steerage, on a subsidized ticket to a new colony as an essential tradesman indentured to the corporation. Aurora is a travel writer from New York City from obvious wealth, on-board to “experience” interstellar travel and a new colony and write a book about it. So she is Julia Roberts from Eat Pray Love— if Javier Bardem kidnapped her to live with him on a desert island. Part of the fun of the middle of the film is watching Jim enjoy all the gold-level amenities of the ship, things he could never afford on his ticket (even his breakfast choices suck). I can’t help think that if he had thought things through a little better, he could have woken up a steerage passenger to be his soulmate. She would be far appreciative of living the high life on a big empty ship than Aurora, who sort of takes it all for granted as the normal accouterments of her posh life.

The astonishingly immoral center of the narrative takes what looks like a rousing sci-fi movie to disturbing new dimensions. And, strange as it may seem, it makes Passengers a great date film: the discussions after the film is over should really add a lot of new definitions to what a fair relationship is— and how far it can go.

Anyway, on to the movie. That asteroid-caused thing that broke Jim’s hibernation pod is still there and threatens to take down the Avalon, sink it like the Titanic. And this immorally created couple must do what is needed to make that big, utterly predictable Act III conclusion happen.

Passengers kicked around Hollywood for a decade; it was a “Black List” script, which meant it was a hot story everyone wanted to develop, but didn’t. Touches of this brilliance and originality show up here and there as the story unfolds. I recommend it— but know that after seeing it you may well go on an unexpected emotional journey of your own.

Donald Trump and Hollywood Omertà

Many people have seen, or at least read about, the now-infamous “hot mic” tape of a candid conversation between Donald Trump and Billy Bush in September 2005. News outlets and the internet are currently saturated with analysis of the content of this tape, in which Trump admits that his money and power permits him to commit sexual assault. The astounding crudity of the verbal exchange was seen as revealing the true nature of Donald Trump’s personality and attitude towards women, and the revelation of this tape may well prove to be the tipping point of the 2016 presidential election.

But this article isn’t about the content of the tape: it’s about why it took so long for it to be released. This is the part of this incredible story that seems to be under-discussed— and it relates directly to Hollywood, which is why it’s being discussed here.

The official story is the producer of “Access Hollywood,” Steve Silverstein, remembered this interview about two weeks before the release and dug the footage out of archives. This story is almost certainly false. The reason why it’s not believable is actually embedded in how the tape was recorded.

This political bombshell (more of a nuclear warhead) was taken from a segment of “Access Hollywood” which documented a cameo Donald Trump was making on the soap opera “Days of Our Lives.” It was shot on the backlot of NBC Studios in Burbank. A camera crew was following Trump and “Access” host Billy Bush: both men were fitted with lavalier microphones and transmitter packs which broadcast RF signal to receivers attached to the camera. During the publicly-released segment a cameraman had stepped outside the bus to set up a shot showing Bush and Trump arriving at the studio to be greeted by soap star Arianne Zucker. Thinking they were off-camera, the two men engaged in a crude, degrading conversation about women. Aside from the on-camera personalities there were seven people involved in this taping: two cameramen, the segment producer, a production assistant, Trump’s bodyguard and PR person, and the bus driver.

After this segment was shot, the footage was likely seen and handled by even more people: on-line and offline editors, more show producers, audio technicians and maybe even an archivist.

Charlie Chaplin, during one of his
many, many court appearances.

So about a dozen people— very likely more— heard and saw this footage in 2005. Yet NONE of these people recalled this conversation, one of the most devastating revelations of character any political aspirant has ever uttered? Particularly as this 2005 taping came on the heels of complaints by the cast and crew of Trump’s show “The Apprentice” about his crude on-set behavior? That is an impressive case of collective amnesia.

Hollywood’s code of silence strikes again.

The film industry has been creating and controlling secrets since the days of Charlie Chaplin (and Lita MacMurray) and Fatty Arbuckle (and Virginia Rappe). The studios all had (and still have) well-funded departments which handled public relations and “fixers,” producer-level executives who specialized in keeping indiscretions out of the press. (Hail Caesar was a thinly fictionalized account about a famous studio fixer.)

The culture of secrecy goes very deep in both the film and TV industries. Entertainment is an unusual industry in that the general public is constantly and intently curious about it. Supermarkets do not devote shelf space at the checkout counters with magazines dishing the dirt on astrophysicists and farmers, after all. Scripts and storylines have to be kept secret: details of film shoots are kept from public view as much as possible as well. The need for confidentiality rivals the Pentagon’s.

