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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Exactly a week ago I introduced “Planet of the Apes” and sadly now have to add this. May he rest in peace.
Statement by the Family of Charlton Heston
Saturday April 5, 11:24 pm ET
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., April 5, 2008 /PRNewswire/ — Legendary actor, civil rights leader and political activist Charlton Heston passed away today, at the age of 84. He died at his home with Lydia, his wife of 64 years, at his side. Mr. Heston was loved by his two children, Fraser Clarke Heston and Holly Heston Rochell, and his three grandchildren, Jack Alexander Heston, Ridley Rochell and Charlie Rochell.
The Heston family issued the following statement:
“To his loving friends, colleagues and fans, we appreciate your heartfelt prayers and support. Charlton Heston was seen by the world as larger than life. He was known for his chiseled jaw, broad shoulders and resonating voice, and, of course, for the roles he played. Indeed, he committed himself to every role with passion, and pursued every cause with unmatched enthusiasm and integrity.
We knew him as an adoring husband, a kind and devoted father, and a gentle grandfather, with an infectious sense of humor. He served these far greater roles with tremendous faith, courage and dignity. He loved deeply, and he was deeply loved.
Yea, and the Lafayette only charges $7 for a level of quality you can’t get in NYC for $14 at a flagship theater. How bizarre is that?
I also saw that print of APES in Suffern several years ago. It was spectacular.
Several years ago, the Lafayette in Suffern, New York ran the restored print of APES and it looked spectacular. This new print at the Ziegfeld was from a fading dupe negative, and had excessive grain.
It’s funny: I’ve seen reel to reel shows at the Lafayette for the past 5 or 6 years. Never once have I seen a missed changeover in their Big Screen Classics series, and the picture is also focused at the start of each reel. I never have to worry about a bad presentation at that showplace.
Oh yes, they use their curtains at every show too. The Ziegfeld could learn a few lessons from them!
I must correct my comment about the entire staff working that night being friendly. When I approached the manager about the focus problem, he seemed irritated, mis-informed and generally had the attitude that there was nothing they could do about it. All of the blame was on the “old reel to reel method” of presentation.
I can’t tell you how much that annoyed me, but I kept my cool and hoped for the best.
Vito; I also wonder if the missed changeover (coincidentally after the reel when I complained) was done on purpose.
The digital stuff I saw there that night, Trailers and commercials, looked great, but didn’t fill the entire screen that the later Panavision film projection did.
I hate to say this, because I’m a film man through and through. If the APES show I saw is the average quality level of their film presentation, maybe digital would be better? At the very least it would be in focus.
I must say though, the staff working that night (boxoffice, ticket taker and concessions) were extremely cordial. They welcomed me; asked if they could assist, and actually thanked me for attending the theater.
It’s too bad they had such an incompetent boob running the show!
The Bond films are all going to be digital transfers. They’ve already been shown in England. If you bought the remastered DVDs in the last year or so, I’d expect to see that level of quality-plus, projected on the big screen.
Make that 3 weeks.
I can only hope that lousy projectionist is not on duty, or has been transferred to some digital-only operation, when my favorite Bond film, “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”, plays the Ziegfeld in 2 weeks.
$14?!?!? That’s crazy….even more than in Rockaway. On their website, the ticket price is only $12, but on the online ticketing site, it’s actually 14. Seniors get $10, which is a lot of moola.
The more I think about this whole projection mess the more irritated I become.
A message to Craig from Clearview:
I know you read theses posts and I believe you owe it to the people who attend the classic movie showings to look into this.
As a professional projectionist with over 50 years in the booth under my belt, I can tell you with great authority that the people running the booth at the Ziegfeld are either up to no good or completely incompetent, either way they must be replaced. It is simply not possible for a professional projectionist to make a change over in a reel-to-reel operation and not notice the incoming reel is out of focus and worse yet not correct it. In fact, after complaints were made it was made worse. The same applies to the missed changeover, I am not buying it, and I think it was done deliberately. The man up there is a fool if he thinks for one moment those of us who know better can accept this outrage in a New York theatre, much less the Ziegfeld. For heavens sake, we can’t even get them to use the curtains, and please,“The curtain is broken"
is getting old.
