Cinerama Hollywood

Also getting evening one-shot screenings at the Dome: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (March 3), Raging Bull (March 10), Aliens (March 13), Back to the Future (March 24) and Say Anything (March 27).

You guys are missing my point because you can’t see past your blind hatred of Twilight. It isn’t about what’s not playing in the Dome, it’s about what is. Chris, have you seen any 3D in the Dome? It’s terrible. That huge curved screen is horrible for 3d, but Arclight doesn’t care (again, despite numerous complaints from viewers). Prometheus used 2 projectors for 3D and the entire right and left quarters of the screen were completely misaligned and impossible to watch (and this also happened with every 3D film to play in there since Avatar). To finally fix the problem, they removed one of the projectors and Amazing Spiderman (while eliminating the ghosting/misalignment) was so dark it was equally unwatchable. I watched most of the movie with the glasses off because it was the lesser of two evils.

Chris, with your hatred of “Lie-Max” can you not see my frustration in a theater that talks all about how presentation quality is their primary goal, yet doesn’t care that the quality of 3D in the Dome is probably one of the worst in the country, yet they continue to force 3D over 2D because fools like me are so in love with the Dome that they keep hoping this time will be different. So yes… Life of Pi: DOME WORTHY. Life of Pi 3D: NOT EVEN CLOSE. But you can’t charge $3.50 extra per seat with the enticement of seeing something at the Dome if you just show 2D.

I’d actually suggested many times to them that the Dome offer 1 or 2 2D showings of film on opening weekends for people who love the Dome but hate 3D in there (even if it’s the late show Saturday night). They steadfastly refuse. They claim it’s because the studios won’t allow them to, despite the fact that theaters like the Ziegfeld in NY and Grauman’s have done exactly that. No, it’s really because they know people will actually flock to the 2D over the 3D and they don’t want to give people what they really want.

Trust me, I love Arclight. I’ve been a member since they re-opened in 2002. I’ve seen more films there than any other theater, but I miss that Arclight. The new Arclight is more concerned with branding itself and becoming a chain with retro-fitted shoe-boxes that don’t really follow the high standards set by Hollywood. They’d rather do pointless Facebook polls about popcorn preferences than actually addressing customer grievances. That’s not the Arclight I fell in love with, though.

Pulling Twilight out of the main house to put it in two smaller houses allows them to schedule twice as many shows, giving patrons a larger choice of showtimes. The Arclight has much higher standards than most of the other chains like AMC. There are not many theaters left that can run 35mm 70mm and digital. Of course there is always someone who will bitch and complain.

Because Arclight isn’t what they were 10 years ago when they started. At the birth of Arclight, they were about premium presentations and being a place where movie fans could congregate. Now (and ever since they opened all of the other Arc"LIGHTS" (Sherman Oaks, Pasadena, Beach Cities, La Jolla), they’ve become nothing more than a slightly upscale chain. While they have a historic screen in the Cinerama Dome, they instead insist on using it to extort 3D surcharges (when 3D looks TERRIBLE in there) and would rather run Resident Evil:Retribution 3D for 40 people on a Monday night than try and run something unique and worthy of that screen. I saw a special 35mm screening of The Fly in the Dome a few years ago with Cronenberg doing a Q&A afterwards (on, I think, a Tuesday night) and it was sold out (or nearly). But now, anytime they show Raiders or Ghostbusters or E.T., they show it in one of the standard auditoriums. Occasionally they do good work and have a Cinerama marathon (which, from what I could tell, was EXTREMELY successful) or the run of Kubrick movies they did not too terribly long ago, but for the most part they’ve been abusing what that screen could/should really be.

A seat is bought for each performance and can be purchased online or at the box office. It is first come first serve and one can book far in advance. The ticket can be printed out at home allowing you admission so need to even go to the box office. It is worth the extra couple of dollars to get the seat you want and not have to fight long lines and pushy teenagers.