It’s all for the greater glory of the Industry, of course. That, and jobs. A scandal that would bring down a star would shut down production. A leaked script would kill off box-office potential. Finally, there’s the prestige factor: being on the set gives even the lowest PA or grip access to some of that rare stuff, Hollywood Glamor— stacks of non-disclosure agreements are willingly signed to gain access to that inner circle.

Why did this revelation take so long to emerge into the light of public scrutiny? The culture of Hollywood, a full century of studio secrets kept, reputations protected, indiscretions hidden. And they are so good at it: Did you know that Tom Cruise is only 5’7”? It took a LOT of will to overcome that much inertia and tradition.

The Brilliant Hack Work of "Stranger Things"

The one-sheet by Kyle Lambert.  I would
call this composition form "Drew Struzan
Baroque:" The color fields, grouping
and eye-lines are nearly identical to
any number of his 1980's posters.

Watched all 8 episodes of this Netflix series in short order: it’s slow and convention-bound in the first few episodes, but it soon stretches out into a satisfying-- if strangely derivative-- science fiction/horror series.

In 1983 Indiana, a young boy suddenly vanishes after a game of D and D with his friends. This sparks several searches and investigations by the missing boy’s friends, family and local authorities, which soon start turning up something unsettling, malevolent and supernatural lurking in the woods outside town. At the same time a strange girl appears, an escapee from a secret government site, embodied with telekinetic powers-- who may prove to be the key to finding the missing boy.

Millie Bobby Brown as "Eleven." Apparently
that buzz cut was not all that easy to achieve.

The direction in these eight episodes is remarkable. The visual style is striking, the art direction is thorough and the individual shots are extremely well-composed (in 1.85:1 Spherical Widescreen, the most popular aspect ratio in the 1980s). The central cast are young teenagers, and every one of them offers realistic, emotive performances— in particular Millie Bobby Brown, who plays the mysterious Eleven. Strong performances by children is an indication of a strong director— or, in the cases of some episodes, directors (the show's creators, the Duffer Brothers).

The Duffer Brothers with Winona Rider on the
set of "Stranger Things." Or is this an homage
to Dead Ringers (1988)?

As stated in the title "Stranger Things" is, nonetheless, “hack work of the highest order.*” A little Poltergeist and E.T. here, a little Evil Dead and Firestarter there, litter the sets with vintage movie posters, and it's a solid tribute to the era. If you were able to subtract these period elements, I doubt there would be enough to fill a single hour-long episode. The title sequence is a well-imitated optical-effect-looking shot, complete with negative specks and vintage fonts (Korinna and Avant Garde). As solid and satisfying as the main plot threads are, there are also weak subplots about bullies and ex-husbands and past loss. Still,  "Stranger Things" is very much worth a good binge-- If anything, it’s fun to watch the show and pick up the 80’s references as they come, flashing like bulbs on a string of Christmas lights.

A few notes:

Castroville in da house!

Acknowledgement of a classic era: “Stranger Things” is set in 1983-- and going past the period setting,it just strip-mines the cinema and popular culture of this era. This was a good choice, as it was a remarkably fecund time for original science fiction, horror and fantasy. Bladerunner, E.T., Mad Max 2, Excalibur, Dragonslayer, Heavy Metal, Conan the Barbarian, The Dead Zone, John Carpenter’s The Thing, The Shining, Poltergeist, The Evil Dead and especially Firestarter were all released around this show’s setting. “Stranger Things” is a pastiche of many of these works, perhaps underscored with a narrative form borrowed from Stephen King. So this isn’t an mere exercise in period visual authenticity: it is also a reworking of genres, kept inside the generic rules of the era. It’s less like, say, “The Americans” or “Fargo,” which are set in past eras, and more like The Artist (2011), which reproduced the narrative and social trappings of the silent era in a silent film.

Cinematic New Mexico: this was the name of a TV and movie trope where cell phones are useless. In the days before wireless become omnipresent horror stories were often set in rural areas, so the instant communication afforded by cell technology was eliminated, which increased the isolation of the characters and intensified the drama. ("New Mexico" was, for a time, a mythical movie region where cell phones didn't work.) 1983 was definitely the pre-cellphone era. This allows places like a regular rural house to be completely cut off and vulnerable to attack from inter-dimensional monsters. The filmmakers even hang a lantern on this by having a regular land-line phone fry into uselessness not once, but twice. This was obviously not the entire reason to set “Stranger Things” in the pre-cellphone past, but it sure didn’t hurt.

