This is Cinerama played for years, with flagship Bijous in key states, and, soon in major European and Asian countries. Of course, the expense was tremendous – having to build special theaters, equipped with giant projectors, screens – and, natch, those 70MM prints x three. The result was 1952’s This is Cinerama, iconic for its opening roller-coaster sequence that immediately sent scores of stunned viewers into the rest room to hurl their partially masticated Goobers and popcorn. Cooper, who, with travel impresario Lowell Thomas, approached unsung ‘Rama hero Hazard Reeves to possibly do a full-length feature, to be shot around the world in Technicolor with a new audio appendage called stereophonic sound (a big movie after all needed big sound). Waller worked with the Army Air Force to create a lifelike rig situation to train pilots under simulated fire. World War II brought the idea further to fruition. More than a decade later, the grandiose concept proved a draw at the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair – a freaky, dizzying attraction (called Vitarama by its exhibitor Fred Waller). The germ of the idea went back as far as the silents, most famously rendered in the triptych finale of Abel Gance’s Napoleon (although these screens didn’t fully “tell” one complete, continuous tapestry. In a nutshell, Cinerama was a synchronous three-camera 70MM process that required a special stadium-esque theater to show the succeeding synchronous three-projection 70MM walls of cinema. It wasn’t simply widescreen, or 3-D, or even IMAX, and yet, the positive attributes of all these things apply. But more than a half century ago, it was a really big deal. Today, the word “Cinerama” tends to confuse most post-Boomers – movie buffs that they may be. Yet another Holy Grail title I long-wished would get a proper home vid release, 1962’s lavish Cinerama entertainment THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM finally gets the Blu-Ray edition it deserves, thanks to The Warner Archive Collection, and the Herculean efforts of the format’s #1 fanboy David Strohmaier. THE FOUR ASPECTS OF THE FILM (Widescreen)
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