Raiders of the Lost Ark: The IMAX Edition!
Just came back from seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark myself. It was a very good presentation overall.
The quality was hampered by the inherent imitations of 1980's 35mm film stock, but no bad post-processing prevented it from reaching its full potential. Grain was intact, though there seemed to be one shot I noticed (a transition to a composite), which had DVNR freezing grain; it's the shot that transitions from the plane to the first map, by the way.
Soft-focus shots were emphasized by the IMAX upconversion process. Strangely enough, the black (too light) and saturation (too much) levels seemed to be off for the first few minutes (jungle sequence); I wonder if this is a by-product of Spielberg brightening it. The rest was fine though. The most spectacular shots, for me, were the ones in the streets of Cairo: wonderfully vivid and detailed.
I wasn't too blown away by the audio, like some others here. It was an average mix: nothing miraculous. That may have been because the IMAX I went to didn't have a good sound system.
However, important note...
Trooperman said:
There was only one thing wrong- George Lucas apparently snuck in the CGI shot of the truck going over the cliff in the chase. When I saw that I was livid. It took me about 5 minutes to get over it.
In the presentation I watched, I saw the original non-CGI'ed shot. Sorry, man, don't know what you saw, but, I'm about 80% sure that it was the original shot in the IMAX presentation. I noted it, since the background looked "crinkly"/"folded"/1980s-fake. The truck also stuck out like a composite and wasn't blended like in the CGI version. Though, the shot did seem like it was re-timed. That threw me off, for a second, since the new color timing more resembled the yellowish, less reddish timing of the CGI version. Has anyone else seen the CGI shot at their IMAX showings?
The establishing shot of Washington D.C. also looked extremely blurry and computerized compared to the surrounding shots and I suspect it may have been CG altered too.
Again, Trooperman, sorry, but I have to disagree with you there. Like Silverwook said, it may have been from another film. It looks like very dupey stock footage to me, rather than a CGI enhanced shot. It may have been DVNR'ed then re-grained. The grain structure was weird on that one.
In conclusion, I give it my top recommendation. My TOP RECOMMENDATION.
10 out of 10 boulders rolling at you