Local Angle: Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), a friend of the missing boy,  wears a “Castroville Artichoke Festival” t-shirt for several episodes. It’s totally unmotivated— He lives in Hawkins, Indiana: Castroville is in Central California, south of Santa Cruz. I do appreciate the shout-out.

* h/t to Jared N. Wright, who coined this one-line summary. Once he wrote it, I couldn’t get past it, so I just included it.

QT's Roadshow Gimmick: or, The Heuristic Eight

This still is the actual proportion of Ultra Panavision 70mm.

Went to a late screening of The Hateful Eight at the Century San Francisco Center, where a friend (Chris) has successfully seen the thing. Very nice place with leather seats where you can buy a beer. At 11:00 on the dot the projected cranked up and the overture screen appeared on that wide, wide screen.

The rest of this is going to a Hegelian dialectical analysis of The Hateful Eight in Roadshow format. It's important to quantify the entire experience this way because when you get right down to it, the synthesis of technology and subject here is super goddamned peculiar.

THESIS: The Ultra Panavision 70mm Roadshow Release.
The extra wide format Tarantino used here -- 65mm source with an extra anamorphic squeeze bringing the frame to a stunning 2.76:1 aspect ratio-- is quite rare and was used exclusively for prestige Hollywood productions. Ben Hur, The Greatest Story Ever Told, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and The Fall of the Roman Empire were previous films lensed in this format.

The technical presentation at the Century San Francisco Center was simply excellent. The image suffered a little bit from the screen masking, which was open at the bottom, showing a soft edge. I believe the auditorium was equipped for either 'scope (2.35:1) or spherical/HD (1.8:1) and simply could not mask the screen down to the right aspect ratio.

70mm film. This is a faded clip from
Hello Dolly! (1970) which was shot in 65mm.

For the sheer visual experience, it's worth the effort seeing the film this way (and you can until January 11th, when they will dismount all the 70mm projection gear). I have been fortunate to have seen several films in Ultra Panavision before (Ben Hur and It's a Mad x4 World, in the Cinerama Dome no less) and the sheer visual aspect of the film-- incredible 70mm detail, rich color and natural tone of photochemical film makes for a memorable experience. (it would have been even better to have seen a screening on a deeply curved Cinerama screen but those are no longer available in the Bay Area.)

No less pleasurable is the entire Roadshow experience: an overture, intermission and a quality program handed to every patron. More films should do this. When I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey in Cinerama Roadshow when I was a little kid there were programs, but you had to buy them.

ANTITHESIS: The Hateful Eight
The movie itself was vile. Set in the Old West, it's a tale about a collection of mostly unpleasant Western movie types holed up in a mountain trading post during a blizzard. Having a full complement of characters, Quentin advances his story by having his characters give little speeches and then kill each other. His idea of a "plot twist" is killing off a character and letting the story dynamics fall into a reductio ad absurdum pattern until the next killing. If anything (and H/T to Chris for pointing this out) it's a lot like John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) complete with Kurt Russell.

They're hateful and there are eight of them.
Walton Goggins (#6 here) turned in a great,
unusual stand-out performance.

There are no overarching themes aside from vengeance and pointless violence and super-casual 19th century racism. Like Django Unchained, one could look at this film as a addressing slavery and institutional racism, but it's clear that ol' QT is only vaguely aware of this: he merely loves having his characters say "nigger" over and over and over until the shock value hardens into dull acceptance.

Some critics have argued that Quentin Tarantino is expertly deconstructing archetypes of classic cinema in his movies. That may well be, but I do not think I have ever seen a Hollywood or spaghetti western quite as nihilistic and meaningless as The Hateful Eight. If anything it gave some glimpses into QT's thought processes-- and man, it's ugly in there. Maybe he's trying to meld the classic low-budget Western with the Austrian horror genre (i.e. Funny Games) in terms of sheer lack of human empathy, but I doubt it. It's all just those ugly thoughts. In fact he's so in love with his own tough-guy, everyone-is-a-killer narrative that he reads the left-hand narration out loud right after the intermission-- apparently because he believes we're a bunch of goldfish who forgot everything in the first half of the movie.

The Hateful Eight also claustrophobic. Most of the movie is set in one room. Wide film notwithstanding, this film has the lowest and simplest production values of any Quentin Tarantino film-- and this includes Reservoir Dogs, another one-set film but with a lot of interesting scenes set in other interesting places.

SYNTHESIS: Tarantino's Roadshow Gimmick
Roadshow implies prestige: Every other film released in Ultra Panavision 70mm had incredibly large budgets, stellar casts and sweeping vistas and locations. Even the ones shot in spherical 65mm, from Oklahoma! (1955) to Samsara (2011) have a certain cachet, a promise of an enhanced experience. Add to that the roadshow format, with an overture, intermission and a program-- all elements of legitimate theater transplanted into cinema to impart a sense of occasion and importance--  it adds up to the anticipation of a special, full-sensory, even transcendent cinematic experience.

