I went to see 5cm per second, and Paprika. Such a shame the question and answer session took so long that Paprika was going to start like 5 minutes after it, so I couldn't get anything signed - didn't have £25 for the artbook anyway so I'd have got the manga signed. But oh my god, Satoshi Kon is such a legend, I was on such a high last night after it was finished. Everything about Paprika is absolutely perfect, everyone must see it right away : ). As for 5cm per second, it was great, but there was this guy in front who blocked out the bottom left hand side of the screen, so I couldn't see the subtitles sometimes, but overall it was very enjoyable - once it got to part two of the story though, I didn't know what was going on... I'll have to see it again sometime.
I'd like to keep writing about how awesome Paprika is, but it'd take many pages and involve lots of nonsensical words.
As for the actual quality of the screening - I'm going to contact the BFI and see where the hell they got the film reel from - it was not as shakey as other films I've seen (Blockbuster films), but it kept going in and out of focus and had a constant bombardment of film artifacts (can't find a specific technical term), but basically it looked like the entire film reel had been dragged backwards through a bed of pins then had dirt and mud dropped on it (in chunks). Not that I'd let it impact enjoyment of such a marvelous film, I put it to the back of my mind - it was just very noticable, and I hope it isn't the same with Appleseed Ex Machina and Vexille - which I'm also going to see.
I don't even know if 5cm per second was in fact projected from a film reel, it had the ADV logo come up and was free of any kind of movement/film artifacts, but the quality was absolutely superb, way above DVD standard, but the subtitles were bright yellow. So I assume they played it from the master tape [or any of these "SD and HD - VHS(PAL/NTSC/SECAM/), DVD, Beta SP, Digibeta, Quvis cinema player
] ( that ADV had (the ADV man was there with a friend), I didn't notice any video artifacts what-so-ever, so I'd assume it was the Digibeta master tape, I haven't a clue what frame rate it was played at though. Putting that aside, it was very enjoyable so I'm not complaining.
Just anyone who hasn't already seen it - GO BUY PAPRIKA!!!
I wonder how many years it'll be until the next Satoshi Kon movie. (And I might go all out to try and get a Blu-ray player, just to see Paprika in HD).
