“You can get technical. You can talk about grain. You can talk about the depths of color registration. You can talk about the ‘sensuousness’ of film as compared to digital. But here’s the big mystery for me. There are films I’ve seen a dozen times that have always affected me emotionally, have devastated me, [but] just do not have the same effect on me when I see them projected digitally. I can’t explain that. It’s the same movie, the same story. But there’s something different. I am really struck by this. We react to these formats differently on an emotional level.” — Toronto Bell Lightbox senior programmer James Quandt talking to National Post‘s Calum Marsh.
Posted on 1.30.15: “Not so long ago I would have swooned at the idea of savoring a parade of black-and-white widescreen classics in their original celluloid splendor. Nobody is a bigger fool for this format than myself. Why, then, would I be ducking BAMcinematek‘s “Black & White ’Scope: American Cinema” (2.27 through 3.19), a 21-film series of widescreen monochrome masterpieces, if I was living in New York? Because 15 of the 21 are being shown in 35mm, and we all know what that means — dirt, scratches, pops, possibly too-dark illumination or murky images, occasionally weak sound, reel-change marks, etc. There’s just no romance left in film projection. That was then, this is now. Digital exactitude or nothing.”