"When our resident VistaVision evangelist Jim Hemphill carefully broke down each and every format, I confess I expected his guide would end any debates, full-stop. VistaVision is obviously the superior format, right? (That's a short way to note it's my own preference.) Well, perhaps in an ideal world in which the super-sized format was available to all audiences. And we sure-as-shootin' don't live in an ideal world, and VistaVision prints of PTA's latest masterpiece are only available in four venues around the world."
"VistaVision is the greatest of all the widescreen processes the studios tried out to compete with television in the 1950s - it has the highest resolution without any of the downsides of formats like CinemaScope, Super-35, etc. - but because of its costs and complexity it was ultimately phased out in favor of cheaper and inferior systems."
Paul Thomas Anderson's tenth film "One Battle After Another" is being released in multiple premium exhibition formats. VistaVision offers the highest resolution among widescreen processes and avoids the common downsides of CinemaScope and Super-35. VistaVision was historically phased out because its costs and complexity outweighed studio incentives for cheaper systems. Prints of the film in VistaVision are extremely limited, available at only a handful of venues worldwide. The limited distribution requires audiences to choose between superior image quality and practical access, producing divergent personal preferences rather than a single consensus.
Read at IndieWire
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