Greetings all,
As most of you know, this Friday Christopher Nolan’s epic will grace our biggest screens. This is the first film to be shot entirely in the IMAX format. To enable this, IMAX had to create a blimp to dampen the loud sound of the film as it passed through the camera. The blimp also had to have a mirror to help the actors see one another.
When the film opens, there will be many options to see. The ultimate experience would be the 70mm IMAX version, which in Dallas will only be shown at the Cinemark Theater. You can see the regular IMAX version at AMC Northpark, Mesquite, and the Cinemark. You can see it in 70mm film projection at the Angelika Theater, Cinemark, and the AMC Northpark. The 35mm version is at the Alamo and Texas Theatre. Any of these will be good.
There have been many adaptations of the Odyssey. There is a good podcast about the original text on The Daily, which you can hear here. For a completely different take on it, you could watch The Coen Brothers’ “Oh Brother Where Art Thou,” which you would need to rent from Apple TV or others. The title of that Coen Bros film comes from “Sullivan’s Travels” (which you can see on Criterion), a story about a wealthy film director who wants to make a film based on a nonexistent novel called “O Brother, Art Where Out Thou.” I would recommend seeing both of them.
There has been some discussion about the accents in the film. There is a vocal online contingent that would have preferred the characters to speak with English accents, which I think is insane.
I am grateful that big films that take big risks can still be made. In an era where so many people watch films on home screens, we need to gather together and share the epic experience and take ourselves away from our current drama.
Shooting in large formats usually to show us grand vistas and tell us an epic story. The film, “The Invite,” was shot on 35 mm film, which looks really good. But the entire film takes place in one apartment, which would traditionally be shot digitally. The film, directed by Olivia Wilde, was shot on film to give it a less stagey look, which works; it was also shot in sequence.
For the past two years, there has been a cool thing called “The Popcorn List,” a list of feature films that film-fest programmers love but have not received theatrical distribution. This week, the Texas Theatre is showing one of them. On Wednesday night, July 15, they are showing “Seeds” at 6:30 pm. It is a black-and-white film that offers a look into the lives of Black generational farmers, unveiling the challenges of maintaining a legacy and the value of land ownership. This is a really great documentary, and I applaud the Texas Theatre in showing this series.
Lastly, Spacy and $5flesh will present a double feature evening of “The Patron Saint of Roadkill” (directed by UTA alum Arin Spence) and “Dance Freak” (directed by Robby Rackleff and Alan Resnick) plus an open bar and live music after-party. It is on Sunday, July 19 at 6:30pm.
Next weekend, I will be in El Paso for the Plaza Classic film fest. If you are anywhere near there, I suggest you check it out.
Have a great week!
-Bart
Howdy,
The past few “blockbusters” have not been box office hits week after week. First Warner Bros DC movie “Supergirl” came out to bad reviews, then “Minions and Monsters” which is probably the best film in the animated franchise has been struggling to take off, and this past weekend Disney’s remake of “Moana.”
Less than a decade after the original animated film and two years after the animated sequel was reformatted for theaters (instead of the direct to Disney+ route) made only $43 million an “underwhelming debut” according to BoxOffice Pro. Everyone saw this failure coming in the weeks leading up to it, except for maybe Disney. Not only was no one yearning to see the princess of the ocean in real life, but especially not when it looks like this.
Joyhat@Joyhat512
@furious31630
1:29 AM · Jul 14, 2026 · 13.8M Views
463 Replies · 156 Reposts · 12.3K Likes
Will this weekend’s release of “The Odyssey” be able to set the box office on the right course for the rest of 2026? Christopher Nolan’s last film “Oppenheimer” not only swept at the Oscars with a Best Picture win the next year and also six others, but made $975 million worldwide. Those are unreal numbers for a three hour movie about the science of atomic bombs. Even in Japan, where the release was described as “uneasy” it was the best performing international movie of the year.
The opening weekend of “Oppenheimer” was of course helped by the Barbenheimer phenomenon where people would go see the very pink, woman-centric popcorn film back-to-back with the biopic where woman are sidelined “wife” and “mistress” and half the film is in black and white. This weekend is “The Odyssey” alone and with IMAX, 70 mm, 35 mm and more repeat viewings are sure to juice the numbers, whether or not the film is good. Social movie tracking app Letterboxd is offering a virtual punchcard to see all six. (There is one just called “Large Format”?)
At the Modern, we are not screening it in IMAX 70 mm, or screening it at all. But we will be showing a digital, regular 2D version of the new documentary “Peter Asher: Everywhere Man” about the music manager. Check out the trailer below and have a great week.
-Elijah
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