Have a news tip for us?
Just email . Ideas for stories, links to interesting articles, and press releases are welcome.
Memories
-
October 23, 2009
Remembering Cinerama (Part 43: New Haven)
REMEMBERING CINERAMA
Part 43: New HavenThe following is Part Forty-Three in a series of retrospectives on Cinerama, the legendary motion picture process that kicked off the widescreen revolution. The series focuses on providing a market-by-market historical record of when and where Cinerama and its multi-panel clones were exhibited. The easy-to-reference articles serve to provide nostalgia to those who experienced the Cinerama presentations when they were new and to highlight the movie palaces in which the memorable screenings took place.
Part 1: New York City
Part 2: Chicago
Part 3: San Francisco
Part 4: Houston
Part 5: Washington, DC
Part 6: Los Angeles
Part 7: Atlanta
Part 8: San Diego
Part 9: Dallas
Part 10: Oklahoma City
Part 11: Syracuse
Part 12: Toronto
Part 13: Columbus
Part 14: Montreal
Part 15: Northern New Jersey
Part 16: Charlotte
Part 17: Vancouver
Part 18: Salt Lake City
Part 19: Boston
Part 20: Philadelphia
Part 21: Fresno
Part 22: Detroit
Part 23: Minneapolis
Part 24: Albuquerque
Part 25: El Paso
Part 26: Des Moines
Part 27: Miami
Part 28: Orange County
Part 29: Pittsburgh
Part 30: Baltimore
Part 31: Long Island
Part 32: Kansas City
Part 33: Milwaukee
Part 34: Nanuet/Rockland County
Part 35: Denver
Part 36: Worcester
Part 37: Toledo
Part 38: St. Louis
Part 39: Tampa
Part 40: Calgary
Part 41: Hartford
Part 42: AlbanyAnd now…Part 43: Cinerama Presentations in New Haven, Connecticut!
6 comments -
October 9, 2009
Remembering Cinerama (Part 42: Albany)
REMEMBERING CINERAMA
Part 42: AlbanyThe following is Part Forty-Two in a series of retrospectives on Cinerama, the legendary motion picture process that kicked off the widescreen revolution. The series focuses on providing a market-by-market historical record of when and where Cinerama and its multi-panel clones were exhibited. The easy-to-reference articles serve to provide nostalgia to those who experienced the Cinerama presentations when they were new and to highlight the movie palaces in which the memorable screenings took place.
Part 1: New York City
Part 2: Chicago
Part 3: San Francisco
Part 4: Houston
Part 5: Washington, DC
Part 6: Los Angeles
Part 7: Atlanta
Part 8: San Diego
Part 9: Dallas
Part 10: Oklahoma City
Part 11: Syracuse
Part 12: Toronto
Part 13: Columbus
Part 14: Montreal
Part 15: Northern New Jersey
Part 16: Charlotte
Part 17: Vancouver
Part 18: Salt Lake City
Part 19: Boston
Part 20: Philadelphia
Part 21: Fresno
Part 22: Detroit
Part 23: Minneapolis
Part 24: Albuquerque
Part 25: El Paso
Part 26: Des Moines
Part 27: Miami
Part 28: Orange County
Part 29: Pittsburgh
Part 30: Baltimore
Part 31: Long Island
Part 32: Kansas City
Part 33: Milwaukee
Part 34: Nanuet/Rockland County
Part 35: Denver
Part 36: Worcester
Part 37: Toledo
Part 38: St. Louis
Part 39: Tampa
Part 40: Calgary
Part 41: HartfordAnd now…Part 42: Cinerama Presentations in Albany, New York!
-
September 29, 2009
Remembering the lost theaters of Boise
BOISE, ID — In a a two-part article recently published in Sunday editions of Idaho Statesman, area historian Arthur Hart writes about the movie theaters of Boise, Idaho. Many, if not most, are long gone, some even from memory. One, however, the Egyptian, still survives.
They didn’t have multiplex movie theaters in Boise a century ago, but Boiseans had a range of choices, all of them Downtown.
