Wouldn’t they have done so much better with Walk Don’t Run rather than Kaleidascope which I have the impression did rather poorly?
Did Touch of Mink really do better than Odd Couple with a 10 week run?
And while I like glossy starry 60’s comedies Mink is pretty bad.
I wonder if Lawrence today can have the same emotional impact it had in the late 80’s early 90’s consdidering what we have been through historically.
I saw it 3 times when the Ziegfeld showed the restored film and was blown away by it.
However considering our ambivilant views towards the Arab world and Islam today how can we emotially respond to it? Does it make the British actions seem all the more horrifying or do they gain in sympathy?
All this talk about projectionists. I remember seeing 2001 at the Rivoli in 76. I hadn’t seen the film for years since when I was a boy and really remembered nothing about it except it was boring as hell and the kids matinee I saw it at in the suburbs practically rioted at the stupid plot turns(if you can call them that.)
When I saw it again at the Riv it was one of the greatest cinema experieces of my life and at the end of the first half just as you realize Hal is spying the huge curtains started closing in on the Rivoli’s magnificent curved screen absolutely perfectly timed.
I was in shock.
This is pretty disappointing to read but not surprising. The Loew’s Jersey presented Ben Hur beautifully.
The Ziegfeld should be the top of the line.
Clearview you should not be presenting a film just because somebody wants to see it. You should be getting the best prints and presenting them as they should be shown reel to reel. You are not a college film society which orders up a print willy nilly.
A pristine print of a 70mm Zhivago was just shown in LA.
Why are YOU showing it in 35mm?
There is absolutely no excuse but laziness and sloppiness.
You are professionals. BE PROFESSIONAL!
Get Bob Furmenek as a consultant.
It took you long enough to listen to our pleas.
Now do it right!
And don’t get all defensinve on us and say screw you buddy.
You are not doing your job as it should be done and somebody has to tell you.
The suburbs have been doing this 10 times better than you for years now and you are just waking up. Well good morning!
Bob, Saps is right. The width is exactly the same for 1.85 and 2.35. Therefore Ben Hur would be shown on a smaller screen than a film like the Misfits. This gives a widescreen movie the letterbox look.
This was the same for cinemascope at the New York Capitol and Rivoli when the screen masking was simply lowered( I know this from pictures I’ve seen.)
It took Cinerama and Todd AO to truly equip these theaters with a widescreen. This was acheived by placing the new screen in front of the proscenium and creating a traveling curtain.
Craig are you going to be trying for other 70mm prints? Maybe Clearview could spring for a My Fair Lady print and tour it like a stage musical?
We’ve been begging you guys to do this forever and now that you’ve taken the hint and its a success please take our other suggestion to heart.
Vince
Mike I was refering to WSS but I saw Dolly as well at the Cinerama and though it is not a film I am crazy about I would be there in a shot to see a Todd AO print of it for the production design alone.
I don’t believe this film has ever had a 70mm 6 track stereo presentation in New York since its first run at the Rivoli.
Now if only Clearview would install a larger curved screen(65 to 75ft) in front of the proscenium,install a curtain and show occassional PRISTINE roadshow prints with much publicity they would send the New York cinema going public for a loop and put an end to the constantly empty houses.
So why doesn’t Clearview just cancel the Lady showings and replace them with WSS?
I do have a question for you guys at Clearview. Why do a very rare theatrical showing of one of the most beautiful Hollywood films ever made and make no effort to show a 70mm print and then not even make sure the 35mm print is pristine. Obviously a lot of time and planning went into this and all you did was put in an order to the distributor and not make sure the condition of the product you were getting was top notch?
I saw the restoration at the Ziegfeld 3 times in ‘93. Whoever was in charge back then did the film proud with no commercials and the use of the curtain. Every performance I saw was sold out. I mean that literally. Then after nine days it was pulled for a Meryl Streep action flick.
I am on my knees. Please repeat this great success.
I can’t believe these guys did the restoration only to have the film disintegrate all over again after only 10 years.
Gee how about a movie about the 14 hijackers who received express visas and then betrayed this country’s faith in them killing thousands of innocent people.
Now why don’t we ever see a movie like that?
Bill I can’t wait. I love the great conducting of Johnny Green whatever he did. And on this job he outdid himself.
Not sure if this is true or not but I believe I read that when the soundtrack was played for Bernstein for the first time at a party he hated it so much he humiliated Green in front of everybody.
When Kael reviewed the film I believe she made a swipe at the stereo sound as well.
There must have been something in the water in ‘61.
Bill, How was WSS, will be there tomorrow night.
Fairly good crowd for the Misfits.
Can’t tell you how much this film benefits from the big, big screen treatment. Gable and Monroe were made for movie palaces and the stunning Ansel Adams like photography is beautiful with the chasing of the mustangs downright thrilling. No way are you going to get the feeling of exhilaration of what these men do at Film Forum or on TCM.
A great choice.
I am a big Fellini fan but I have to say I think Charity is better(no bricks ok?) The Pompei club and the whole movie star bit is so wonderful in the Fosse, Oscar in the Fellini is just too hateful and I have little tolerance for Giulietta and her cute waif routine(now Giulietta in Fred and Ginger and Spirits for me is a pretty wonderful actress.)
The revival had a young woman as Charity which makes no sense and then they replace Bob Fosse with Wayne Cilento.
They worked very hard to have a failure.
Anyway off to the Ziegfeld for multiple viewings of WSS next week.
Ed Sweet Charity is sensational and I saw Paint Your Wagon at the Warner Cinerama in 70mm in the late 70’s and I loved. Some of them properly present are not as bad as the critics made them out to be. Remember when they opened cinema critics had to prove how hip they were and how old-fashioned the roadshow concept seemed to them. I thought they were and continue to think they were pretentious idiots. One of their crew(albeit on Broadway) is still around and thriving-Clive Barnes.
You should read Ethan Morden’s comments in his book One Last Kiss on Renata Adler’s New York Times review of Half a Sixpence at the Criterion. He skewers the mind set of the New York intellectuals of the period in just a few words.
Get in touch with the American Cinemateque in Hollywood. See if they would be interested in a New York outpost. Contact Scorsese and Di Niro. Anybody with money who loves wide screen films. We’ve all been saying this for years. Its a great opportunity for somebody like you who has the capital! The great american film museum that for once is not a screening room!
New York you can do it!
Jim again you are dead on right. I only wish the Jersey reporters and papers would chronicle the greed and destructiveness of our developers but then they are in their pockets through the advertisers(see the New York Times for example.)
For all of you talking about a 70mm Zhivago or Ben Hur. See above comments. Clearview was too lazy(or too dim?) to get a Lady print in 70mm which is the entire point of seeing it in a large theater!
Outside of that I think the programmer did an intelligent job of choosing what we think of as classics and what younger people think of as classics.
And yeah I’d love to see Sound of Music and Oklahoma again in Todd AO but it doesn’t look like it will happen again in my lifetime in New York.(and Magnificent Men and South Pacific…)
And if they did maybe me and another 10 people would care. That would be about it.
The stage version comes after the ball which makes the first half too long. The movie got it right. It helps that the always radiant Audrey is heart stoppingly beautiful at that moment. How lucky the world is that she got the role.
Oh my God. Times Square does not need another multiplex live or film. Please restore it to its historic theatrical use as a single theater. Otherwise you have another theatrical complex that is a dime a dozen in New York.
Please restore it as it was when it was the Demille one of New York’s great movie theaters. It will be the only one left in midtown Manhattan.
Is that simply room 1? So that if you saw the movie title next to 1 in the listing you would know that was the film playing in that large Lamb imitation auditorium?
I would think that they would not want to demolish it but after seeing the work that FOL has done they are seeing the potential of the Loew’s.
For a time the Jersey politicos have been trying to get their greedy little hands on the place.
FOL in addition to working like dogs to bring the theater back into workable condition have the grief on continually watching their backs.
It might very well be that what they are doing is not only immoral it is illegal. But New Jersey executives (I mean, politicians) have never allowed immorality or malfeasance to hinder a comfortable cushioning of the their pockets.
After all it is easier to cheat a citizen than a customer.
Howard see above posts about Cinerama at the Ziegfeld in ‘73.
Also look up Vincent Canby’s '73 article in the Times.
It was a case of why did they bother.
Wouldn’t they have done so much better with Walk Don’t Run rather than Kaleidascope which I have the impression did rather poorly?
Did Touch of Mink really do better than Odd Couple with a 10 week run?
And while I like glossy starry 60’s comedies Mink is pretty bad.
I wonder if Lawrence today can have the same emotional impact it had in the late 80’s early 90’s consdidering what we have been through historically.
I saw it 3 times when the Ziegfeld showed the restored film and was blown away by it.
However considering our ambivilant views towards the Arab world and Islam today how can we emotially respond to it? Does it make the British actions seem all the more horrifying or do they gain in sympathy?
All this talk about projectionists. I remember seeing 2001 at the Rivoli in 76. I hadn’t seen the film for years since when I was a boy and really remembered nothing about it except it was boring as hell and the kids matinee I saw it at in the suburbs practically rioted at the stupid plot turns(if you can call them that.)
When I saw it again at the Riv it was one of the greatest cinema experieces of my life and at the end of the first half just as you realize Hal is spying the huge curtains started closing in on the Rivoli’s magnificent curved screen absolutely perfectly timed.
I was in shock.
This is pretty disappointing to read but not surprising. The Loew’s Jersey presented Ben Hur beautifully.
The Ziegfeld should be the top of the line.
Clearview you should not be presenting a film just because somebody wants to see it. You should be getting the best prints and presenting them as they should be shown reel to reel. You are not a college film society which orders up a print willy nilly.
A pristine print of a 70mm Zhivago was just shown in LA.
Why are YOU showing it in 35mm?
There is absolutely no excuse but laziness and sloppiness.
You are professionals. BE PROFESSIONAL!
Get Bob Furmenek as a consultant.
It took you long enough to listen to our pleas.
Now do it right!
And don’t get all defensinve on us and say screw you buddy.
You are not doing your job as it should be done and somebody has to tell you.
The suburbs have been doing this 10 times better than you for years now and you are just waking up. Well good morning!
Singin in the Rain should be on a double bill with like maybe Funny Face. Gene and Fred and Audrey! All directed by Stanley.
Bob, Saps is right. The width is exactly the same for 1.85 and 2.35. Therefore Ben Hur would be shown on a smaller screen than a film like the Misfits. This gives a widescreen movie the letterbox look.
This was the same for cinemascope at the New York Capitol and Rivoli when the screen masking was simply lowered( I know this from pictures I’ve seen.)
It took Cinerama and Todd AO to truly equip these theaters with a widescreen. This was acheived by placing the new screen in front of the proscenium and creating a traveling curtain.
Bob nobody appreciates what you did at the Loew’s more than I. If only you had the Ziegfeld to run!(Just install a larger screen.)
Craig are you going to be trying for other 70mm prints? Maybe Clearview could spring for a My Fair Lady print and tour it like a stage musical?
We’ve been begging you guys to do this forever and now that you’ve taken the hint and its a success please take our other suggestion to heart.
Vince
Mike I was refering to WSS but I saw Dolly as well at the Cinerama and though it is not a film I am crazy about I would be there in a shot to see a Todd AO print of it for the production design alone.
I don’t believe this film has ever had a 70mm 6 track stereo presentation in New York since its first run at the Rivoli.
Now if only Clearview would install a larger curved screen(65 to 75ft) in front of the proscenium,install a curtain and show occassional PRISTINE roadshow prints with much publicity they would send the New York cinema going public for a loop and put an end to the constantly empty houses.
So why doesn’t Clearview just cancel the Lady showings and replace them with WSS?
I do have a question for you guys at Clearview. Why do a very rare theatrical showing of one of the most beautiful Hollywood films ever made and make no effort to show a 70mm print and then not even make sure the 35mm print is pristine. Obviously a lot of time and planning went into this and all you did was put in an order to the distributor and not make sure the condition of the product you were getting was top notch?
I saw the restoration at the Ziegfeld 3 times in ‘93. Whoever was in charge back then did the film proud with no commercials and the use of the curtain. Every performance I saw was sold out. I mean that literally. Then after nine days it was pulled for a Meryl Streep action flick.
I am on my knees. Please repeat this great success.
I can’t believe these guys did the restoration only to have the film disintegrate all over again after only 10 years.
Gee how about a movie about the 14 hijackers who received express visas and then betrayed this country’s faith in them killing thousands of innocent people.
Now why don’t we ever see a movie like that?
Bill I can’t wait. I love the great conducting of Johnny Green whatever he did. And on this job he outdid himself.
Not sure if this is true or not but I believe I read that when the soundtrack was played for Bernstein for the first time at a party he hated it so much he humiliated Green in front of everybody.
When Kael reviewed the film I believe she made a swipe at the stereo sound as well.
There must have been something in the water in ‘61.
Bill, How was WSS, will be there tomorrow night.
Fairly good crowd for the Misfits.
Can’t tell you how much this film benefits from the big, big screen treatment. Gable and Monroe were made for movie palaces and the stunning Ansel Adams like photography is beautiful with the chasing of the mustangs downright thrilling. No way are you going to get the feeling of exhilaration of what these men do at Film Forum or on TCM.
A great choice.
I am a big Fellini fan but I have to say I think Charity is better(no bricks ok?) The Pompei club and the whole movie star bit is so wonderful in the Fosse, Oscar in the Fellini is just too hateful and I have little tolerance for Giulietta and her cute waif routine(now Giulietta in Fred and Ginger and Spirits for me is a pretty wonderful actress.)
The revival had a young woman as Charity which makes no sense and then they replace Bob Fosse with Wayne Cilento.
They worked very hard to have a failure.
Anyway off to the Ziegfeld for multiple viewings of WSS next week.
Ed Sweet Charity is sensational and I saw Paint Your Wagon at the Warner Cinerama in 70mm in the late 70’s and I loved. Some of them properly present are not as bad as the critics made them out to be. Remember when they opened cinema critics had to prove how hip they were and how old-fashioned the roadshow concept seemed to them. I thought they were and continue to think they were pretentious idiots. One of their crew(albeit on Broadway) is still around and thriving-Clive Barnes.
You should read Ethan Morden’s comments in his book One Last Kiss on Renata Adler’s New York Times review of Half a Sixpence at the Criterion. He skewers the mind set of the New York intellectuals of the period in just a few words.
Get in touch with the American Cinemateque in Hollywood. See if they would be interested in a New York outpost. Contact Scorsese and Di Niro. Anybody with money who loves wide screen films. We’ve all been saying this for years. Its a great opportunity for somebody like you who has the capital! The great american film museum that for once is not a screening room!
New York you can do it!
Jim again you are dead on right. I only wish the Jersey reporters and papers would chronicle the greed and destructiveness of our developers but then they are in their pockets through the advertisers(see the New York Times for example.)
For all of you talking about a 70mm Zhivago or Ben Hur. See above comments. Clearview was too lazy(or too dim?) to get a Lady print in 70mm which is the entire point of seeing it in a large theater!
Outside of that I think the programmer did an intelligent job of choosing what we think of as classics and what younger people think of as classics.
And yeah I’d love to see Sound of Music and Oklahoma again in Todd AO but it doesn’t look like it will happen again in my lifetime in New York.(and Magnificent Men and South Pacific…)
And if they did maybe me and another 10 people would care. That would be about it.
The stage version comes after the ball which makes the first half too long. The movie got it right. It helps that the always radiant Audrey is heart stoppingly beautiful at that moment. How lucky the world is that she got the role.
Oh my God. Times Square does not need another multiplex live or film. Please restore it to its historic theatrical use as a single theater. Otherwise you have another theatrical complex that is a dime a dozen in New York.
Please restore it as it was when it was the Demille one of New York’s great movie theaters. It will be the only one left in midtown Manhattan.
Is that simply room 1? So that if you saw the movie title next to 1 in the listing you would know that was the film playing in that large Lamb imitation auditorium?
I would think that they would not want to demolish it but after seeing the work that FOL has done they are seeing the potential of the Loew’s.
For a time the Jersey politicos have been trying to get their greedy little hands on the place.
FOL in addition to working like dogs to bring the theater back into workable condition have the grief on continually watching their backs.
It might very well be that what they are doing is not only immoral it is illegal. But New Jersey executives (I mean, politicians) have never allowed immorality or malfeasance to hinder a comfortable cushioning of the their pockets.
After all it is easier to cheat a citizen than a customer.
Howard see above posts about Cinerama at the Ziegfeld in ‘73.
Also look up Vincent Canby’s '73 article in the Times.
It was a case of why did they bother.