We don't get any of that here.

The Hateful Eight is an anti-prestige movie. It's a grindhouse Western full of grungy, glib characters who spend the majority of the film in a rustic shack pointing revolvers at each other. There are some gorgeous sweeping vistas in the beginning of the film, when the first four of the eight meet up in a stagecoach, set in the snowy wilds of Wyoming. But aside from some clever use of cross-frame staging and mise-en-scene, the super-wide frame and rich film look is wasted. It's the least spectacular large-format movie I've ever seen.

The synthetic effect is, as I said, super goddamned peculiar. It's like putting on evening wear and paying a premium to watch a bunch of YouTube cat videos. I overheard a few conversations during the intermission: Most other audience members were trying to define what the big deal was about 70mm and why the screen was so squished. This represents a misuse of the format. Tarantino should have made Inglorious Basterds in Ultra Panavision 65: it had sweep, spectacle, a huge cast and amazing settings. Hell, he should have made Kill Bill into a single, 200-minute-long-with-intermission roadshow production. In terms of matching content to format The Hateful Eight deserved to be filmed in 16mm and blown up to plain HD.

If you want to see a bit of cinematic history, a real live roadshow 70mm release with the full bells and whistles, The Hateful Eight technically qualifies, I suppose. If you're all hype to see Jennifer Jason Leigh (who was great, BTW) get punched in the face, covered with her own and various people's blood, and called a bitch about a million times, see the Digital Cinema version: it's shorter and cheaper.

Quentin would have been PISSED

With nothing compelling on TV and a movie pass burning in my wallet, I decided to attend a roadshow screening of The Hateful Eight.

I've sort of fallen out with Tarantino lately, what with his ardent passion for turning junk movies from the past into faux-junk cinema and utter devotion to pointless nihilistic gore and over-the-top vengeance stories. It's all part of his huge movie-geek thing-- but something of substance DID come out of it. The man cares about old-school widescreen cinema: so do I. That's where our Venn diagrams intersect.

He went through an extraordinary amount of trouble to create a roadshow release of The Hateful Eight. The last film I remember seeing in a proper roadshow release was Apocalyse Now, a credits-free 70mm screening with a program provided. The Hateful Eight goes a few steps better, with a musical overture, intermission and a three-hour program length.

At least, that's what I understand is supposed to happen.

The fun part: going out with a big ol' 65mm
camera and shooting cool lens flares.

December 28th's  last screening was supposed to start at eleven at the Daly City 20. I got there early, paid the $3 up-charge and staked out a seat near the screen, pleased they had curtained it for crazy wide 2.76:1 Ultra Panavision. Two young women-- practically the only female-only party in a half-full show-- stopped on the way in and noted the smell. Sure enough-- this was the fourth screening of the day and Quentin's core audience demographic had filled the auditorium with a heavy, funky, manly fragrance.

11:00 became 11:10, then 11:20. No movie. The floor manager appeared, handed out rain checks and promised we'd be up and running in about ten minutes. At 11:40, he came back and cancelled the show. So, in the end I did NOT see The Hateful Eight-- but I got two movie passes and three roadshow programs out of the experience, so not a total loss.

The floor manager and I chatted just before he called the screening off. Apparently the theater got all the hardware for a 70mm screening just before it was supposed to start. The projector was refurbished, and at the end of the roadshow screening they will haul it away and 2K digital shows would take it's place. The problem was the projector was just plain broken: it simply would not pass the wide film, some sort of mechanical failure. This cancelled screening was not the first one they had to axe either. Roadshow screenings have gone dark all across the US and Canada in regular intervals.

Hey: Quentin Tarantino and The Weinstein Company are trying very hard to give the audience a taste of the widescreen glories of the past, and more power to them for it.  The thing is: they're giving audience a taste of not just that, but the entirety of photomechanical projection technology.

For each of The Hateful Eight roadshow venues they had to ship in a 70mm projector, set it up and align it, and station a projectionist exclusively to handle the thing. (I'm sure they had to bring in flatbed film platters in some places as well, but not Daly City: they still had one Christie system left). These projectors are likely vintage Century or Todd-AO machines they bought used and had mechanically refurbished. But without the infrastructure and expertise to maintain these machines, they break. They didn't break as much in the past because they were so common.

DP70 35/70mm projector.

