By MCN Editor editor@moviecitynews.com

Seattle Cinerama Film Festival Announced

Posted Thursday, August 25th, 2011 - Comments Off on Seattle Cinerama Film Festival Announced
Be Sociable, Share!

Rare, Classic Films to Screen at Seattle Cinerama Theater

SEATTLE, Aug. 25, 2011 –  Film buffs will be treated to 15 classic widescreen movies during the Cinerama Film Festival, including extremely rare 70mm prints from studio vaults and the archives of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The festival opens Sept. 30 at Seattle Cinerama Theatre and runs through Oct. 16. Opening weekend will feature two of only seven movies ever produced for Cinerama’s three-projector technology, This is Cinerama and How The West Was Won.

The other movies featured will be widescreen classics in 70mm, including West Side Story, Lawrence of Arabia and Cleopatra. The 70mm prints Cinerama goers will enjoy are on loan from Hollywood studios’ vaults and rarely seen by general audiences, said theater operator Greg Wood. Prints will be loaned by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers, Disney & MGM.

The festival is sponsored by Seattle Cinerama Theatre and SIFF.

Cinerama Theatre is owned by Paul G. Allen, the Seattle philanthropist and co-founder of Microsoft. He saved the vintage 1963 movie theater from demolition in 1988. Last year he gave the theater a multi-million dollar upgrade, with digital sounds, 3-D capabilities, a new screen, movie memorabilia from his personal collection and the best selection of locally-made concessions at any theater in Seattle.

Along with the capability to show the latest blockbusters in 3-D, Allen frequently donates use of Cinerama to non-profit film festivals, including the Seattle International Film Festival, Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, National Film Festival for Talented Youth (NFFTY) and the Seattle Jewish Film Festival.

“Cinerama has been one of Seattle’s great treasures, and Paul Allen has made it one of the best movie palaces in the world,” said Carl Spence, SIFF’s Artistic Director. “As much as digital cinema is transforming the movie going experience, it still has not achieved the rich look and dimension of celluloid, particularly compared to what you’ll see with the widescreen and luminous 70mm film featured at the Cinerama Festival.”

Allen said the Cinerama Festival is possible because of the generosity and cooperation of The Academy and the film studios.

“We’re grateful to the Academy and studios for sharing these treasures with us, and allowing Cinerama’s audiences to see them the way they were intended – on the wide screen,” said Allen, who saved Cinerama in 1988.

The films will be projected by state-of-the-art equipment and seen on the theater’s original Cinerama screen – the largest in the world. “Last fall we embraced the future with a large technical upgrade. We’re now excited to embrace the past with a special series dedicated to 70mm film,” Wood said.

WHAT CINERAMA IS: Cinerama came to popularity in the early 1960s, shot with three 35mm motion picture cameras mounted as one unit, sharing one motor. Three separate projectors running simultaneously merged the film into one movie, shown on a giant, deeply curved screen.

Tickets will be available for purchase for $12 beginning Friday, Aug. 26 at www.cinerama.com.

3-Strip Cinerama films:

This Is Cinerama How The West Was Won

70mm films:

The Sound Of Music Lawrence of Arabia Cleopatra 2001: A Space Odyssey My Fair Lady

West Side Story

Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Playtime Baraka

South Pacific Tron Lord Jim

For more information about the film festival, including screening times, visit: www.cinerama.com.

# # #

Be Sociable, Share!

Posted in Movie City News, Press Releases | Comments Off on Seattle Cinerama Film Festival Announced

Comments are closed.

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon