Excerpts from the article:

"But now, just as Cinerama's unique method of movie projection is about to celebrate its 50th anniversary, a debate is raging in Hollywood over plans by the dome's owners to install a new giant curved screen that critics guarantee will make Cinerama movies, as well as many conventional ones, appear out of focus."

"They are frustrated that Pacific Theatres, which has roots in Southern California dating to 1946 and has owned the rights to Cinerama since the early 1960s, has decided to install a solid-sheet screen in the refurbished theater rather than a louvered screen like the one that graced the dome when it opened in 1963 and remained there for a decade."

"They fear that if Pacific Theatres uses a solid-sheet screen, it will create the same focus problems that caused movies in the old dome to appear washed out as a result of light bouncing from one side of the deeply curved screen to the other."

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The last movie I saw there was a newly-struck 70mm scope print of "The Ten Commandments", my favorite Hollywood biblical spectacular. What a horrible experience. First, the original image (VistaVision?) was reframed to fit normal scope, and it was SEVERELY cropped. It was a joke, painful to look at. The LA Times actually mentioned this in their review I think. Then during the entire first half of the movie, I had a sense that something was wrong with the projector or something (I don't know if they were on changeovers or platter). It just felt like something was wrong and the projectionist was probably sweating bullets. Sure enough, right before the intermission, as Moses meets the burning bush, the film broke and a frame got stuck, and of course within a half second it burned, with everyone watching it on the screen. All in all the experience was so unpleasant we just left and went home (to Orange County, a long drive!).

The Dome is an interesting piece of movie history. But if the renovation is for the purpose of showing regular old 35mm or even 70mm conventional films, on a screen as deeply curved as I remember, they should forget it and either turn it into a museum, or bulldoze it.

But what is really annoying about the standard screen controversy is that Pacific claims the real reason they are not going with it is that the "sound system would make a strip screen vibrate". From the IMDB News:

This Is Cinerama?

An angry controversy has erupted in Hollywood over the decision to reopen the Cinerama Theater and exhibit existing classic Cinerama movies there on a single curved screen instead of a louvered one as the originals were. Reporting on the controversy, today's (Tuesday) Los Angeles Times commented: "Only in Hollywood, with its heavy concentration of film industry professionals and serious movie buffs, could the design of a movie screen provoke such concern, and even outrage." Critics contend that a single curved screen will cause light on each end to reflect onto the opposite side and that the center will sag, making it difficult for projectionists to keep the picture sharply focused. Operators of the theater counter that the strips of a louvered screen would move if a state-of-the-art sound system is placed behind it. (The Times noted that when the original Cinerama film, This Is Cinerama, debuted in September, 1952, it became the top-grossing movie of that year, even though only a handful of theaters were equipped to screen it. It remained in Cinerama theaters for two more years.)

Now, I remember seeing Cinerama way back when (at the Clairidge Theatre in N.J.), and I remember the show was quite loud, thank you, and the screen didn't budge a bit from the obviously intense sound pressure. So it would seem to me that the excuse given by Pacific is your basic crock of merde.

quote:

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The problem with Seattle's screen is that the young "experts" that put
the thing in wouldn't pay any attention to the information given them.
They didn't understand why the louvres were needed. The louvres don't
face the back of the theatre, they follow the curvature of the screen.
Additionally they don't overlap as they should. This makes for a single
piece screen that's got about 1,500 slits in it.

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Does any one know if there are any plans to correct the problem he describes?