Re: Projecting "The Searchers" digitally -- I feel your pain, brother. However, I wonder if what you saw as true digital projection or they were merely projecting the new DVD. There's a pretty dramatic difference.
I'm no fan of digital projection of movies shot on film, even though it can be acceptable, depending on how it's done. (I've seen it look awful, and I've seen it look surprisingly good -- last year, I saw "Modern Times" projected digitally at UCLA and it looked surprisingly good.) However, today with more and more "films" being shot digitally, it gets more complicated because THOSE films actually look far crisper when projected digitally. Ideally, the theater of the future will have BOTH kinds of projectors. But, then things never happen ideally...