Agreed Flix70. Reserved seats in the Dome are the best thing ever. I have 2 specific locations I like to sit and reserved seating insures I have the seats I want without having to wait (sometimes hours) to get them. When we went to Grauman’s for the final Harry Potter (and this was before they moved to reserved seating there) we arrived around 9:30 for the midnight show and were already down Hollywood Blvd and around Orange. When we were finally let in, there was row after row of great seats covered with long Harry Potter scarves because 2 or 3 people were staking claim to nearly entire rows for friends that hadn’t arrived yet. My friend and I (who, again, both arrived 2+ hours early were relegated to the back corner, second from last row. I’ve NEVER, in the 100+ times I’ve been to the Arclight, had a bad seat there. Not once. To me, that’s why reserved seating is so great.

I like reserved seating. It just doesn’t guarantee you a seat, it guarantees your seat. I’m sure everyone has a favorite place to sit in a theater, especially at the Dome. Reserved seating guarantees my seat remains my seat.

I agree we’ve lost the pageantry of going to the movies. I do think, however, the Dome is the only theater in town offering some of that lost experience. Their curtain stays closed, we’re treated to classic film scores before the show and with the exception of trailers, there’s no on-screen advertising. For that, I’d pay a premium price every time.

It may be just my opinion, but “reserved seats” as used today does not carry the same cachet as it did in the roadshow era, especially when everything else about the today’s showings are quite ordinary – no screen curtains, no overtures, no intermissions, no exit music, no souvenir books, etc. The notion has lost much of its prestige.

The only advantage to having a reserved seat these days is that it assures you a seat at a special or likely-to-be-crowded showing. One pays a premium price but that does not always translate to a premium experience either in terms of the film or the ambiance. I have paid for a reserved seat tickets lately only to find the theater three-quarters empty.

I do not know of any on-line list that shows all reserved seat engagements in the LA area, regardless of format. The Coate/Kallay lists I cited above show all 70mm showings (regardless of any particular 70mm process; it also includes films exhibited in 70mm even if they were 35mm blowups) that they could identify; there is a list for each year from 1955 through 2012. If the film was shown on a reserved-seat basis, this is noted within the list for each individual year in addition to the theater showing the film and other data.

The Wikipedia article on films exhibited on a roadshow basis has a lengthy list of films shown that way from the 1910’s through the 1970’s. It does not indicate which of these were specifically shown a roadshow basis in LA, but I am sure that as the movie capital of America, I would suspect that many, if not most of them, were. Certainly there were 35m films run on roadshow basis in NYC and LA that did not get this treatment elsewhere, but it may not be always easy to identify if a particular film was run on a two-a-day roadshow basis in any particular city unless one is able to check newspaper archives or releasing studio records.

Looking at the lists compiled by Coate and Kallay at the FromScripttoDVD.com website, I noted at least two: “Camelot” (run began 11-02-67) and “Paint Your Wagon” (run began 10-23-69). The list includes only those films presented in 70mm, so it would not include any 35mm film shown on a reserved seat basis there during those nine years.

I also attended the Festival and it was a wonderful experience watching the original films restored and presented in digital showed us that digital is good and new and glorious adventures are still to come, Watching “the Brothers Grimm” brought me to tears at times it was just wonderful, Listening to the laughter during Mad Mad continues the joy of a full theater – you become part of the movie and “This is Cinerama"
and "in the Picture” being with the guys that we’re there when it started and watching the new film one simple word describes the presentations and the Festival “JOY” to John, Dave, the best crew in the booths and the Management and staff of Pacific and the Arclight Cinema’s THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU

Thank you John Sittig for the fantastic Cinerama Festival this week. I attended This is Cinerama on Sunday night and just got home from seeing IAMMMMW in 70mm. Sunday was sold out and tonight was close it it. It was fantastic to see these great films (well ok, TIC is not that great, but it is fun) presented how and where they should be shown!

It was announced Sunday that you will be retiring, and I wanted to personally thank you for decades of the best projection and sound possible! Thank you for your dedication and hard work on restoration so people like myself in 2012 can actually see Cinerama movies in 3 strip Cinerama! Some of my most treasured memories happened on your watch at the Dome over the past few decades, and I wish you much happiness in your retirement!

When I first saw TIC in Boston in 1960, the projectionist dropped a hinged sephia filter in front of the lens when that segment came up and quickly removed at the seqment end. Those segments had been photographed in black @ white in late 1949.