It was wonderful to see the half-century-old 2001: A Space Odyssey tonight at the Salle Debussy, and under such regal circumstances with such sterling company (Chris Nolan, Keir Dullea, Jan Harlan, Suzanne Fritz of Warner Bros. publicity) and with several high-perspective, hail-fellow-well-met critics in attendance — Owen Gleiberman, Peter Howell, etc.

But the film lacked the required needle-sharp detail (which is definitely there in the photographic elements) and it suffered from overly dark images with slightly muddy textures, not to mention that teal-blue sky when Moonwatcher smashes the bones and that gray face of Dave Bowman behind the space-helmet visor during the French chateau sequence at the very end. It proved once again that the myth of 70mm projection being the ultimate visual experience in a theatre is just that — a myth.

What we saw tonight was fine if you weren’t being too demanding, but it didn’t deliver anything close to the crisp detail and clarity of the 2007 Bluray version, and don’t even talk about the forthcoming 2001 4K Bluray, which will almost certainly blow everyone away.

Chris Nolan wanted us to experience the 2001 he fell in love with when he saw it at age 7 or 8 with his father in Leicester Square, and which he seems to truly believe is still the greatest way to experience Stanley Kubrick‘s epic. But digital technology has bypassed 70mm for the most part, and I’m sorry but 70mm photography and projection just isn’t the cat’s meow any more. It hasn’t been for some time. The 70mm myth has to be recognized for what it is — a dream, a notion that no longer applies, a celluloid nostalgia trip.

The absolute infinite blackness of space and the visual punctuation of each and every little star look wonderful, on the other hand. And the well-amplified digital sound, pumped by the Salle Debussy’s superb sound system, was great. And I loved that old 1968 first-run program that they reprinted and handed out tonight.

6:50 am Cannes update: The usual tut-tutters and harumphers commented that I’m still failing to understand the difference between quality-level 70mm celluloid projection vs. 1080p Bluray resolution on a 65-inch 4K HDR monitor. “Nice bullshit qualifying,” I replied. “You’re basically saying that Nolan’s 70mm celluloid 2001 can’t look as breathtakingly sharp or clean as the 2007 Bluray, but it’s better nonetheless. I’ve been watching films my entire life, and my eyes know when they’re truly satisfied and when they’re not, and I’m sorry if this displeases the 70mm purist crowd but my eyes want what they want. In my book, a little tasteful grain-scrubbing is a VERY good thing. The 2007 Bluray is perfect.”

After reading the mostly-non-negative reviews of Gaspar Noe‘s Climax, a Director’s Fortnight film which is screening at the Theatre du Croisette at 6:15 pm, I’ve decided to see it instead of the Chris Nolan-endorsed, non-restored version of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which begins at 6:45 pm at the Salle Debussy. It feels tepid and timid to choose a film I’ve seen 15 or 20 times over something new, provocative, challenging, etc.

What if I arrive at the Theatre du Croisette and come upon a line that is way, way too long to offer any hope of getting in? I’ll bail on the Noe, run down the Croisette to see the Nolan, and try to see the Noe tomorrow (it’s screening at two venues but probably without English subtitles).

5:20 pm update: The Noe line is long and winding and bordering on ridiculous, and I’m at the end of it. Where’s the cutoff point? At best I’ll snag a shitty seat in the balcony with my legs turning numb from a lack of blood circulation. I’m sticking with the Noe but with trepidation. At least I know I’ll get a decent seat for the Nolan because of my semi-elite press pass.

6:15pm: We didn’t make it. No room at the inn. After waiting and hoping for 70 minutes. So we speed-walked over to the Salle Debussy and caught Chris Nolan’s 2001.

Terrific — we all get to sit through some horrific fantasia courtesy of Danish provocateur Lars von Trier. The film is about a serial killer (Matt Dillon) honing his brutal art. What’s the Cannes Film Festival history regarding explicit warnings of this sort? These are posted on (a) a hard ticket for Tuesday (5.15) morning’s screening and (b) an official Cannes screening schedule:

Early this afternoon I caught a first-rate, highly recommended Ingmar Bergman doc, A Year In A Life, inside the Salle Bunuel. My plan was to emerge at 3:30 pm and step right into a pink-with-yellow-dot line for the 4 pm Chris Nolan discussion, set for the same venue.

Fuhgedaboudit. The outer lobby was mobbed, wall-to-wall bodies, limited oxygen. Access to the pink-with-yellow-dot line was blocked off, and a security guy told me to head downstairs. I flashed my pass and said, “But I’m here for the Nolan thing, and I’m a pink–with–yellow–dot press guy, which is almost as good as a white pass. Why can’t I just join the other semi-elites and wait in line?”

Sorry but you’re too late, there are too many others waiting, you’re not getting in, etc.

So I went back to the pad to write, read and fold laundry until it was time to line up for my next film, Thunder Road, which was market-screening on rue Meynardier at 8:30. But I got caught up in writing about 2001 and when I arrived at 7:50 pm, I was again told “sorry, you’re too late, line’s too long, you shoulda been here at 7 pm,” etc.

So I’m a free man in Paris tonight. I’m thinking of attending a Cinema de Le Plage screening of Jerzy Skolimowski‘s Le Depart (’67) with Jean–Pierre Leaud. It starts at 9:30 pm, which is when it starts to get dark here.

