70mm Screenings in NYC

[Dave Bickford]

Osi,

Although shot in 35mm, The Wild Bunch has had 70mm showings since 1970. According to in70mm.com, "It featured six-track stereophonic sound and full-frame imagery blown up from anamorphic 35mm."

Why would they make a 70mm print from a 35mm original? That makes no sense. May as well take a Super 8mm print and transfer to 16mm. Or an mp3 audio file bumped up to uncompressed wav file. No gain in quality. 🤷♂️

[Martin Davey]

Actually there is a slight gain in picture quality. You have to take into account that a copy from a negative is a second generation copy. So a 35mm print from a 35mm negative is one generation removed, and would have lost detail because its not a 'mirror' version of the neg. A 70mm (65mm) negative is superior to a 70mm print for the same reason.
However a blowup from a 35mm neg to a 70mm frame size will retain more of the picture quality (even though its a copy) because of the extra area that is available. It would never be as good as a 70mm native image of course. I happen to see a demonstration at the MOMI cinema back in the 1990s when an extract of 'The hunt for red october' was shown, once in 35mm and once as a 70mm blow up. The demonstration was really to show the difference between 35mm dolby optical and 70mm mag, but the image also got a benefit from the process.

[Rodney Bourke]

Hi Doug Melbourne is also having the 70mmExperience with OPPENHEIMER playing from today till next Wednesday
at the Sun theatre.

https://suntheatre.com.au/now-playing/

and Astor Cinema with 2001 in 70mm playing from the Sunday playing till Next Saturday

https://www.astortheatre.net.au/

[Douglas Meltzer]

Rodney,

I saw Oppenheimer here in 70mm Imax. I think very highly of this film and the visuals are extremely impressive. There's a tilt up during the Trinity test that made me feel as if I was craning my neck up to look at the top of the test tower.

Your Sun Theatre link shows a really interesting combination of both new and repertory programming.

[Osi Osgood]

Martin, that was actually quite interesting! I wonder if when they made they're transfers for the Wild Bunch Blu-ray, did they just use an existing "positive" on 35mm, a straight, PC driven new positive, not on film, from the original negative, or a 70mm taken from either a 35mm negative or positive? It's a film that demands the best possible presentation.

[Edward Nicielnik]

Here is a list of 70mm Films The Astor have shown I saw Eddie Scissorhand 70mm blown 35mm and it was very clear and good

https://www.astortheatre.net.au/tech...m-print/page/2

[Edward Nicielnik]

And I
attended this Event and got a signed 2001 a Space Odyssey from Keir Dullea & Gary Lockwood to sign it for me that was the day that the actor who voiced Hal died.

https://www.astortheatre.net.au/film...pace-odyssey-2

[Brian Fretwell]

I have to admit that I was rather underwhelmed by the 70mm showing of 2001 at the BFI Imax. Having seen it orginally at a Cinerama cinema I thought their 70mm projector was underpowered for the grey IMAX screem.

[Ed Gordon]

I have to admit that I was rather underwhelmed by the 70mm showing of 2001 at the BFI Imax. Having seen it orginally at a Cinerama cinema I thought their 70mm projector was underpowered for the grey IMAX screem.

Same here Brian. It opened at the Seattle Cinerama in May of 1968 and played there for 77 weeks. We went to a matinee presentation that was sparsely attended (this was before the word got out about it). No, I did not take drugs before seeing it, but we sure felt stoned after experiencing that full roadshow presentation on the Cinerama screen.