Back in my movie theater management days a surprising number of theaters I managed had 70mm capability. In the 80s United Artists had the presence of mind to buy up and install a lot of DP-70 Todd-AO projectors made by Phillips/Norelco in the Netherlands in 1955 or so. The reasons for buying up these machines was twofold: they were very solidly made and reliable for regular 35mm screenings, and even the dopiest non-union assistant manager could switch them over to 70mm. Even with dopey non-union assistant managers running the shows, there were technicians available for overhaul and spare parts were in abundance in every projection booth (sometimes even spare projectors). This all made the average screening in the film era a reliable thing.

Nonetheless, there were a lot of moving parts and flying film and things went off the rails all the time. I am personally responsible for destroying a $3000 reel of 70mm: I started a screening of Bonfire of the Vanities in 70mm blow-up (why? WHY?) forgetting to engage the feed platter motor. Reel One wrapped around the hub and was torn to shreds. Fortunately we could switch to 35mm until a replacement reel arrived (and Larry Levin finished yelling at me).

Digital projection has as we all know, transformed the moviegoing experience. For the audience the changes have been subtle: the picture is more steady, screenings more reliable, and unfortunately trailers nearly endless. the films still "break," though, but they do it digitally: It was reported that an opening night screening of Star Wars: The Force Awakens glitched a few minutes in and skipped to the very end of the film. Digital Cinema's most profound change happened in the booth: no moving parts. Films are loaded via hard drive. The roar of the average film projector (which was terrifyingly loud when running 70mm) has been replaced by the hum of cooling fans.

Like I said, big praise for Tarantino for bringing back Ultra Panavision, but it's a kind of stunt, like wiring theater seats to shock people. My cancelled show was part of this whole retro-technical stunt rather than the continuum of modern Digital Cinema technology, and as such none of the backups were available. There was no 35mm print backup or a spare digital projector. He's giving people a taste of the old film days, but it's so late after the passing of this technology it's definitely a double-edged sword. Part of this is sheer hubris: it's easy and cool on the front end to go out and shoot a film with 65mm Panavision cameras and hand-restored 1.25X anamorphic lenses. On the back end it's not so easy: conforming 100 theaters to a nearly dead film format is a tall order indeed, a stunt not as easily pulled off.

So I'm gonna try again soon to see another roadshow screening, but this time I'm going to a theater that isn't in the sticks (Daly City: I'll bet they installed the less reliable refurbished projectors in the outliers). Sheer law of averages means next time the projector will light up.

Zardoz was Exactly 42 Years Ahead Of It's Time

The Big Floating Guy himself.

Perhaps taking my friend Chris’s lead I recently re-watched Zardoz, John Boorman’s very singular science fiction film from 1973. It’s a simple story: In a post-apocalyptic 2293, it’s the story about Zed (Sean Connery), an “exterminator” who manages to escape the wasteland into a “Vortex.” Behind the force fields of the vortex live the “Eternals,” who guard and catalog the remnants of civilization, all under the protection of The Tabernacle, an artificial intelligence. The mere presence of Zed creates conflict and eventually leads to the destruction of their unnatural order.

I know most people with a knowledge of film have some easily portable ideas about this film, sort of meta-positions. Yes, Sean Connery runs around wearing a silly red diaper. Yes, “Zardoz” is a take on “The Wizard of Oz.” Yes, it’s a parable about how nature abhors a vacuum— and will find a way re-establish itself whenever denied. But Zardoz, like Zed himself, is a very clever creation, far more clever than such superficial observations. This film was a breakthrough in several areas— and even has a remarkable solution to a problem that plagues the current state of portable computing.

Burned-out Municipal Centre.

1. Zardoz was the first film to portray what is now a common science-fiction trope: a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The world of this film has been destroyed: civilization has fallen, starving survivors wander blasted hillsides and destroyed cities— preyed on by Exterminators, horsemen chosen by the god Zardoz to check the population of these “Brutals.” The last film to portray people living in an ad-hoc post-apocalyptic society was Alexander Korda’s Things to Come (1940). Sure, the Cold War created plenty of films where the End has Come, but it’s usually a tidy place of empty streets— The World, The Flesh and the Devil (1959), On The Beach (also 1959), Five (1951), etc. In Boorman’s 2293 everything outside the Vortex is wrecked and moldy and haunted by The Brutals: grungy, skinny people wearing threadbare clothes. Boorman’s vision no doubt influenced everything in this genre that came after, from A Boy and His Dog (1975) to Mad Max 2 (1983) right up to The Road (2009) and the Terminator series.