Why deliberity? That’s simple, thy do not want to be bothered running reel-to-reel, and will stoop to any lengths to discredit the operation to avoid having to do it. They prefer the easy life of running a platter or a Digital presentation so as not to have to put in much effort. I can also tell you, the union must have plenty of projectionist who would jump at the chance to operate a show in that ole time format, they need to be found and put to work at the Ziegfeld then and put the current crew in the usher staff.
SHAME!
Yes, do indeed tell someone at Fox about this. It’ll be interesting to find out if anyone there even cares. Someone told me, during the first couple days that “Planet of the Apes” was showing that they thought the color balance of the movie looked too blue during the first reel, then a little warmer during the second, then better during the next, and so on. Well, that’s probably just the bulbs warming up during projection, but it shouldn’t be that way. Could be a badly color-balanced print, or it could be bad projection, but really is anything ever going to be perfect? It all starts with the quality of the source material used to make the print, and all I can say is Fox dropped the ball here. (Of course, this doesn’t have anything to do with projectors being out of focus, but I just need to vent here.) They should have provided a restored “archival” print of “Apes.” I know for a fact that Schawn Belston, vice president of film preservation at Fox, has done just such a restoration of “Apes,” because as a work-in-progress it was shown at The George Eastman House in Rochester, NY a few years ago, and it is that — I can only hope! — that’s going to be the source for the Blu-Ray DVD that’s coming out in October. For a 40th anniversary showing in NYC of a landmark film in their library, you’d think Fox would only be interested in the best possible product being presented to the public. You’d think that, but it ain’t so. A theatre in Minnesota (www.heightstheater.com) will be the next to show this print, a “brand new print,” but not one made from a new restored interpositive, that’s for sure. Yes, do indeed tell Fox.
My goodness, how could I possibly not comment on that reel-to-reel story.
That theatre manager was either completely misinformed or part of a plot to disgrace reel-to reel showings. How sad to think that such a situation could exist in New York at the Ziegfeld. None of what he said made any sense, the one hour prep time, his explanation of the problem being caused by the “old reel-to-reel and calling it “retardedâ€.
Are the people at Clearview aware of the moron they have running the Ziegfeld? I won’ even go into the ridiculous idea that the focus issue could not be addressed or that running reel-to-reel had anything to do with it.
I will be writing a letter to someone I know at Fox, they need to know about this. I will ask that someone contact Clearview to look in to it.
I believe the whole situation is a plot by management and the projection staff, to create a problem that should not exist in order to gain support to eliminate reel-to-reel showings. There is just no other explanation. These idiots should not be in our business.
Yep, that’s good ole Jimmy D and his band of pencil pushers hard work at it again. They don’t have a SINGLE manager in the entire clearview chain who’s been a manager for 29 years. The a-holes fired them all, or made life so miserable, they quit. I know, I witnessed a lot of it during my time there. All these crack heads they have working now only know “platters” (not only the easy way out, but the ruination of the industry in general) Give ME reel-to-reel anytime, and it will be flawless. I’ve just recently done it in a reportory, and will again in a few weeks. So all you Ziegfeld lovers, get on the horn and speak up. There is absolutly NO reason for that kind of DUMB answer about the focus. Clearly, this person has NO CLUE AT ALL, just like most of them who work for Clearview.
I just got back from “Shine a Light”. There were more people at the Ziegfeld than I expected, considering it’s playing on 42nd St. and also in Imax. We all gave it a nice round of applause at the end. It doesn’t seem all that long ago that I saw another Martin Scorsese concert film, “The Last Waltz”, at the Ziegfeld. But it’s been 30 years.
The bad news: admission is now $14! That’s probably the case all over midtown Manhattan, or else it soon will be when the summer movie season gets going.
That’s true, Bob, about the condition of the prints, but in the end it all comes down to who’s running the show. If the projectionist you had was running “Porgy and Bess”, it would’ve been a real disaster. Fortunately someone with the skill and committment of yourself (or Jeff, Pete, Vito, REndres) was up in the booth that night.
But don’t forget Bill, PORGY AND BESS was a 50 year old dye-transfer Technicolor, magnetic print. It was bound to have some focus drifting due to warp or shrinkage.
APES was a brand-spanking-new print that should have had no problems.
