Phil Oye

I saw Finding Nemo tonight and I have to say that I was pretty impressed. All of the Pixar movies (A Bug’s Life, Toy Story, etc.) are all pretty good as are the PDI movies (Shrek, Antz, etc.). Finding Nemo definitely fit in well with the others. Funny, good story, and the animation was superb. Plus, the story was partly set in Sydney, Australia which made Jeni and I enjoy it even more.

The interesting thing was that I was able to catch it in a theater that uses digital projection. All I can say is: “Wow”. No scratches, no debris, no reel changes, plus really sharp focus. The colors seemed a little saturated, but that was probably due to it being an animated movie or (possibly) mis-calibration.

We saw the movie on a small-ish screen so it wasn’t a true test of the resolution. I read that when Phantom Menace came out that there were quite a few complaints about poor resolution (about a thousand lines). Apparently, the current resolution is 2048 lines, or slightly better than HDTV. That is certainly pretty good, but when presented on a giant screen, you’re going to notice the lines. Apparently, 35mm film is up around 4000 lines.

So we’re not quite ready to pronouce the death of film. Even so, I definitely need to see a live action movie using the current technology of digital projection. Eventually, they’ll get to 4000 lines—I can’t wait.