Before heading to home video, Final Cut gets a brief theatrical run so you can watch it the way God and Director Francis Ford Coppola intended: on a huge screen in a dark room with no ability to hit pause and escape. Many theaters are also showing it on Sony's cutting-edge 4K Laser Cinema Projectors, which only hit the market about a year ago. Although most cinema projectors are already 4K, the 4K Laser replaces the xenon bulbs used by most projectors with a longer-lasting, brighter, and more-consistent laser.
I hadn't seen Apocalypse Now all the way through since Redux in 2001, and I'd never seen a movie in 4K Laser or even heard those words put together before. So I leapt at the opportunity to see the movie again in a newer fidelity. And not only did I get to see Final Cut at the Alamo Drafthouse LaCenterra just outside Houston, but manager Robert Saucedo and projectionist Noah Fife were generous enough to show me their Sony 4K Laser. And while the 4K Laser may lack the old-school romance of Alamo Austin's 70mm projector, I learned plenty about modern digital cinema presentation.
