Are you in Vancouver? Do you want to see the best version of THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY available theatrically? Come on down and watch it! (After I talk about it for ~10 minutes.)

From the Jafar Panahi talk at Berlinale.

To the Texans here:

omg

Happy birthday to the best to ever do it.

Told ya so

My copy of @bcwallin.com's monograph - featuring an essay about Danny Boyle's use of digital formats by yours truly - arrived today. Very excited to see it released tomorrow.

Hell yeah.

Nothing will ever convince me this stuff isn't intentional rage bait.

The most time-consuming part of my TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME edit combining it with THE MISSING PIECES is easily recolouring those deleted scenes to match FWWM. Despite being widely recognized as canonical and essential, THE MISSING PIECES was very obviously not given much of a colour grade.

Bastardized Anthony Mann's REIGN OF TERROR today.

The best in the business (@damnfoolcrusade.bsky.social) reviews the most exciting home video release of the year.

Calibration day is an overwhelming time at the studio.

Love that the world's leading search engine confidently spouts absolute misinformation instead of actual results when you type in "What was THE MASTERMIND shot on".

Life knows no period so stress-free as that which occurs between hitting "Schedule Send" late at night and 8am the next morning. All the satisfaction of Dealing With The Thing and none of the consequences.

I'm a pretty tough and grumpy mark for this type of YouTube cultural criticism video essay, but this is legitimately a really good rundown of the implications of the Oz Sphere monstrosity for film restoration and the future of cinema as communal art/entertainment.

My take on the Optic/Haptic vid is: It tries to develop a unifying theory on a broad thesis with a shaky premise (“Why don’t movies look realistic anymore?”) and inevitably winds up with a mess of cherry-picking, self-contradictions, specious reasoning, along with a lot of individually good points.

Well, I finally found time to speculatively tint Lubitsch's THE OYSTER PRINCESS (1919).

Two questions about the new Lubitsch Musicals BD set from Criterion: 1. Where's the tinted ONE HOUR WITH YOU restoration? 2. Gimme the new tinted ONE HOUR WITH YOU restoration.

Interesting to note that the (UNRELIABLE) 35mm fan-scan that's floating around is somewheres in between the two home video releases in terms of the hue of the moonlight.

Wow

Saw IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT; went very long about the way in which attempts to separate the "story" and "quality" of a film from context and metatext are doomed to fail. I rarely say I'm "happy" with what I write on LetterBoxd because that ain't the point, bit I'm unusually happy with this.

A story of an icon. A story of changing times and media. Read @dagscott.bsky.social in STEVE JOBS MONOGRAPH, coming soon!

/r/colorgrading in a nutshell

Revisited Heaven's Gate for the first time in a couple of decades.

It will never not bug me when I see period pieces not even bother to hide the fact that they're using digital projectors to double for film projectors. See THE BRESLAU MURDERS, in which they use a modern 1.78:1 screen and projector and don't even bother to matte off the black padding.

Used this as an opportunity to write a piece I had been longing to find an excuse to write for years and years: a brief history of Danny Boyle's use of digital cinematography. Out soon!

Some personal news 📚 10 years ago today, Steve Jobs (2015) was released. This year, I am launching a book: a work of 8 writers, analyzing it piece by piece, to appreciate the film as greater than the sum of its parts. Sign up is now open to find out when you can own a copy of STEVE JOBS MONOGRAPH.

A shot I stole while interviewing Frederick Elmes for @viffest.bsky.social

Rewatching THE PHANTOM THREAD and I *knew* I recognized that hotel.

I liked it

I'll be hosting a talk with cinematographer Frederick Elmes (BLUE VELVET / WILD AT HEART / ERASERHEAD / HULK / PATERSON / FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER, among many others) at VIFF on October 8th!

I have been alerted to the fact that this is currently what emerges when you Google the lyrics to 'Born to Run'.

Thinking about the common response media criticism that "art's effect on the audience is subjective and down to individual preference". It tends to be a means of arguing that we shouldn't make declaratives saying people who like something or wrong or that less work like it should be made. thread 🧵

Finally saw THE LADY AND THE DUKE, closing one of my final outstanding Rohmer blind spots. Fascinating as an early digital work.

2 Hours of Jordan Cronenweth footage just leaked!?!?!

First contemporaneous update to my digital list since 2023.

Probably my frontrunner for best-cinematography-of-2025 at this point. Holy moly. I genuinely didn't think Boyle had it in him.

Went on Tim Brayton's podcast to talk the restoration and new Arrow release of THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY, and the state of film preservation on home video as a whole. Ritrovata, AI "upscaling", and Wong Kar-Wai all make appearances. The mini-media tour continues!

Friend of the Lubitsch show Paul Cuff invited me to post a guest entry on his (terrific, essential) silent movie-centric blog to delve into the new (and fantastically exciting) discoveries surrounding THE STUDENT PRINCE IN OLD HEIDELBERG (1927). Things are happening!

It has a trailer! Only 42 days! Holy moly!

I stopped by @damnfoolcrusade.bsky.social's Youtube channel to discuss the new Arrow 4k releases of Sergio Leone's DOLLARS trilogy. There's nobody better than Spencer in the home video technical criticism space, and we had a terrific conversation.

Finally made the damn 21st century list. Chronological. Fifteen films from this century that I personally value, because three rows formats better than two.

Spat some bile about THE OCEANGATE DISASTER and the state of modern infodocs. Also: split diopters.

Finally saw the new Wes! Brief thoughts on Delbonnel and the singularity, mostly:

THE STUDENT PRINCE IN OLD HEIDELBERG: the Live.Die.Repeat of its era.

Some extremely speculative tinting...

So: uh, they uploaded a MOMA restoration of THE STUDENT PRINCE IN OLD HEIDELBERG to the Bundesarchiv, and it turns out it's a Czech-version-of-SUNRISE-level different cut than the Photoplay version. Different takes. Whole beats rearranged. Pacing changes. This is wild. (Inset = Photoplay)