Hippies may have saved “2001.” “Stoned audiences” flocked to the movie. David Bowie took a few drops of cannabis tincture before watching, and countless others dropped acid. According to one report, a young man at a showing in Los Angeles plunged through the movie screen, shouting, “It’s God! It’s God!” John Lennon said he saw the film “every week.” “2001” initially opened in limited release, shown only in 70-mm. on curved Cinerama screens. M-G-M thought it had on its hands a second “Doctor Zhivago” (1965) or “Ben-Hur” (1959), or perhaps another “Spartacus” (1960), the splashy studio hit that Kubrick, low on funds, had directed about a decade before. But instead the theatres were filling up with fans of cult films like Roger Corman’s “The Trip,” or “Psych-Out,” the early Jack Nicholson flick with music by the Strawberry Alarm Clock. These movies, though cheesy, found a new use for editing and special effects: to mimic psychedelic visions. The iconic Star Gate sequence in “2001,” when Dave Bowman, the film’s protagonist, hurtles in his space pod through a corridor of swimming kaleidoscopic colors, could even be timed, with sufficient practice, to crest with the viewer’s own hallucinations. The studio soon caught on, and a new tagline was added to the movie’s redesigned posters: “The ultimate trip.”

Credit: Dan Chiasson, The New Yorker

[Steve Lee]

Whilst on the subject of 70mm I have just watched a wonderful video on the history of 70mm on youtube, that has been produced by a forum member Noah Henderson.
This is an in depth view into which company produced each of the 70mm system and formats, and is very interesting to see.
Wonderful work Noah.

[Douglas Meltzer]

Steve - Thank you for posting Noah's documentary about 70mm. It's excellent!





Over the weekend I went to see the 70mm screening of Lawrence of Arabia. I had never seen this in a theater. The roadshow print was struck in 2012 and the image was breathtaking. The colors were so vibrant that it was Peter O'Toole's blue eyes that left the biggest impression on me! Whenever a wide shot came on the screen where extras filled the frame, I kept thinking how remarkable it was because this is real, no CGI. It was an amazing cinema experience.

Listening to the comments afterward, the younger folks were very impressed. It was great to see that so many came out to see this on film. I did hear one person say the only movie they had ever seen Alec Guinness in before this was Star Wars....

Next up, 2001!

[Graham Ritchie]

Back in the 1970s the Cinerama theatre here ran a number of 70mm prints. The one I liked watching the most was "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines" sadly those 70mm screenings were poorly attended. The one plus for me was the Mag Men I new the theatre manager who gave me the grand tour of the place before the start and the intermission. The Cinerama theatre was an impressive place plus having a chat with the projectionist before kick off was very interesting. Another one on 70mm I watched back then, was "Ryan's Daughter" those films looked great.

Many years later we did run four of David Lean's films, one a week but they were on 35mm. I took this photo after Lawrence arrived, it took a while to inspect all the reels then load the film onto a couple of platter decks, with an intermission I should add, a must for any David Lean film Doug did you have an Intermission?

PS I have never watched 2001 on 70mm but we did see it on 35mm, Yvonne slept all the way through it apart from the Intermission then it was back to zzzzzzz land, so I don't think watching it in 70mm would have made any difference for Yvonne

[Douglas Meltzer]

Graham,

That’s quite a picture!

This roadshow print started with the overture, had intermission music, and ended with the exit music.

I’m not a fan of 2001, but I thought I’d give it a second chance and see it big & loud.

[Osi Osgood]

One film that certainly should have been on that list, is Disney's TRON. TRON was the first film to be shot completely on65mm, the first since ten years earlier with "Ryan's Daughter". It was released on 35mm however, and I wonder if it was ever actually released as a 70mm presentation, but if they wanted to, being that the original negative is 65mm, it could certainly be done. Fortunately,for the first, it was released in it's original 65mm on the Blu-ray release.

[Ed Gordon]

One film that certainly should have been on that list, is Disney's TRON. TRON was the first film to be shot completely on65mm, the first since ten years earlier with "Ryan's Daughter". It was released on 35mm however, and I wonder if it was ever actually released as a 70mm presentation, but if they wanted to, being that the original negative is 65mm, it could certainly be done. Fortunately,for the first, it was released in it's original 65mm on the Blu-ray release.

It was released in 70mm. https://in70mm.com/presents/1959_sup...tron/index.htm