At last the Cinerama Dome

I didn't even know what a Cinerama Dome was, much less that there was one in Los Angeles. Furthermore I hadn't even realized that the Arclight Hollywood theater was home to the Cinerama Dome. Imagine that? And Ryan had been talking about this place for some time.

A Cinerama Dome is a theater designed to show widescreen, 70mm Cinerama films. What's so great about 70mm you ask? Well I asked too - it has a higher resolution than the standard 35mm film. Essentially it has a wider film gauge and from what I understand you can fit a lot more image on 70mm film and most theaters aren't equipped to show movies shot with 70mm film.

70mm illustration

Actual 70mm film. Can you even resist that lion?

So instead they show the same movies but in 35mm, which leads me to believe that you may be missing some of the scenery in the shots cause they must be cut off. Kinda like the difference between standard television in the 1980s and when the letterbox format first came out and everyone hated it! But then once we all knew better we loved it right out loud and I couldn't even imagine watching a movie on an old fashioned standard television screen.

What's incredible about the Cinedome here in Hollywood is it's the first one of its kind ever built, and it opened its doors on November 7, 1963 to moviegoers. The first movie shown here was It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. In fact when Ryan and I made our first visit to the theater a man sitting behind us was telling his friend that he had come to this very theater to see that movie. He also went on to say that Neil Young took him to see 2001: Space Odyssey in San Francisco, then continued boasting about being Dennis Hopper's voice coach or something like that. He was talking so loud I was sure his stories were for the benefit of all us. Egos!

In 1998 the Cinedome in Hollywood was declared a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument. I am guessing this means the domed theater is safe from destruction, but at one time there had been talk about doing just that. Thankfully preservationists and movie goers alike made their opinions known loud and clear and so for people like me who never even heard of a Cinerama Dome can now go and appreciate one.

Another neat tid bit of information is the Cineramic Dome films us three projectors to cast the image on the screen. (I know! I still can't even wrap my head around how that might work).

Well, Ryan and I went to see Life of Pi and it was beautiful. Visually it was marvelous. It was shown in 3D, but the 3D was so subtle I forgot it was even in 3D.

But it was magic to look at. The colors were vibrant, vivid, and sometimes breathtaking. And the movie is so much more than a tale about a shipwrecked boy who must survive on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger.

I urge folks to see it. It is a really deep story, but is told in such a simple way. I think that's part of the magic that makes the movie so profound.

I don't want to say much more about it than that. I don't want to spoil it, or ruin anyone else's interpretations of it.

But there is a huge "aha" at the end, and then if you think about that "aha" for a little while longer you can see how the story becomes a metaphor on more than one level. Very well done.

Apart from the movie, the seats were comfy. The screen was large and curved. It was not a flat screen, instead it curled like a piece of elbow macaroni - kind of bowed. The acoustics were great, and overall I had no complaints. It's kind of like a tamed down IMAX. The screen was 86 feet long.

This is the concept of the screen, but it doesn't seem that annoying in person. It's actually really quite nice

Courtesy of Arclight- this is a picture of the Cinerama Dome inside.