Ziegfeld Theatre
141 W. 54th Street,
New York,
NY
10019
141 W. 54th Street,
New York,
NY
10019
131 people
favorited this theater
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Thank you for adding “Zieg”.
You’ve earned your salary from whatever movie company you work publicizing movies/
Who cares? Don’t you have anything better to do? Are you 12?
This is a site about movie theatres.
Ahem! “HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3: SENIOR YEAR” opens at the Zieg this fall.
If you don’t even mention the name of the theatre, The Ziegfeld, your leaving comments on the wrong page.
Imagine what would happen if Disney decided to make one of those 60’s Annette Funicello/Frankie Avalon “Beach Party” movies and you have “High School Musical”.
Benjamin Button looks interesting from the preview I saw. Brad Pitt regresses from old age to his youth or something along those lines and Cate Blanchett is his co-star. It looks like an interesting pairing and story. HS Musical 3? I’ll pass. Don’t know much about the others. I bet the Ziegfeld will get DP versions of those movies, if not most.
According to the Clearview Cinemas website, there are a few Fall/Holiday flicks coming to the Ziegfeld:
RIGHTEOUS KILL (September 12)
HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3: SENIOR YEAR (October 24)
QUANTUM OF SOLACE (November 7)
BOLT (November 26)
THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON (December 19)
Hope you guys reply to my comment. Thanks!
While Mamma Mia isn’t nearly as polished as last years Hairspray I still thought it was a lot of fun!
Sand Pebbles Sept. 6th….I have the DVD and haven’t opened it yet, I was gonna watch it tonight actually, but now I’m gonna to see it on the big screen…how bout it Pete? what other tidbits can you give us about the next BigScreen series????
Damn! I’m suffern ‘cause I can’t get to Suffern! Ziegfeld Man, if you haven’t watched the DVD yet, wait to see THE SAND PEBBLES there — if you can go.
Wow Pete – that’s a good one to start the season off right!
Ziegfeld Man –
Regarding Steve McQueen in “The Sand Pebbles”, keep September 6 open for a drive to the Lafayette Theatre in Suffern… :)
I thought there was an appealingly earthy rock-and-roll edge to his singing; at least it was all in key.
I’m convinced Brosnan’s bad singing was an intentional part of the show. At the climax of his first big solo number “SOS”, the orchestra started getting louder and drowning him out to the point where you could barely hear him anymore. That had to have been planned!
Pierce Brosnan gets the award for absolute worst singing in a leading role of a movie musical. This is the best they could come up with? Oy! :–)
Excellent post Jeff thsnks!
Thanks for the replies, guys. All of the above having been said, I’m very glad that Fox films from the era look as good as they do on DVD (check out the recent DVD of 1954’s GARDEN OF EVIL). I don’t know how Fox is saving it’s library — both chemically and digitally, I suppose — but after years of awful transfers, the studio seems to be turning things around in the last few years. Fox is my favorite studio — and I’m talking the pre-1970 Fox, not the modern one — so I care. I’m glad THE SAND PEBBLES (1966) and JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (1959) look as good as they do, and I’m hoping the upcoming Blu-ray of PLANET OF THE APES (1968) — my favorite film — will reflect positive restoration efforts despite the “Color by DeLuxe.”
Now, back to posts about what’s playing at the Ziegfeld….
The Technicolor process was a three strip B&W negative (with each negative recording the RED, GREEN, and BLUE) up to the 1950’s until Kodak came out with a monopack color negative film. After that they stopped using the 3 strip camera, and shot a single strip color negative. That negative was then separated photographically into 3 B&W printing masters (matrices) from which the 3 color dye transfer was made. A Technicolor print (dye transfer/IB Tech) isn’t technically a photographic print (it’s printed, just like you’d print the Sunday comics). The dyes Technicolor used, didn’t fade, and you could control the saturation level somewhat with different dye formations. IB Tech prints have proven themselves to stand the test of time for fade resistance. Most, if not all, color negatives had separation B&W masters made from them for archival purposes, but time hasn’t been kind to them either. Contrast differences, shrinkage, VS, and fade on the original negative (assuming the original negative even exists) has made restoration of many old films difficult and expensive.
