Cinerama Hollywood
6360 Sunset Boulevard,
Los Angeles,
CA
90028
6360 Sunset Boulevard,
Los Angeles,
CA
90028
142 people
favorited this theater
Showing 776 - 800 of 1,416 comments
A first: Arclight AND Chinese both booking Terminator Salvation.
I apologize for offending the Village. It is indeed one of the best remaining single screen palaces and deserves a visit every once in a while when something worth seeing is playing on it’s screen.
Premiere night, 1965, from the LAPL:
http://jpg3.lapl.org/pics28/00063855.jpg
I think the Village in Westwood has the best overall presentation quality of the few remaining first run movie palaces in southern CA. And at 1300+ seats I believe it also has the largest seating capacity of any first run movie auditorium in So Cal.
On the cinematreasures page for the Village they are saying that Mann will likely not renew the leases on the Village and Bruin when they expire in a couple of years.
Kram, thanks for helping put another nail in the coffin of one of the last great single screeners. Your comment runs counter to the spirit of this website. The Arclight is great and all, but there are many other great reasons to visit the Village and I would encourage everyone who hasn’t been there to do so.
Saw WATCHMEN here last night in theater 10. Surprisingly digital projection AND sound were top notch. I guess there’s no need to go to the Village in Westwood anymore
Michael list on in 70MM in NYC shows that it did not play in 70MM in NYC.
I think I saw Zoot Suit at the Rivoli, not sure if they ran it in 70mm.
I’d love to see a 70mm print of ‘The Muppet Movie’ the 35mm print I saw last year at the AFI Silver was a cropped grainey looking one.
I imagine that Zoot Suit got a 70mm release since it was a musical (many musicals of the era got 70mm) and Universal was hoping for a big hit in the vein of films such as Fame (even though the failures of Sgt. Pepper, The Wiz and Xanadu should have taught them). The reviews were decent but the film failed and didn’t manage much of a release.
However, Universal finally did get a hit musical in The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas a year later (which interestingly enough did not get a 70mm release).
oh thats right, Run Simon Run (1974) was the one i was thinking of not Run Joe Run (ugh) I think it was an ABC movie of the week, Run Joe Run was the kids show from oddly enough the SAME YEAR!
I still can’t imagine how Zoot Suit got a 70mm Sensurround presentation.
Someone needs to track down that 70 print of the Muppet Movie and show it, whooo..!
The film in Michael’s list above “Run Run Joe” was also known as “Arrivano Joe e Margherito”(1974) with Keith Carradine & Tom Skerritt. It’s fun he has it listed above as a 70MM, but not on his former site that showed in 70MM in Los Angeles.
Well there’s a Burt Reynolds film called “Run, Simon, Run” on IMDB.
IMDB doesn’t seem to list a “Run,Run Joe” but there was a Saturday morning kids show called “Run,Joe,Run!” about a fugitive dog.
It ran on NBC for two seasons,1974-‘76.
Was this movie released undder another name?
Damon, Yes “Alien” opened the Egyptian Theatre in 70MM and they also had it running all night with a special display in the front of the theatre. The “Zoot Suit” presentation was in 70MM Sensurround-Plus.
Possible reason of why Run, Run Joe ran (and in 70mm): Pacific Theatres distributed the film in a likely attempt to follow in National General’s (and later the United Artists Theatre Circut’s two label, UFDC and Taurus) footsteps. Not surprisingly, it didn’t work.
was just perusing Michael Coate’s list above, some reason I could have swore “Alien” played at the dome (in 70mm) in ‘79, before or after Apocalypse but i guess not. Where did Alien open, the Egyptian? Some surprising 70mm engagements like “The Muppet Movie” and “Run, Run Joe!” (1974) a film i’d never even HEARD of before, strange that the TV movie “Run Joe Run” (Burt Reynolds) came out the same year. “The Earthling” (1981) there’s a forgotten film, as well as “Bully” (1978) “Sextette” (1978) “Maurie” (1973) “You’ll Like My Mother” (1972) and “Zandy’s Bride” (1974) And nobody ever believes me when i mention “Zoot Suit” as the last Sunsurround presentation (and 70mm too!?) How did THAT film justify that kind of presentation??
