Director’s Epic Find for New Western

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Director’s Epic Find for New Western
Classic Movie Look: Scene from ‘The Hateful Eight.’

At a time when more and more Hollywood films are made using digital technology, Quentin Tarantino is staying old school – more than a half-century old, in fact.

The double Oscar winner’s upcoming western, “The Hateful Eight,” set to be released Christmas Day, was filmed using the same lenses that shot iconic 1959 Charlton Heston epic “Ben-Hur.”

“It’s not the same types of lenses – they used these actual lenses on ‘Ben-Hur,’” the filmmaker said at Comic-Con, the San Diego pop-culture fest that wrapped up last week. “They only made one set of them.”

He discovered the historic Ultra Panavision lenses – also used on other classics “Battle of the Bulge” and “How the West Was Won” – on a visit to Panavision’s Hollywood headquarters and decided he had to have them to give his next film an epic look.

He also plans to show the film in old-style projection only, at least during its initial release in select cities, and accompany it with playbills, an intermission and other classic touches.

“The thing I don’t like about digital projection is it’s just HBO in public. By losing film projection, we’ve already ceded too much ground to the barbarians,” he said, apparently referring to those who are indifferent about the beauty and quality of film. “I didn’t work 20 years to see diminishing returns. That’s not the movie industry I signed up for.”

– Sandro Monetti

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