Luminosity Explained

I watched “Project Hail Mary” (see: yesterday’s review) at my preferred theater, the Davis, a three-screener nestled one neighborhood over from mine and unaffiliated with any of the chain monoliths. They are mostly a first-run place, but they host repertory screenings too, like 1995’s “Party Girl” this Thursday. As such, they showed a trailer of it prior to “Project Hail Mary” and though I watched Parker Posey’s indie classic several times on VHS back in the day and again at some point on DVD in the current century, I have never seen it on the big screen. When the preview transitioned from its opening image of Posey walking down a New York street to a close-up of Posey, oh my god, reader, it was like a solar flare; I practically put my hands in front of my face to shield myself from the intense silver screen radiation. 

The “Party Girl” trailer was not on 35mm, alas, and so absent that glorious crackle, but still, as a 4K restoration, it looked like 35mm film and served as a revelatory contrast against the ensuing “Project Hail Mary” and its digital cameras. That “Party Girl” trailer was so much more tactile and lifelike even if, simultaneously, it went to show how putting a close-up of a lifelike image on the big screen transformed lifelike into larger than life. It reminded me of 20 years ago when I saw “Casablanca” on the big screen for the first time at The Music Box and that first close-up of Ingrid Bergman lit to look like an angel (you know the one I’m talking about) epitomized the notion of movie stars as flickering gods. “Project Hail Mary” might have specifically been filmed for IMAX to render it as big as possible, but those images of Tau Ceti and the far reaches of the Milky Way felt less celestial than the Queen of the Indies in close-up.