In 1910 you also could choose the entertainment offered by the Dime, the Nickelodeon, or the Bijou. In a sequence that was repeated often with those pioneer theaters, the Bijou, at 921 Main, became the Woods in 1912 and the Rex in 1914. In its prime, the Bijou offered six movies a week. In January 1911, these included two comedies, “Tag Day at Silver Gulch” and “The Gardener’s Ladder,” and two dramas, “The Englishman’s Honor” and “Washed Ashore.” A film described in the ad as “industrial” was titled “Wood Carving at Brienz” and “The Home of the Seal” was listed as “educational.”
-
September 22, 2009
“Grandfather” of Salt Lake City film exhibition dies at 77
SALT LAKE CITY, UT — Regarded as Salt Lake’s champion of classic Hollywood films and at one time the operator of a number of the city’s theaters, Arthur Charles Proctor has passed. He is remembered in this article from the Deseret News.
“Art was the city’s single greatest influence for the preservation of classic movies from what we now call the Golden Age — the 1930s, ‘40s and '50s,” said Chris Hicks, former Deseret News movie critic and entertainment editor.
“Unlike most film buffs, he didn’t just talk about old movies — he showed them on the big screen in his theaters week after week for years. Then, when VHS movies came on the scene, Art opened a video store and rented those same golden oldies. I’m sure he had the largest collection of classic films in the state, and he loved to share them. His contribution to the local movie scene really can’t be measured.”
-
September 21, 2009
Remembering Cinerama (Part 41: Hartford)
REMEMBERING CINERAMA
Part 41: HartfordThe following is Part Forty-One in a series of retrospectives on Cinerama, the legendary motion picture process that kicked off the widescreen revolution. The series focuses on providing a market-by-market historical record of when and where Cinerama and its multi-panel clones were exhibited. The easy-to-reference articles serve to provide nostalgia to those who experienced the Cinerama presentations when they were new and to highlight the movie palaces in which the memorable screenings took place.
Part 1: New York City
Part 2: Chicago
Part 3: San Francisco
Part 4: Houston
Part 5: Washington, DC
Part 6: Los Angeles
Part 7: Atlanta
Part 8: San Diego
Part 9: Dallas
Part 10: Oklahoma City
Part 11: Syracuse
Part 12: Toronto
Part 13: Columbus
Part 14: Montreal
Part 15: Northern New Jersey
Part 16: Charlotte
Part 17: Vancouver
Part 18: Salt Lake City
Part 19: Boston
Part 20: Philadelphia
Part 21: Fresno
Part 22: Detroit
Part 23: Minneapolis
Part 24: Albuquerque
Part 25: El Paso
Part 26: Des Moines
Part 27: Miami
Part 28: Orange County
Part 29: Pittsburgh
Part 30: Baltimore
Part 31: Long Island
Part 32: Kansas City
Part 33: Milwaukee
Part 34: Nanuet/Rockland County
Part 35: Denver
Part 36: Worcester
Part 37: Toledo
Part 38: St. Louis
Part 39: Tampa
Part 40: CalgaryAnd now…Part 41: Cinerama Presentations in Hartford, Connecticut!
-
September 17, 2009
Reconsidering Hollywood’s greatest year: 1939 vs. 1959
Many consider 1939 to be the Hollywood’s finest year in terms of classic film production, the year that gave us “Gone with the Wind” and “The Wizard of Oz” among others. But in this article from the Seattle Times, the year 1959, during which “Ben-Hur,” “North by Northwest,” “Some Like It Hot,” were all released, also was a very comparably significant year in film history.
But my favorite movie year is 1959, the 12-month period when Alfred Hitchcock, Marilyn Monroe, Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann, Otto Preminger, Jimmy Stewart and William Wyler all hit career peaks. Simultaneously, art houses were flooded with some of the best work from Francois Truffaut, Ingmar Bergman, Satyajit Ray and Alain Resnais.
It was a year that seemed to sum up many careers (several veteran filmmakers directed their last pictures), while anticipating the innovations and disruptions of the 1960s.
Read the full story in the Seattle Times.
