Smileboxed THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM -- Will it ever make it to Bluray? - Page 4

from the souvenir program:

 

Thank you , Matt, I like what you have to say there. Please feel free to elaborate. There could even be a "play fairy tales" option in the menu like we've seen some musicals do with the songs.
Edited by NY2LA - 2/2/12 at 10:26am

Thanks for the scan, Greg. I wonder how many of your famous ad art display compositions you could do based on the doodles and portrait art in that book... I do believe that is where I first learned all about Cinerama.

just for you NY2LA

 

This ad brings back memories...wow!

 

What an impressive ad that was. Those dark blocks next to the reviews were the portraits, I'm guessing?

Bravo, Encore!

As I've said you could contact Marty Hart at AWSM and ask him. Meanwhile found this with a Google search:

Source of upcoming This Is Cinerama DVD/Blu-ray?

from Martin Hart

Due to budgetary restrictions, SERIOUS budgetary restrictions, it was not possible to work from the original negatives. Instead, Strohmaier and his minions have worked from the negative created for the 70mm release. At first I was severely disappointed in that choice but I've seen enough of the work that I no longer have any reservations. Here's why:

The condition of the original camera negatives is pretty sad. They have been run through contact printers hundreds of times and show lots of damage and dirt. There are blank slugs that replace missing frames and patched tears, etc. Only the 1963 re-issue of "This Is Cinerama" was printed using dye transfer, which don't subject the negative to umptillion runs through the optical printer. TIC was the only one of the travelogues that had an IB Technicolor release. All others were contact printed on Eastman color print stock by Technicolor.

I was concerned that a lot of the image would be lost but that doesn't appear to be true. Since the negative has no mag stripes it contains more of the original three panels than on a striped print. The image height is just a hair less than the full three-strip frame but the difference in height is very, very small. The 70mm negative contains problems as well and where possible Dave transferred the same footage from either the original or duplicate negatives. His matching of the 70mm and 35mm panels is extremely good and nobody is going to be able to tell where it was done. Trust me.

The final product does not have the unbelievable panel matching that is seen in WHVs digital work on "How The West Was Won". I'm not saying that to be critical. The TIC materials are in much worse condition than the HTWWW negatives which were printed in IB Technicolor. I have an evaluation copy of TIC on DVD and I think it looks great, but the more recent material that Dave's put on the web looks even better.

If you happen to like "This is Cinerama" then the upcoming release shouldn't be a disappointment. I believe that it will only be available in Smilebox which will allow copyright protection of the resulting product. Sorry for getting a bit wordy here but I get kind of excited about the subject as I've seen how it's progressed thus far. The guys working on this project are really squeezing everything they can from the source material and they are doing a labor of love, and just a little bit of money.

I have a DVD of Dave's "Windjammer" which I think looks better than the version run at the Cinerama Dome, but TIC looks about a thousand percent better. It'll fill the biggest home screens with a real ass kicker of a virtual reality time machine.

Marty
--
The American WideScreen Museum
http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/

This is very helpful, thanks.

One question: you refer to DVD a few times. I trust that there will be Blu-rays as well. In fact, I see no reason for a DVD at all of these films, given the likely customer base.


Thanks again!

I didn't write that. It was a quote, credited top and bottom to Marty Hart at AWSM. Gosh, I thought I made that clear. He is in direct contact with the guys who are working on the digital transfer of TIC and Windjammer. Neither title has been released yet, so of course there are no Blu-Rays yet. But if you have something like a movie on your computer, and you want to show it to someone, you could make a DVD copy for them to look at. When he mentions having an evaluation copy that is what he means.

Not everyone interested in this kind of thing can afford HDTV or a Blu Ray player, btw.

Cool picture, right?

Well I was in Larry Edmunds today to pick up Cinema Retro, told the owner about all the Cinerama stuff coming up, and he showed me a blowup of that picture - without the headline it's like a 1.85 width, it was printed in saturated color, and about 9x12" suitable for framing.

He also has souvenir books for 5 Cinerama movies, originals, not the Dome's reprints. And has a few from Grimm left behind the counter.

Larry Edmunds Bookshop | Hollywood, California http://www.larryedmunds.com/

Has anyone looked at the Denver Cooper Cinerama newsreel?
http://www.britishpathe.com/video/the-wonderful-world-of-the-brothers-grimm-preview

I'd already bought the box set LP, which had the souvenir program, so I didn't need to buy it at the theatre. Funnily, when I saw How The West Was Won it was the first roadshow film I was not bowled over by - I loved the hugeness of it and the look of it, but even as a teen some of the story was really irritating - I had no such problems with Grimm.

It's funny that you mention that since the Seattle Cinerama loves the Cinerama logo. I have two shirts with the logo, one from 2004 and one from 2010.
I don't know if they're selling the shirts online, but the website for the Seattle Cinerama is terrific. And for the record, the first movie they played was TWWOTBG in January 1963.

Adrian - You may have already seen it but this is an Interesting piece about the Royalty: http://cinerama.topcities.com/royaltytheatre.htm

I had tickets to see THE GOLDEN HEAD but couldn't go at the last minute. I always regret not having seen THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM in Cinerama. I saw the trailer (in Cinerama) when seeing HOW THE WEST WAS WON but for some reason I never got round to seeing it, despite seeing the vast majority of all 70mm and Cinerama films from 1962 onwards.

Their website is very nice looking but almost all the information on it is wrong. Particularly dates and Cinerama details. I heard that WWOTBG was their first movie. A former employee had put together a nice website about it a decade or so back. i think the Seattle Cinerama is in good hands since the new guy took over but he still hasn't corrected the errors on the site. I think their theatre beats the heck out of the Dome.

Thanks for that link, Douglas. I do remember the blood-red auditorium and the stairs down to the stalls. The cinema was on Portugal Street, off Kingsway. I saw Mutiny on the Bounty there in its premiere engagement (as they used to say) and The Best of Cinerama. I didn't think it was quite right as a Cinerama theatre as the auditorium was a bit of long narrow tunnel and you need quite a shallow but wide auditorium for Cinerama, like the Casino and the Coliseum. The Astoria worked well with a curved screen because that had the right shape of auditorium.

It might be worth reminding people about the fabulously huge curved screen at the Odeon Marble Arch which was installed for D150. By the late 1980s it was the only curvaceous one left in Britain, until David Lean had it removed for Lawrence of Arabia. My favourite director destroyed my favourite cinema for my favourite film. A trilemma.

WWOTBG Newsreel of Premiere at Cooper Theatre in Denver CO.

 

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/the-wonderful-world-of-the-brothers-grimm-preview

 

On the British Pathe site, which I find interesting.  Cinema Treasures web site was the one that point in the direction for this.  See we already have one extra for the Blu-ray. 

 

And I actually still have one of those books they are passing out in the theatre Lobby.  It came with the storybook soundtrack LP of the film. 

 

 

 

Thanks for that link.  I have those books in the LP sets, too.  (I love that kind of packaging in general, including the times it has best been carried over through the era of LD and DVD/BLU box sets.)

 

One of the documentaries or newsreel clips on Ben-Hur also shows the handing out of the hardcover books in the lobby.  I love the additional shot here of the audience members paging through them.

 

After that Director Alan Parker demanded the notorious flat screen and flat drop ceiling at the Cinerama Dome for Evita. Both were gone with the film but that began Pacific's excuses to demolish the Dome or at least the screen.

Funny that I posted that link twice before here, one of the first things I posted in this thread, and none of you noticed it until CT mentioned it.

Connecting the dots...

Now that cinema retro and some online sources have some details that we didn't have before...

1) Cinema Retro shows a 70mm composite frame, in which all 3 panels are of equal size, all rather narrow, which suggests the previously mentioned 1.25 anamorphic squeeze. The article shows ads from several screenings, evidence of several 70mm composite revivals in the 70s, although no proof that Grimm was one of them. Still that frame, and a previous mention that the TIC element (65mm neg) being used for the DVD/BR has no soundtrack, (revealing more available image on the sides) should put to rest concerns of whether all 3 panels will be fully seen. Again taking into consideration the aperture plates, projection portals and screen masking, (all of which normally chop off a bit of picture edge) it's likely that nothing will be missing from the video that ever made it to the screens of most cinemas in the first place. Anyone who has ever been involved with mastering a widescreen negative to video could tell you that they typically can reveal more of the image than the cinemas ever did.

2) The magazine article adds a detail that the rare Grimm print comes from a collector in Australia, and mentions often such prints were abandoned in the theatres after the initial run. An article at IN70MM http://www.in70mm.com/news/2012/mitchell/index.htm profiles what has to be that same collector, including a picture of Grimm projected in 3 strip in his backyard cinema. The fact that his screen shows a narrow center panel flanked by two wider side panels is explained by a shot of his booth, in which the portals are all in a row, making the sides spread further from the throw angle. Mention is made about the prints typically being left behind after initial runs, which explains the existence of his prints. He also mentions aging of the prints and himself, has limited his screening them, sounding understandably weary of the effort and expense necessary to store and run those prints. He made a point of saying the upcoming discs would be an easier way to view the movies... without mentioning that Grimm is the only one not being transferred. I'd say fans owe him quite a bit of gratitude for allowing the Grimm print to be shipped all the way to England...

Another article online promises to show an "archival" print of Grimm at the Cinerama Dome this fall. http://www.in70mm.com/news/2011/cinerama/index.htm We can figure it's the same print unless someone announces otherwise. "Archival" doesn't sound like a print a collector has been holding onto, so who knows? Unfortunately, there hasn't been much in the way of unified communication among people close enough to today's Cinerama projects for us to draw any sure conclusions so we are left with speculation.



3) Websites talking about Bradford and Hollywood both list dates for Cinerama festivals and both mention plans to run Grimm. In this respect, Seattle is conspicuous for not having announced anything regarding Cinerama for this anniversary year.



Edited by NY2LA - 2/7/12 at 10:25am

I love this stuff!

 

You have my apologies.  I missed your previous posts concerning the link and certainly would not have re-posted it if I was aware of them.  I saw the link on Cinema Treasures and got excited for several reasons.  The foremost being I knew this thread was alive and there is interest in the film.  The more interest shown in an un-available movie on DVD or Blu-ray, the more it gets to the executives  that control the film.  Your posts concerning this film and others, show your passion for the films and that is a very good thing and makes your posts enjoyable. 

 

COMPARING original 3 STRIP to CURRENT TCM TRANSFER and LASERDISC.

Someone running a nice site at http://cinerama.topcities.com/wwotbgld.htm has already posted the difference.

This suggests that a new transfer or somehow more complete new version was created after the laserdisc...

As the site mentions the frames representing the TCM broadcast are from an old VHS, we have no way of knowing the picture quality of the actual transfer, or the element it was taken from. Further clouding this is that TCM is only broadcasting in SD as far as I know.

However, all this is more than enough for us to ask WB, what (presumably 35mm composite) source was THAT from? And why can't we at least have that for now?
Edited by NY2LA - 2/7/12 at 9:01am

That site is run by Roland Lataille, who is a regular poster in this forum.

Excellent. I wonder if he now has a DVR to capture frame grabs from the next time WWOTBG is broadcast.

Great, thanks for clarifying that. Maybe should have said normal center panel and wider sides... Does that mean you know the gentleman who ran the screening? Can you confirm that was a print he has saved all these years, and if that is the print slated for screening at Bradford this Spring and the Dome in the Fall?

Funnily enough, I just saw another picture of a 3 Strip being projected elsewhere with presumably correct projector placement and the side panels looked bigger there as well.
Edited by NY2LA - 2/7/12 at 7:03pm

I've lost track with the guy who ran the Cinerama in Sydney. I would suspect that it may be the Bradford print. I know he has been helping them out.
When I saw it the colour was perfect and sharp as a tack.