Raiders of the Lost Ark

[Geoff Jones]

I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark at the Sloans Lake Alamo Drafthouse in Denver at 10:25 last night in Auditorium 1.

They projected the new 4k remaster, and it looked and sounded terrific. This was my first visit to the Sloans Lake location. Auditorium 1 is decent, with a constant height screen that looks close to 50 feet wide. The rest of the screens there range from too small to ridiculously small.

Raiders of the Lost Ark holds up great at 40, but of course, it isn't the years, honey, it's the mileage.

[Frank Cox]

I played Raiders here about a year back, during the great movie drought of 2020. I quite enjoyed it myself, but didn't get many people out to see it. I also played Jaws and Jurassic Park and a few other old movies that I never thought I'd actually be playing in my theatre. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much of a demand for that sort of thing around here so I won't be doing it any more unless I run out of movies again.

It was something to do for the week and I enjoyed those movies myself, so there is that.

[Mike Blakesley]

We played Raiders during the Great 2020 Coronapocalypse Pandemic Sars-Cov-20 Movie Shortage too, and it did pretty well for us. I think out of all the oldies we played it did about 4th place business in terms of attendance.

Of the old movies we played, the one that put the most butts in the seats for us (which I never would have predicted in a million years) was "Hocus Pocus," which we played right around Halloween.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I guess that 2020 was a bit of a wonky reference, but I do see quite a market for "classics" on the big screen. It may not exist in any market, but there definitely is some strong nostalgic drive there to experience those movies again on the big screen.

What I've seen myself though, is that such a thing needs a while to get a following. You literally need to build an audience. Then, it's still often difficult to judge what entices your audience. For example, I was a bit flabbergasted that a rerun of The Big Lebowski actually sold out on a mid-week evening...

[Geoff Jones]

You literally need to build an audience.

One good way to do that is to make sure the classics are always on the largest screen in the building. Give your audience an experience that blows away anything they might have at home.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I remember when it was re-released back around 2012 and it looked just horrible. So bad in fact that I got up and walked out. The color changed scene to scene, some scenes were washed out, and the effects also looked super obvious like they were some sort of cheaply done effects. I'm just glad I did not pay to see it back then. I had a mint 35mm print of it back in the 1990's and the 35's looked very good. So I look foreword to seeing this 4K version at some point.

[Mike Blakesley]

Seems like we played it from a Paramount DCP (either that, or I converted it from a recent blu-ray). Whatever, I thought it looked really good.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Seems like we played it from a Paramount DCP (either that, or I converted it from a recent blu-ray). Whatever, I thought it looked really good.

I just have an older DVD, and it looks better than what I saw in 2012. The live action stuff looked ok, but the effects looked sick. There was also color shift in some scenes like Star Wars Special edition had,.as though the internegative or what ever element they took it from had been really neglected.

[Jon Dent]

Of the old movies we played, the one that put the most butts in the seats for us (which I never would have predicted in a million years) was "Hocus Pocus," which we played right around Halloween.

That movie is a genuine cult hit. For the life of me I can't figure out why.