Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 12 September

Stop Making Sense (Demme, 1984) is screening at IMAX Queensgate tonight

This recommendation is of limited specific utility to most as I suspect this screening is already sold out, but – the new 4K restoration of Stop Making Sense, Jonathan Demme’s masterpiece concert collaboration with Talking Heads, will be getting a wider release in local cinemas from 22 September.

Tonight’s screening is a bit special, though, because it is for IMAX screens only – 160 across North America alone – and it includes the special post-screening Q&A from the Toronto Film Festival featuring the first appearance together of all four band members for 21 years.

My seats are in Row B – close enough to hide in David Byrne’s oversized suit pocket – and I am looking forward to hearing what the restoration has done for the already tremendous sound mix. If you are one of the many people who had the SMS soundtrack in their collection, you’ll know what I mean.

Cinema sound systems are still the closest we can get to the live sound experience. The guy who restored the Elvis Presley concert film, Elvis: That’s the Way It Is told me that the sound at Wellington’s Paramount, which I was managing at the time, was the best he’d ever heard. That was because we had a live music PA for our front and centre channels rather than cinema amps and speakers.

If you were ever lucky enough to look behind the screen at the Paramount you would have seen stacks of speakers, like a concert setup. Such a loss …

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If you can’t wait to see Stop Making Sense in cinemas once again, you can rent the previous restoration at AroVision.

Further Reading

At RNZ Widescreen, I’ve recommenced my quixotic quest to watch the top 50 films in the Sight & Sound critics’ list of the greatest films of all time and just posted a piece about the 45th-equal title, Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon.