MovieChat Forums > This Is Cinerama (1955) Discussion > This is Cinerama Blu-Ray

This is Cinerama Blu-Ray

posted 12 years ago by paulench
5 replies | jump to latest

The package includes two discs. First is the Blu-ray of the movie and all the extras. The second disc is a two-sided DVD. One side is the movie (also in Smilebox format) and the other side contains all the extras. Also included is a booklet copy of the opening night program with a lot of information about the Cinerama process, Lowell Thomas and several of the men involved in creating the film, production photos of the filming, and more.

The color and sharpness quality of the film is much higher than I ever expected. In the "making of" extra David Strohmaier and Greg Kimble explain in pretty good detail how they were able to pull natural color out of extremely faded scenes, remove the scratches, and reassemble the multitude of scenes into a presentation as close to the original presentation as possible.

"Smilebox" - love it or hate it. Frankly, I cannot think of any other way to present Cinerama films and remove some of the tremendous distortion inherent in showing the 3-panel film on a flat screen. I had seen the Blu-Ray "How the West Was Won" and was used to the Smilebox format, but newcomers might not like it at first and see it as a gimmick of some sort.

The stereo and fidelity of the sound is also startling. The guys at Chace Audio handled that part of the restoration and the result is worthy of a new soundtrack CD album.

This is a film you should watch on as large a screen as possible, and do sit closer to the screen than usual. The Smilebox seems to work best when you do. After you watch it all the way through, watch it again later with the audio commentary turned on. Strohmaier and others provide 2 hours of very informative facts and even trivia of behind the scenes stories on each scene.

As someone who saw several Cinerama films in theaters back in the day, I think this is as close to the experience as possible.

[–] Big G-2 12 years ago

Cool, although I may have to order it as Barnes & Noble and Bestbuy don't seem to carry it. And Amazon states they are temporarily out of stock, so my best shot is Movies Unlimited, which its retail price is much cheaper than that of Amazon's.

[–] jimpiscitelli 12 years ago

I would suggest you order it directly from Flicker Alley:

Here is their site:http://www.flickeralley.biz/index.php?option=com_content&view=arti cle&id=100&Itemid=54

[–] Big G-2 11 years ago

Yes, much cheaper. Thanks! I will give that a try.

[–] prpelias 10 years ago

Sadly, they were forced to use a 70 mm dupe negative instead of the 3-strip Cinerama sources. No word that I could notice was said about the status of the original negatives. Sound, on the other hand, is way better than picture.

I saw the theatrical presentation of the 70 mm version of This Is Cinerama but in a "flat" 70 mm screen. It was rather disappointing. But so is the new HD version, on account of most of us having a 55 to 60 in TV screens.

Still, from a historical and collector's point of view, it is worth having, better than nothing anyway. And personally, I do love the stereophonic demo produced near intermission.

[–] melnar1 7 years ago

You must be commenting on the BluRay version.

I have just watched the DVD version.

In my opinion, the quality of both video and audio leave a lot to be desired.

I would hope that the BluRay version is very much better.