Some Eternals enjoying the garden, unconcerned
about the Brutals on the other side of the shield.

2. The immortal inhabitants of the Vortex, the Eternals, live apart from the dying world behind impenetrable periphery shields. The Eternals took it upon themselves to become the custodians of the past— and in doing so completely detached themselves from Humanity itself. It’s a remarkable criticism of Objectivism— Ayn Rand’s philosophy that great people should be left alone to do great things, and compassion and mercy are really a signs of weakness. Avalow, one of the Eternals, explains to Zed how the Vortex came to be— and perfectly defines it as Galt Gulch:

“We took all that was good and made an oasis here. We few— the rich, the powerful, the clever— cut ourselves off to guard the knowledge and treasures of civilization as the world plunged into a dark age. To do this we had to harden our hearts against suffering outside.”

Boorman exposes this sort of exceptional elitism as nothing more than hubris, unnatural folly that can only fail in the end.

Zed utilizes a Wearable to interface with the Mainframe.

3. The Vortex owes it’s (admittedly doomed) existence to The Tabernacle— an artificial intelligence intimately linked to every Eternal that runs and protects the place. The physical presence of The Tabernacle is revealed in the end of the film as (mild spoiler) a crystal the size of a paperweight. But this is not the part I found intriguing. The interface units the Eternals use to communicate are white metal rings topped with a large square crystal. These rings operate for all intents and purposes like perfected smartphones: They can be used to call people, take notes, scan and diagnose, retrieve and display data, and allow Siri-like verbal communication with Tabernacle.

Consuela (Charlotte Rampling) takes notes.

Damn. The form factor is almost perfect!

Ring displays data. Note that in 2293 the Eternals
have adopted a form of Hip-Hop English.

The long and on-going problem we have with iPhones and Androids in the present day is all in the form factor: to use these devices, you have to walk around with it in your hand and stare at it. Situational awareness suffers for this. Smartphones have managed to make a whole generation of people look detached and unsociable. Even a wearable in the form of a watch is an imperfect solution. Humans were simply not designed to be constantly interacting with a lump of plastic in our hands.

May (Sarah Kestelman) performs a retinal scan with her ring.

A RING, however: stroke of genius! you can talk to it and it answers. it can take pictures and interact with the environment. It can project data and displays. and best of all, you can do all these things without being physically impeded by the device. If we all had tidy little rings rather than clunky phones we’d certainly be in a much better place. Our hands would be free! No more distracted walking or driving-- and we’d see the return of quaint notions such as conversational eye contact. I’m sure a ring that was a portable computer looked like speculative science fiction in 1973, but in 2015 they look like they’re about 5 years away from market reality.

Well-written speculative science fiction is a tricky thing: it does not always reveal itself when first presented, but after a measure of time the world catches up with the creator’s vision.

Age of Ultron and a Genre That's Far From Done

The Avengers (including a few new recruits on the left), against a background
of the hundreds of robots they're about to shred.

Look: if a movie makes nearly $200 million domestic on opening weekend and nearly $400 million worldwide, you kinda have to see what the fuss is about.

Right off the bat, I can tell you that Avengers: Age of Ultron is a worthy and entertaining addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Having absorbed (mostly via osmosis and basic cable) all TEN previous movies in this continuity, I can tell it's a neat new adventure. In terms of sheer spectacle it's worth the cost of a ticket (though I did not pop for 3D glasses: I'm here for the story, baby). The effects are seamless and perfectly designed and so well-integrated that about halfway in I stopped thinking about the sheer hours of VFX design and rendering that went into every damn frame and just let it wash over me.

HAL 9000. Often imitated,
never surpassed, he still has
much to teach us.

The plot: The Avengers, fresh from saving the world from Loki in the last movie, need to locate and dispose of Loki's scepter, a source of mystical power and all other sorts of mayhem. But Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) wants to use it one last time to get his pet project working: a cybernetic creation that will protect all of Earth. But, as the film 2001: a Space Odyssey taught us, it is very difficult to explain the concept of security to a computer without them misconstruing the intent and trying to kill all of us. Which is what the newly animated Ultron (voiced with Tony Stark insouciance by fellow former Brat Pack member James Spader) immediately tries to do. So the threat this time was internally created-- and it's going to take the entire Avengers team to fix it and save the whole planet. Again.