Fox can share a dubious blame here too, I’m told when Kodak came out with their CRI stock (Color Reversal Intermediate) Fox transfered many original Technicolor 3 strip nitrate negatives to the CRI stock (creating a new “single” color negative), and then destroyed the nitrate originals. The CRI’s? Well, they faded in about 10-15 years. Many had no B&W separation masters made from them. Making new prints on those films will require extensive color correction, and with some it’s impossible.
There’s plenty of documentation out there online about our film heritage, and the mistakes that were made and confidence put in film stocks. Plenty of blame to spread around.
Sorry Rory I did not spend much time in the lab. I worked for Fox which, as Jeff pointed out, is where all the prints were made.
Both color and black and white prints were made there.
I did go down there on many ocasions having made a lot of friends who worked in the lab. I watched color timing done, negitive cutting and the sound recording room where the magnetic tracks were sounded on to the prints at high speed. I remember several small closet like screening rooms where every reel had to be run to test for quality and then have an ok sticker placed on the print. I recall thinking what a boring job that was running the same movie over and over all day long. Often just the same reel of a movie.
I later came to appreciate the problems with most Eastman stock prints and the problems with fading. Many studios used Eastman stock Deluxe, Warnercolor, Metrocolor etc. But they all used different bathes or washes making the color unigue from one another. All of them had the same problems with color fading. As Jeff said you really are hard pressed to find any prints from back then that are not faded to red or purple. Perhaps the original negatives did not receive the care they neeed. Only Technicolor which is an original positive instead of a negative has held up over the years.
Sorry to bore some of and take up space on the Ziegfeld page but I thought perhaps some of you would be interested
Deluxe was Fox’s in-house lab. They are also universally known as one of the worst labs of the studio labs. Metrocolor was another bad one. A lot of corners cut during washing.
Deluxe’s Eastmancolor prints were also some of the first to fade, and any remaining today are a glorious red. You also can’t say much for the negatives they processed either. Not that Eastmancolor wasn’t a good stock (well, it wasn’t), but there are still some Eastmancolor prints that are 30+ years old that while faded, still retain color in various degrees (some amazingly well), and the difference was in the processing. You won’t find anything that came out to Deluxe in the 50’s-70’s to have any color left.
“I worked at Fox in the 50s and Deluxe labs was in the same building, I seem to recall a large inventory of raw stock was always kept on hand.
posted by vito on Jul 17, 2008 at 3:48am”
This is why so many Fox films are “Color by DeLuxe.” I think the were part owners of the company, however I have no idea if the modern Twentieth Century Fox has any connection to the current Deluxe film labs (which has gone digital too and does a lot of DVD mastering) or if even the current Deluxe is the same company?
I’ve also read often that Deluxe film lab back in the 50s thru to the early 70s wasn’t the best lab, and more often than not their prints were notorious for fading, and even many of the original negatives to many Fox films and others have badly faded because they weren’t “fixed” long enough.
Know anything about this, Vito?
Rory
Hi Bob:
Totally agree-send your idea (along with any others for revivals) to Craig at Clearview. See a few posts up for his e-mail.
Best
Bill:
I was at the 1:45 PM and couldn’t agree with you more. A lot of fun and Meryl and the others are fabulous. The audience was really into it…and, may I add, the curtains closed and opened. A great Ziegfeld experience.
Best
Thanks, Bill, for your eye-witness account. Always welcome.
The Ziegfeld had to be the liveliest theater in the city tonight. The audience loved “Mamma Mia”. I was a little resistant to it at first, but ultimately it wore me down too. An old-fashioned good time at the movies.
I guess there’s nothing Meryl Streep can’t do. She even got a round of applause in the middle of one of her songs. The crowd wasn’t too kind to Pierce Brosnan when he attempted to sing, but somehow he looked like he knew he’d get that reaction and was in on the joke. It just added to the fun. A woman near me was dancing in the aisle with her kids during the closing credits. That could be a first for the Ziegfeld.
The sound system made the score sound great, as expected. Very big crowd, even though it’s not a Ziegfeld exclusive and is playing all over town, and there was a line of people waiting to get in for the late show (always a welcome sight).
Saps: I’ll be going there for “Mamma Mia” tonight (can’t see “The Dark Knight” at Lincoln Square IMAX till Thursday) so I’ll report on the show later.
We’re on opposite sides of this topic: I actually look forward to getting “12"s and "55"s in my mailbox, my two favorite NYC theaters.