“Watching my children and friends look at a computer screen with a movie — with the lights on, with interruptions, trying to multitask — is very depressing to people like me,” Stone said at a filmmaker panel discussion on the Las Vegas Convention Center floor. “Now, my daughter had [a movie on] a phone the other day. I found it, literally, sad. I feel like we are the last of the Mohicans, in a way.”
Read the entire article, complete with a short video (unfortunately without Mr. Stone’s commennts) at:
Consumer Electronics Show: Three directors ponder film’s future
At the Las Vegas expo, Oliver Stone, Michael Mann and Baz Luhrmann talk Blu-ray, 3-D and other technology, the integrity of classic films, and new ways of watching movies.
By Geoff Boucher, Los Angeles Times January 10, 2011
Stone made that fading-frontier analogy for the benefit of director Michael Mann, his generational peer who was sitting beside him and who had just shown the crowd an especially vivid sequence from the new Blu-ray edition of his 1992 epic, “The Last of the Mohicans.”
Mann chuckled, but Stone wasn’t smiling. As Hollywood moves further into the era of portability and pixels, the “Sunset Blvd.” words of Norma Desmond spring to mind: “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.”
The panel, which also included “Moulin Rouge!” director Baz Luhrmann, was a bit of an anomaly at the hardware-obsessed event. The discussion, organized by Fox Home Entertainment and moderated by this reporter, was focused on high-definition Blu-ray discs.
While all three of the famous perfectionists expressed enthusiasm for the format — Mann said “Blu-ray does a better job [than DVD] by a factor of about 12 or 13” — they voiced less certainty and even flashes of anxiety when the talk turned to other technology topics.
Luhrmann, 48, said he worries about the integrity of classic films when modern technology adds too much clarity to the images …
And Mann, who spent months preparing “Mohicans” for last year’s Blu-ray version, noted that despite his affection …
Still, Luhrmann said he is “fantastically optimistic” about technology in general and eager to see where 3-D leads to … Mann also said he would like to see what 3-D might bring to a carefully constructed dialogue drama as opposed to …
…
Although more and more entertainment is moving toward digital delivery, Stone said the Blu-ray format may be able to extend its life if people consider it a collectible.
“This is about film preservation … it’s the last hardware, the best of the last hardware. There won’t be any other hardware now,” he said. “It’s going to be on a digital phone or on a computer or on a TV screen.”
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times