Joss Whedon's style and humor is far more muted here than in his last Avengers movie, but his sense of cinematic action is still there and even improved a bit over his last outing. the opening battle is one long Alejandro González Iñárritu-style tracking shot. In several parts he slows the action down, which allowed some moments of quiet awe. He also gives some great acting turns for the more human members of the Avengers gang. Hawkeye (Modesto's own Jeremy Renner) has some moments of quiet vulnerability. Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) also gets some nice little moments. A few notes:

• The widespread criticism about Black Widow's character is absolutely true, unfortunately. I feel the giant three-fingered gloved hand of Disney here, holding back Whedon's organic feminism. Natasha is turned from a complex character with a morally questionable past to a sort of kick-ass den mother with a love story (you know, for the chicks). The chilling "red on my ledger" backstory between her and Loki from the last movie is completely absent. Disappointing.

Paul Rudd IS Ant-Man! As far as I could tell from the
trailers this isn't going to be a Romantic Comedy and
Judd Apatow is nowhere to be seen.

• Contrary to some social observers and film critics we have not reached "Peak Comic Book Movie." Not even close. There is a huge stack of Superhero movies waiting in the wings from Marvel and DC: Ant-Man and the Superman-Batman deal and Wonder Woman (I think) and the Fantastic 4 reboot (huh?) and the Guardians of the Galaxy sequel and many, many more. So far these movies still manage to be inventive and fresh, and the dead hand of Mannerism has yet to appear in the genre. Still…

• ...Though Avengers: Age of Ultron is a fun watch and a neat action story, you can see in it how this genre is going to play out: Death by Character Shield. "Character Shield" is one of the screenwriting phrases which explains why lead characters in series and franchise entertainment tend to survive anything you can throw at them: they HAVE to. The appeal of the leads is what makes a series or franchise work, so whatever hairy death-defying situations the writers put them through they HAVE to make it out the other side. They can be emotionally changed, evolve or what have you, but you can't kill 'em.

Superheroes were tailor-made for action franchises: They're tough, very strong, often superhuman beings who can participate in huge violent battles and generally come out with naught but cosmetic scratches. Which is great, because there are usually a string of movies yet to be made featuring them stretching on into the distant future. Furthermore, these superheroes are generally assigned to quests that invariably have them saving the entire world (the Avengers have done this twice now), which is great because it increases your audience base.  But-- quoting another writer on this subject-- if everything is at stake, then nothing is at stake. They're always going to save the world and they're always going to survive. The character shield now encompasses the whole world and everything in it, and the only things you can battle are aliens (the last Avengers) or robots (this one). There is hope for complexity and consequences in the lesser Marvel movies (Captain America: The Winter Solder was a surprisingly complex political thriller) but the forces of monolithic Narrative Stasis are starting to show. With Stasis comes Mannerism, and then audience boredom, and then we move on to the next thing.

The super-secret hangar under Washington where SHIELD has
created a fleet of equally super-secret helicarriers. (scene from
Captain America: The Winter Soldier.) Your unaccounted
off-budget tax dollars at work!

• The product placement for Audi has evolved from ubiquitous to absurd.  Fine new Audis show up everywhere-- in frenetic chase scenes in Seoul, English universities, sitting out in the open in dirt-poor Eastern European countries with the keys in the ignition. At one point in the film Tony Stark activates an offscreen car with a remote. Guess what make of car, driverless, rolls into frame?

• Considering the large number of people in the United States who identify with right-wing causes, I am always surprised how a movie like this is widely liked and accepted despite the blatant presence in it of World Government-- and by that I mean exactly what Tea Party crazies are talking about: shadowy militarized organizations operating internationally with absolute impunity and with overwhelming destructive power. In Age of Ultron The SHIELD agency has collapsed (due to events in The Winter Soldier) but Nick Fury's organization fits the description perfectly: a UN-level secret military that operates stealthily everywhere in the world, has awe-inspiring weapons of mass destruction and respects no borders. The Avengers themselves have the same basic mission as SHIELD-- but as they are just a handful of superheroes they don't seem quite as-- well, quite as obvious-- as a fleet of flying aircraft carriers. Perhaps those of the Fox News persuasion identify more with the direct, um, "problem solving" methods of the Avengers and SHIELD (i.e. awe-inspiring carnage) than ever consider that they are basically seeing UN Black Helicopters: The Movie.

Ex Machina: Tech Bro Frankenstein

In the 1985 John Hughes comedy Weird Science two high-school-age geeks combine their technological talents to the only end they find logical: to create a perfect woman. Being 1985 and all, the preferred medium of creation is a personal computer and scanner. The result was Lisa, a magical sexy Mary Poppins who, though she may not have made all of her creator's dreams come true, leaves them far more popular in high school.

Films reflect the times they are created in, and the mid-80s there was a streak of optimism in science fiction.* Maybe it was that fact tech was still on the edge of larger society. We had cool home computers, IBM PC-ATs, Apple Macintoshes and and the occasional Amiga 1000, but no real internet to speak of. We were in full control. Fast-forward exactly 30 years…

"So, what would you little maniacs like to do first?"
It's so charming and innocent in retrospect that
a woman who just materialized out of a computer
would have to even ask that question.

Ex Machina, currently out in limited release and will be available for download June 1st, is the Millennial generation's answer to Weird Science. Caleb (Domhall Gleeson, who played the protag in Frank), a gifted coder in a very large tech firm, wins a contest to spend a week with the firm's CEO, Nathan (Oscar Isaac, Llewyn Davis himself) in his private underground lab in an isolated corner of what seems to be Iceland. Caleb finds out he is supposed to deliver the "Turing Test" for indisputable cybernetic self-awareness to Ava (Alicia Vikander), an android of Nathan's creation. Ava is a stunningly good combination of seamless VFX and perfectly executed, full-body acting by Ms. Vikander, by far the best part of the film. Caleb quickly falls for Ava, who is confined to a glassed-in room. Tension soon develops when, during a power cut when Nathan's cameras are knocked out, Ava says that Nathan cannot be trusted. A strange power struggle develops between the secretive Nathan, the inquisitive (and smitten) Caleb, and Ava, who may well be manipulating him to prevent her erasure and gain her freedom.

All in all, it is a fascinating movie which asks some rather important questions about our current relationship with artificial intelligence, a popular cinematic subject these days (Autómata, The Machine, Chappie, etc.). However, in the late second act the limits of writer-director Alex Garland's vision become apparent. You never quite get ahead the central plot of the film, but you realize there is only one outcome for this story and that is the one that happens. Afterwards you are left with a large series of "what ifs" and "what the hells" similar to the questions audiences had after screening Prometheus: Not nearly as much or as bad (Prometheus squandered a lot of the goodwill of the fans of the Alien film series) but a realization that this film could have been much more if a few more rewrites could have been knocked out. Notes:

We just got our second-round VC funding, bro!

• The world of Ex Machina is both abstract and almost depressingly familiar. From my vantage point here in the Bay Area this stylized science-fiction world looked like something I see every day here. The interiors of Nathan's lab-- clean concrete walls, glass doors, hidden LED lighting-- looks like the inside of every tech start-up I have ever seen (with less stuffed animals and ironic wall art, maybe). Nathan and Caleb are absolutely spot-on Silicon Valley techies: overachieving expert coders with limited social skills. They wear skinny jeans, sweats and hoodies in neutral tones, drink expensive-looking beer and vodka, and eat sushi. They are engaged in the ultimate code geek endeavor: creating the perfect girlfriend.

• Sexy female robots have been around since at least the 1920s (Maria from Metropolis). Ava is clearly a part of this continuum, which explores the fetishization of technology. This is the fist film I can remember where a robot's sexuality is held up as a question: Caleb asks Nathan why he would muddy the waters of a Turing Test by introducing something as distracting as giving the subject AI a female body. Nathan's answer was, amazingly, ten minutes of hanging a lantern on this subject: all lifeforms come gender-specific, sex makes life fun, it makes the Turing Test more interesting, and shut up that's why.

The answer to the encroachment of AI and the
inevitability of both the Singularity and the
eventual extinction of the human race: Drink up, bro!

It was odd to waste so much time on the Fembot question because it has been answered long ago: YES, quite a few men find the idea of female robots sexy. Ask anyone from Japan. Hell, Svedka Vodka is betting their whole ad campaign on it. When you get right down to it,  Ex Machina could be a long mediation on the problems that would arise if the Svedka robot babe was actually created. The tech bro main characters drink enough to qualify as their key demographic.

• Seen at the Sundance Kabuki in San Francisco, up in the balcony of Theater 1. This is their biggest screen and back when the Kabuki was an AMC theater I saw some amazing stuff there: Jurassic Park, Fargo and the industry screening of Starship Troopers. The balcony is amazing now: there are tables between seat pairs and you can order booze from the 3rd floor bar. I spent half the screening a little ticked off that I wasn't drinking an IPA with my popcorn.

So ultimately I'd recommend Ex Machina-- but you may be happier about it if you wait for the download.

* Doing the research for this piece I have to say the biggest surprise was what a banner year 1985 was for science fiction films. Aside from Weird Science, Back to the Future, Brazil, Cocoon, Enemy Mine, Re-Animator, Legend, Lifeforce and Return of the Living Dead all came out that year. The only franchise installments of note were Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, both rather good films.