-
September 15, 2009
Fragment of famed Ziegfeld Theater shows up on E. 80th Street
NEW YORK, NY The figure of a goddess carved in limestone that is alleged to be from the front of the former Ziegfeld Theater in NYC has been noted in a yard in front of a building on E. 80th Street in NYC according to this story.
How did it come to be here? Apparently, 52 East 80th was once owned by Jerry Hammer, a theatrical producer. In the 1960s, he was riding past the Ziegfeld in a car with developer Zachary Fisher, who mentioned he was tearing it down. Hammer jokingly asked if he could have one of the limestone heads. Four months later, he heard noises outside of his Upper East Side home – it was a truck lowering the head by crane into his front yard. Hammer moved out of the place in 1998 but left the head behind.
Read the full story in the Huffington Post.
-
September 9, 2009
Remembering Cinerama (Part 40: Calgary)
REMEMBERING CINERAMA
Part 40: CalgaryThe following is Part Forty in a series of retrospectives on Cinerama, the legendary motion picture process that kicked off the widescreen revolution. The series focuses on providing a market-by-market historical record of when and where Cinerama and its multi-panel clones were exhibited. The easy-to-reference articles serve to provide nostalgia to those who experienced the Cinerama presentations when they were new and to highlight the movie palaces in which the memorable screenings took place.
Part 1: New York City
Part 2: Chicago
Part 3: San Francisco
Part 4: Houston
Part 5: Washington, DC
Part 6: Los Angeles
Part 7: Atlanta
Part 8: San Diego
Part 9: Dallas
Part 10: Oklahoma City
Part 11: Syracuse
Part 12: Toronto
Part 13: Columbus
Part 14: Montreal
Part 15: Northern New Jersey
Part 16: Charlotte
Part 17: Vancouver
Part 18: Salt Lake City
Part 19: Boston
Part 20: Philadelphia
Part 21: Fresno
Part 22: Detroit
Part 23: Minneapolis
Part 24: Albuquerque
Part 25: El Paso
Part 26: Des Moines
Part 27: Miami
Part 28: Orange County
Part 29: Pittsburgh
Part 30: Baltimore
Part 31: Long Island
Part 32: Kansas City
Part 33: Milwaukee
Part 34: Nanuet/Rockland County
Part 35: Denver
Part 36: Worcester
Part 37: Toledo
Part 38: St. Louis
Part 39: TampaAnd now…Part 40: Cinerama Presentations in Calgary, Alberta!
-
September 3, 2009
Reflections on the influence of “The Wizard of Oz”
As noted in an earlier posting here on Cinema Treasures, the “Wizard of Oz” will be shown in over 400 theaters on September 23 on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of its original release. In a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, Ray Harryhausen, Joe Dante, Guillermo del Toro, Zack Snyder and others reflect on the iconic film’s influence and legacy.
That may sound like a lot of attention for an artifact from the FDR administration, but there’s a timeless quality to the cinematic adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s 1900 children’s novel that still transports new generations over the rainbow. The movie remains an essential reference point — this December in James Cameron’s much-ballyhooed sci-fi epic “Avatar,” for instance, when the main character arrives on a dazzling jungle planet, moviegoers will hear a familiar line: “You’re not in Kansas anymore.” Cameron chuckled when asked about the line. “Yeah, it’s my favorite movie; I had to get it in there somewhere,” he said. Cameron is not alone in his ongoing romance with “Oz.” To mark the anniversary, The Times interviewed creators in film, television, music and books who have never wearied of the cinematic trip down the yellow brick road.
-
September 1, 2009
Where can I find historic movie theaters in Tennessee?
This article in the Examiner looks at the great movie palaces in the state of Tennessee.
The oldest movie theatre in Tennessee is the Bijou Theater in Knoxville. The theater was originally built in 1817 as a hotel but was opened as a theatre in 1909. It is the fourth oldest building in Knoxville. The theatre was first opened for vaudeville, where acts like the Marx Brothers performed, and then adapted into a movie theater. The theatre still shows movies and also does tons of musical acts, stand up comedians, orchestra and theatre performances, keeping its roots alive.