The thing that got me was his claim that they spent an hour each day preparing the machines for reel to reel, including balancing of the lamphouses. (I did ask if they ran RP40, or some other SMPTE test loop, and he didn’t know what I was talking about. He said they used some kind of digital meter to read the screen. How that is supposed to adjust the focus, I don’t know.)
If had only used binoculars to focus at the start of reel 2, that left projector should have been fine for the rest of the show.
To give the Ziegfeld some reel-to-reel credibility, last fall’s screening of “Porgy and Bess” went out of focus several times, but the projectionist was right on top of it and corrected it almost instantly. Too bad that person was not on duty for “Planet of the Apes”.
If I’d been there, they’d have had to physically stop me from trying to do that, Bill. I nearly got thrown out of the Bergen Mall Cinema back in ‘89 when they couldn’t/wouldn’t fix the focus during a Star Trek V/ Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade double feature.
<sigh> Bob…
Must I remind everyone about the 70mm issues a few years back with LOA, and the sound horribly out of sync? They didn’t really care that night either. But they did give me two coupons for a free show that were valid for two weeks from date of issue. Whoopee!
Bob, sorry you had a bad show. I’m going there tonight for “Shine a Light”, but it’ll be digital so it should be OK. I’ll bet you wanted to go into that booth yourself and show them how it’s done.
Oh, perhaps Asheville in the long run. Depends. For now, Marion (my sister’s just built a house there), but I feel like I’ll like being in Asheville better, and I’m sure you know why — whoever you are.
Rory
I live in Asheville, NC. Where r u moving too? Sorry guys I know I shouldn’t post this here.
Mike
I’m glad they didn’t have that problem when I was there — I’d have gone ape and hurt somebody. I think there are different crews working at different times, and if this manager guy has no more respect for how the “used” to do it correctly than that, then he should go f@#k himself and go manage a McDonald’s or something. It’ll be quite some time before I consider going back to the Ziegfeld too — but that’s because I’ll be living in North Carolina!
I went to the 5:00 show of PLANET OF THE APES on Thursday. The trailers were shown digitally and then the feature began. Reel one was on the right projector, and the picture and sound were fine. However, when they did the changeover to reel two, it was quite noticeably out of focus. I was in the 12th row and stuck with it throughout the reel. I hoped it would get better. Unfortunately, the operator made no attempt to fix the problem.
The changeover to reel three was smooth, so I sat back and began to (once again) get wrapped up in the movie. I assumed reel four would be fine. Surely, a professional film operator would not run two reels out of focus!
Guess what? Reel four began (on the left projector) and it was still out of focus. I waited five minutes and no attempt was made to correct it. So, I reluctantly left my seat to go tell the manager.
When I found him in the lobby, I told him about the problem. He explained that the focus issues were because they were running in the old reel to reel method. When I tried to explain it was only the left projector, it did not seem to register with him. He explained that running a film reel to reel was “retarded” (his word, not mine) and that it really should be shown on a platter. After several minutes of frustrated attempts to explain that it was only the lens that needed adjusting and that it had nothing to do with reel to reel or the lamp house, he finally called the booth and told the operator that he was going to have to check each reel as it ran. I got the impression that I wasn’t the first person to complain.
I thanked him and he then told me he was glad this was the final day of the show because it took them an hour each morning to set up to run reel to reel. I didn’t question this and figured I had missed enough of the film anyway. His final comment was that he had been in the business for 29 years, and it would be so much better if the film had been shown digitally. I didn’t debate this point and went back to my seat.
When I walked into the theater, I noticed that the operator had made an attempt to focus the picture. Unfortunately, it was now worse! Whereas before the film looked fairly clear from the back of the house, now it looked as blurry as it did when I was in the 12th row. I decided to put up with it and sat down in the second to last row. I knew at least the changeover to reel five would get us back to a clear picture. It did, with one slight problem; the operator missed the changeover. I’m not talking a few seconds of blank film or leader from the end of reel four. We were treated to the complete tail leader with loud audio pops, and then about ten seconds of white light on a blank screen!
Thankfully, the rest of the show ran fine – with the exception of every other reel being out of focus. He did make the rest of the changeovers properly.
The curtains were not used.
With this type of presentation, it will be quite some time before I consider going back to the Ziegfeld.