Sure wish i’d seen Quest for Fire (in 70) there, probably no prints on the planet left of that
That would be very neat. I saw “Ben-Hur†in 70 MM at the Dome sometime in the early 90’s, and it was spectacular. However, since the Dome apparently no longer runs reel-to-reel, chances are practically zero for a 70 MM engagement. My understanding is that only one or two 70 MM prints of the film are in existence. A 50 year anniversary engagement would probably have to be a 35 MM presentation, and in so-so condition. I don’t know of any efforts to create a digital transfer. “Ben-Hur†would be on my top 5 list for a full restoration. Hopefully it will happen soon…
JSA
They had a 40th anniversary screening of “2001” last year (two of them, actually) so the chances for “Ben-Hur” could be good.
Any chance we’ll get a 50th anniversary screening of Ben-Hur at the Dome this year? C'mon, Arclight, step up and give one of the truly great films in the history of cinema the anniversary party it deserves. And at least an extended weekend-long run would be nice. These one-night weekday screenings don’t help your members living in OC. You did if for the Godfather last year, you can do it for Ben-Hur.
I’ve been to the Dome a few times. It is similiar in terms of screen to the Washington D.C. Uptown. LA also has huge screens, though not curved, at Village (Westwood Village) and Grauman’s Chinese.
Is the screen currently installed as large as the one depicted in Ken Mc’s pic? If so, it doesn’t seem as curved as our Uptown but it seems wider though. I say this because if you sit at a certain spot, at the Uptown, and I don’t mean in the front row, you’ve got an almost perfect screen periphery.
Here are some photos from the LA Library, circa 1980s:
http://jpg1.lapl.org/pics34/00036935.jpg
http://jpg1.lapl.org/pics34/00036937.jpg
It’s his fault for buying tickets so darn late. Row Z??? Sheesh!
Here is a letter from an unhappy Arclight customer back in May 2002, via the LA Times:
I have swallowed—hook, line and sinker—the idea of Arclight Cinemas. I bought into the $14 tickets. I joined the membership club even before I set foot into the theater. I first went to Arclight to see “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” and I loved every minute of the experience: the sound, the seats, the lack of advertisements, the picture. Going to the movies is a redefined experience.
Then comes the first blockbuster of the summer, “Spider-Man.” I cannot wait to see this at Arclight, and this time I want to see it at the Dome—the refurbished Cinerama Dome. According to the Arclight Web site, it has even more added features than the multiplex auditoriums. I sold my friends on the idea of $14 tickets by reciting news articles and the Web site.
I loved telling them that the theaters “exceed THX standards” with their state-of-the-art “Kinoton projectors, JBL speakers and Dolby and SDDS sound systems.” Some of them asked me if I was a spokesman for Arclight. I bought the tickets online; a bunch of tickets had already been sold, so I had to take seats in the back of the theater, Row Z.
Everything I had bought into, and therefore sold my friends on as well, was false for Row Z. It seems that the moviegoing experience described doesn’t fully apply to the last five or so rows in the Cinerama Dome. Imagine the dome and a circle’s perimeter. The last couple of rows are outside this perimeter, underneath the projection booth. This makes most of the features of the Arclight movie experience moot.
All of the speakers (and even the projectors) are way in front of you. I could hear the people around me eating their caramel popcorn and the girls talking about Tobey Maguire’s abs better than I could hear the film. Here’s a little more sensory overload. Imagine this space (outside the perimeter) with a short ceiling and walls on three sides, jammed with five rows of people. The warmth of body heat was unbearable for the first hour, not to mention the combination of popcorn, chocolate, hot-dog and other less pleasant smells.
I have had better theater experiences at the Bose store in the mall—and those were free.