Midnight update: Le Depart is the worst Skolimowski film I’ve ever seen. Make that the only bad one. It’s a brisk mood comedy of all things. Jean-Pierre Leaud‘s acting could be so grating when he put his mind to it — his performance here is worse than his obnoxious filmmaker boyfriend of Maria Schneider in Last Tango in Paris, and that’s saying something.

Skolimowsky himself introduced Le Depart. “I made this film when I was very young,” he said, “and apparently it’s still watchable.”

From Cate Blanchett‘s speech on the steps of the Palais: “Women are not a minority in the world, yet the current state of the industry stays otherwise. As women, we all face our own unique challenges, but we stand together on these stairs today as a symbol of our determination and commitment to progress. We are writers, producers, directors, actresses, cinematographers, talent agents, editors, distributors, sales agents…all involved in the cinematic arts.”

Cate Blanchett speaks as the 82 women stand on the Palais’s steps #Cannes2018pic.twitter.com/lF0FJQZCIU

— Rebecca Lewis (@bexlewis361) May 12, 2018

The unrestored, original-elements Chris Nolan version of 2001: A Space Odyssey screens early tomorrow evening (6:45 pm) at the Salle Debussy. Remember that the trailer for this looked yellowish, teal-tinted and minus the sharpness found on the 2001 Bluray. If Nolan’s version looks yellow-teal on the big screen, bombs away.

Examine the 2007 Bluray version of Dave Bowman‘s face through his red space-helmet visor vs. the far less distinct Nolan version. Anyone who says Nolan’s is preferable needs to be hunted down by men in white coats right now.

2007 Bluray capture above; unrestored Nolan version below.

Nolan discussing his non-restored 2001 at the Salle Bunuel earlier today.

Remember what film restoration guru Robert Harris told me on 3.28.18 (“Not So Fast On That 70mm 2001 Mastering”): “The new 70mm print they’ll be showing in Cannes will not look like 2001 did in 1968. It can’t be an authentic recreation of how the film looked 50 years ago for any number of reasons. Color stocks, black levels and grain structure are different now, color temperature of the lamps has changed but can be adapted. They were using carbon arc lamps in ’68 and they aren’t now, and on top of everything else the film stock is different — the stock used for original prints was a stock that arrived back in 1962. And so the images [may] ironically look too clear.

“What they show may be beautiful, but they’re not working from the original camera negative, which has been badly damaged. They’re working from ‘new printing elements’ taken from the original negative, which basically means a fourth-generation print. All original prints were struck from the camera original. They won’t be using the original film stock that the original 2001 was printed on, which was Eastman 5385, a 1962 film stock, that had appropriate film grain to the way the film had been designed. So it’s not off the negative, they don’t have the original film stock, and they’re be making it off a dupe rather than using 4K or 8K files.

For those who never noticed or cared to: Compare Stanley Kubrick‘s Bronx patois in the below video to Peter Sellers‘ Kubrick-like speaking style in Lolita. Sellers copied Kubrick beat-for-beat and vowel-for-vowel (“Yuh daughtah”).

Bill Maher: “There are only two kinds of movies — the blockbuster…robots and monsters and superheroes…and movies like this [i.e., First Reformed] that I see in a hotel room.”

Ethan Hawke: “We’re all only as good as our time period…only as good as our community. Take One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. A great film and it was made by a studio, studio put it out in the malls, everyone went to see it, it’s got a sad ending but it got awards but…what, is it an art film? I don’t know if they would make that today.”

Maher: “They wouldn’t, they wouldn’t.”

Hawke: “It’s a strange thing. You more you feed people popcorn, the more they just want popcorn.”

Today (Saturday, 5.12) is relatively light with only three events (two films and an interview) on the schedule. At 1:30 pm (or 70 minutes from now) is a screening of Bergman — A Year in A Life at the Salle Bunuel. At 4 pm in the same venue Christopher Nolan will talk about this and that, but mostly, I presume, about the original negative, non-restored version of 2001: A Space Odyssey that he’s been promoting. Finally at 8 pm is a screening of Jim Cummings‘ Thunder Road at Les Arcades.

Late last night I saw Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra‘s Birds of Passage, an indigenous drug-dealing film which many Cannes critics have been creaming over. It’s been justly celebrated as a fresh nativist take on the Columbian drug boom of the ’70s and ’80s, using the perspective of the Wayuu culture. I appreciated this distinction, and all of that is fine.

But the dramatic theme is roughly the same we’ve been seeing in drug-dealing movies for decades, which is that (a) dealing will pollute your soul and (b) sooner or later anyone who seeks to profit from big-time drug dealing will wind up dead on the floor. Sooner or later all dealers form gangs and go to war with each other, etc. The principal Wayuu characters start out simple and pure and just looking to better their lives, and by the end they’ve all taken a bullet or several.

The perspective is interesting, but it’s basically the same bouillabaisse.

During the last third you’re saying to yourself, “Okay, everyone’s gonna die, this scourge will consume itself, the black birds of death are circling so let’s just get it over with….kill everyone, it’s late, I’d like to go home and catch some zees.”

I believed at first that the lack of English subtitles on last night’s print (the Spanish-language drama was shown with French subtitles) wouldn’t be a problem — I understood the gist of almost all the scenes. But after a while I began to feel irritated that I was missing out on countless particulars contained in the dialogue. I expect I’ll see it again someday with English subtitles, and then we’ll see what goes.