Film | by Shane “Shanegri-La” Hnetka
Quentin Tarantino’s next film is reportedly about the Manson Family murders. The movie — untitled and still in the early stages — would be Tarantino’s second-last before retirement, assuming he sticks to his vow to quit after his 10th film. There are very few filmmakers around like Quentin Tarantino, so even the rumour of an upcoming project is cause for excitement.
Sask Max Attacks
There’s something awesome about having one of the world’s last remaining IMAX film projectors in Regina. Changing technology means that almost all IMAX theatres use digital projectors, which are less hassle. The nice thing for us is that Christopher Nolan likes to screen his movies on film instead of digital, and since Nolan shot his latest using IMAX cameras, we get to see Dunkirk projected on the big, big screen through real film — the way the director prefers it be seen.
Even better: Dunkirk is about 70 per cent IMAX footage, and that means this story about the daring rescue of close to 400,000 Allied soldiers should look freaking spectacular on Regina’s best big, big screen.
Lost Footage
Frank Capra will always be remembered as a filmmaker who specialized in screwball comedies and feel-good tales like It’s a Wonderful Life. But 80 years ago, he made something quite different: a fantasy-adventure film called Lost Horizon. This very cool 1937 is set during the 1935 Chinese revolution. The story: several people fleeing China board a plane, but it gets hijacked en route and crashes in the Himalayan mountains. There, the survivors discover the mythical city of Shangri-La.
Last year, Lost Horizon entered the U.S. Library of Congress’ National Film Registry to be preserved as a movie that’s “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.” Well, at least a version of it did — Capra’s original cut was around six hours, but he trimmed it to 132 minutes for theatres. It was later chopped further, and sadly, much of the footage has been lost.
Since the 1970s, there have been attempts to reconstruct Lost Horizon but until recently at least seven minutes were still missing from the 132-minute cut. Now, another minute has been found and added, and we’ll see it when Sony releases a high-definition, 4K restoration of Lost Horizon in October.
It will be very cool to see Lost Horizon a little more complete and looking better than ever!
Shane Hnetka is a made-in-Saskatchewan film and comic book nerd.
