Every week on Cinebuds sponsored by Joe Wilde Garage Doors, Kristopher Pollard from Milwaukee Film and Radio Milwaukee’s Dori Zori review movies, tell you which ones are showing in our city and talk with the people who help bring them to the big screen.
Music has vinyl. Literature has hardcover editions. Movies have the 70MM format.
Used in decades past for sweeping epics like Lawrence of Arabia and 2001: A Space Odyssey, the preferred presentation of film purists has found modern boosters in luminaries like Quentin Tarantino and — more relevant for this episode of Cinebuds — Christopher Nolan.
Booking the British-American director wasn’t really an option for a little-podcast-that-could like ours. So when we decided to combine our review of The Odyssey with some insight to the 70MM format, we tracked down two ideal local guests: Milwaukee Film technical manager Kelsey Parks and projectionist Spencer Tye.
The organization’s Oriental Theatre is one of just two locations in the state of Wisconsin capable of unspooling a 70MM film (the other is the Marcus Majestic Cinema of Brookfield), and our guests revealed exactly how big of an undertaking that is — literally. The Odyssey requires five reels to cover its 172 minutes, with the heaviest one tipping the scales at nearly 50 pounds.
Before you feel too bad about Kelsey and Spencer’s backs, spare a thought for the folks working at the 41 global locations capable of showing the movie in Nolan’s true preference: 70MM IMAX. Collectively, those prints are roughly 10 miles long and weigh around 550 pounds.
While our friends from Milwaukee Film didn’t need to rent a forklift for its 70MM screenings of The Odyssey, which continue through Aug. 5, just about everything about the undertaking required special attention. Staff set up lawn chairs and camped out to ensure they didn’t miss the FedEx delivery (can’t exactly leave those reels on the porch), and the presentation itself requires manual changeovers every 35 to 40 minutes with perfectly timed transitions so the audience can stay immersed in the story.
Aside from the technical calisthenics, we get into the quality of the movie itself, with Kpolly carrying much of the load since Kelsey and Spencer admitted that their duties in the booth make it tough to ingest The Odyssey like your average audience member. Our bearded Cinebud came in as a Nolan agnostic with “mid-level expectations” and wound up so engrossed that the nearly three hours zipped by, aided by the director’s aesthetic choices (like the giant animatronic cyclops) and several standout performances (John Leguizamo’s in particular).
Fittingly for a review of The Odyssey, we packed a lot into this episode and hope you find time to enjoy the whole thing, which is available via the player at the top of the page or wherever you enjoy your podcasts.
