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Author
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Topic: Miami Shores single-screen returns to life
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Louie Gonsalves
Film Handler
Posts: 16
From: Tamarac, FL, USA
Registered: Jul 2012
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posted 10-13-2012 11:04 AM
Caught this today reading the Sun Sentinel.
The Shores theater, which last ran film 20 years ago, is back to being a moviehouse.
This is a 1946 single-screener.
There's a picture of the interior in the article. If that pic is to be believed, the interior looks like Streamline Moderne.
I may be going to the show tonight. One night only, don'tcha know. I don't much care for musicals, but I'd like to say I saw a cinema risen from the ashes.. especially a single-screen 330 seat joint.
Article on re-opening.
---8<-------------------
By Maria Murriel, SouthFlorida.com
October 13, 2012
O Cinema, the art-house movie theater responsible for bringing grindhouse horror, obscure documentaries and locally produced flicks to South Florida audiences, is taking over the 66-year-old Miami Theater Center in Miami Shores. But lovers of traditional films need not be scandalized; owner Kareem Tabsch says the Miami Shores venue will screen family-friendly reels, starting with the 1940s musical "Blue Skies" on Saturday.
When Fred Astaire and Joan Caulfield hit the screen on opening night, it will be the first time in roughly two decades that the MTC will be used for what it was built: movie-showing. The venue opened in 1946, then called Paramount Movies, and "Blue Skies" was the first film shown there.
But after demand for old-school classics dropped, and single-screen movie theaters lost popularity, the Paramount went through countless reinventions that led it to become a "questionable-subject movie theater," Tabsch says. Miami Shores council members placed a ban on movie theaters to drive out the smutty content and the kind of crowds attracted to the small North Dade village.
In November 2011, Jesse Walters of the Miami Shores Chamber of Commerce helped lift the ban. Tabsch's new theater, O Cinema Miami Shores at the Miami Theater Center, will share the venue with the theater company previously known as the PlayGround Theatre, which puts on shows for children at MTC.
The programming at O Cinema Miami Shores will include animated films, live simulcasts of European ballet and opera, foreign-language narratives and classics from Hollywood's golden era. Still, the Wynwood location will have its grime and indie docs.
"That's not going anywhere," Tabsch says. "It's gonna reach new heights of awesome ridiculousness in Wynwood. [The new theater] is just allowing us to bring more types of films."
Saturday also marks the Village of Miami Shores' 80th anniversary, so a block party and street fair will lead up to the inaugural screening at 7 p.m. Although his new project aims to capture a less-edgy crowd, Tabsch isn't worried O Cinema Miami Shores will negatively affect the image of the Wynwood location.
"There's no reason you can't love both grindhouse and sweeping epics," he says. "I say that because I love blood and guts... but also love 'Casablanca'."
O Cinema Miami Shores at the Miami Theater Center, 9806 NE Second Ave., Miami Shores, screens "Blue Skies" at 7 p.m. Saturday. $10.50, $5 for children 12 and younger at O-Cinema.org."
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Louie Gonsalves
Film Handler
Posts: 16
From: Tamarac, FL, USA
Registered: Jul 2012
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posted 11-12-2012 10:32 PM
Finally got to the Shores to see Kubick's "Fear and Desire"
The Good News: The auditorium doesn't look like it was permanently harmed in its conversion to a "stage" theater. They built a stage that towers above the floor, so I'm hoping the floor itself and the seat studs are OK.
Tbe Bad News: To show movies they just put a screen up with speakers behind it. No masking, not even a proscenium. Just a screen dangling a few feet behind the front edge of the stage. Even at the seats closest to the screen, it's too small. Behind it you can see a fair ways back -- to where the real screen would've been at -- and see just how nice this room once was.
The stereo sound was acceptable, but when the mono feature (all 3 reels of it) rolled the audio was coming from left and above only.
The image, however, was focused. Black level was lacking. Exit and aisle lights were hitting the screen even with the house lights off. The projector sits on a shelf bolted to the back wall, under the booth's ports. The program is ran from a dj-like space at the back left of the auditorium, I suppose from where the stage lights, etc, are controlled. The booth ports are painted black or boarded up, couldn't tell.
The painful part was walking through the lobby, seeing the past and the potential of that lobby, and stepping into the auditorium, a nice wide one.. cut short by that "stage". I can see what it looked like in the past. Oh well. Progress.
All Hail The Multiplex, Destroyer of Cinemas*. This looks like it was a terrific single back in its time. The article in the paper built up my exitement, the reality of it completely deflated me as soon as I saw the mock screen.
I wish O Cinema luck. I don't think I"ll be going back there unless it's something irresistible and unobtainable. I hope the Wynwood location is better.
As for Fear and Desire, let's just say Stanley got much better as time went on. It did show me a few tastes of things he refined later, camera placements, light placement.. composition, things like that. Inner monologues. But yeah, it's a disjointed mess at times.
* I hope no one takes offense, I just have a very soft spot in my heart for singles and twins that were born as such. I realize it is a multiplex world and it has been for 40 years now.
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