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Comment by KozmoNau7 | Hacker News Reader

I've had the same experience with The Shining.

On my PC, it's a bit plodding and slow, but on the big screen, it's a completely visceral and intense experience like no other film I've seen.

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Lawrence of Arabia is supposed to be an immersive, "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant" epic historical drama film which won Best Cinematography. But I couldn't avoid constantly glancing at the time and my notifications, when I watched it on a smart watch screen that also displayed a bar across the top showing the time and my notifications.

I had a similar experience when watching this through the terminal (img to ascii conversion) on my headless server. It was too easy to get distracted by syslog events that were overwriting stdout from the video.

When I watched the movie via a video player made from Redstone, I didn't realize it at first, but the inexact color reproduction really subtracted nuance from the mood, and the fact that I had to run away from monsters every night really prevented me from mentally investing in the movie. This was all really subtle, but later on when I watched the movie in a big theater, I was amazed at the difference!

This post made my day, thank you very much!

I grew up around Washington DC which had some fine large screen theaters. One had a curved screen (the Uptown, IIRC, movies were all in 70mm format) so if you sat in the first few rows, the screen almost wrapped around you. IMHO, the only way to appreciate some of these great movies (2001, Lawrence of Arabia, How the West Was Won) is to see them on a large screen. IMHO, you just don't get to see how spectacular the cinematography is when you watch on a TV or a small screen theater. Unfortunately, most of the large screen theaters have disappeared.

Serious question: How is it possible to view Lawrence of Arabia on a smart watch?

I can only assume this was a joke. Either way, I laughed.

View extremely close with only one eye open.

Lawrence of Arabia showed in its original CinemaScope format is a totally different movie. I was mesmerized.

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