-- SLIGHT CHANGE IN COVER ART FOR FLICKER'S UPCOMING CINERAMA RELEASES --
-- UPDATED ARTWORK ADDED TO PREVIOUS ANNOUNCEMENT --
ORIGINAL ANNOUNCEMENT
Flicker Alley has announced two more Cinerama releases: Cinerama Holiday (Blu-Ray / DVD) and Cinerama South Seas Adventure (Blu-Ray / DVD).
Both are Blu-Ray/DVD combo sets with a street date of October 22nd. Each will come with loads of bonus features (below).
It’s winter in Switzerland, it’s summer
in New England, it’s daybreak on the desert, it’s dancing till dawn,
it’s spring in Paris, it’s jazz in New Orleans…it’s every holiday you
ever dreamed of…come true!
Cinerama Holiday was the 2nd of the
original, 3-panel Cinerama travelogues. Released in 1955, the motion
picture crisscrosses two hybridized travelogues of the “Cinerama camera
accompanied” vacations of two adventurous, real-life, married couples.
We meet first, Fred and Beatrice Troller, from Zurich, Switzerland, who
upon their arrival on the first transatlantic flight to ever land in
Kansas City, unload their motor scooter and begin a panoramic tour of
America, which begins with them driving up Fremont Street in Las Vegas
and catching a casino floor show. Meanwhile, Betty and John Marsh, leave
their Kansas City home to take off on the same plane the Troller’s
arrived on, for a return flight to Switzerland where this couple take in
an outdoor ice show in St. Moritz, and where John rides a bobsled,
beginning their European vacation. The latter of which provides just one
of the film’s obvious, immersive, “thrill” sequences accentuated by the
three-camera/curved-view format.
The Swiss couple are awed by sights of the American west viewed from
the “Vista-Dome” of a speeding California Zephyr train, ride a cable car
in San Francisco, observe a New Orleans “jazz funeral”, a performance
of “Tiger Rag” by Oscar Celestin, and visit a New England county fair,
where the Ferris wheel provides another immersive cinematic experience.
Meanwhile, the American couple ski the Swiss Alps with hundreds of
fellow skiers, and thereafter discover the joy of singing and “fondue”
in a Swiss tavern, and then move on to Paris, where they take in the
Paris Opera, the Louvre, High Mass at the Cathedral of Notre Dame, a
Grand Guignol puppet show, see the spring line in a fashion show, and a
floor show in the famous Lido. Both couples meet up in New York City to
“finish” their movie, so to speak, and are treated to a finale of the
U.S. Navy’s “Blue Angels” performing near-supersonic aerial maneuvers
and landing on an aircraft carrier. And all of that’s a Cinerama
Holiday!
Unseen theatrically since the early 1970’s, and never before broadcast
or issued on home video, the picture now digitally remastered from its
original camera negatives, is now newly presented in the Smilebox Curved
Screen Simulation. It is a fascinating time capsule of the 1950’s, an
age in which most people had yet to experience a flight in a plane.
BONUS FEATURES:
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The original Cinerama Holiday breakdown reel
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New interviews with original participants
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Original 8 mm home movies
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A demonstration and comparison of the film’s restoration
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An amazing scrapbook of images made during production
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A booklet reproduction of an original program
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And much more!
Cinerama South Seas Adventure proved
to be the 5th and last of the original, 3-panel Cinerama travelogues.
Released in 1958, and 4 months after the 3-panel competitor,
“Windjammer: The Voyage of the Christian Radich”, it is at moments
similar, although overall an entirely different tale than previously
seen in the format. Five separate stories are dramatized, woven out of a
series of theoretical, island-hopping voyages that start en route to
Hawaii, and after traversing the South Seas as far as Australia, end up
flying back home from Honolulu.
In between, through both an adventurous shipboard passenger, a
returning American WWII veteran, and the enthused narration, we're taken
island hopping to stops in places lush, tranquil, and inviting, like
Tahiti, Tonga and Fiji, then to and the even more exotic, primitive
Pentecost Island. Native dancing and song are celebrated alongside
cultures and customs spanning thousands of years. Sailing onward to New
Zealand, we're reminded it's also an island, in fact two, with an
unexpected geography including volcanoes and snow-covered mountain
ranges. From there we' travel on to Australia, where we follow the
arrival of a new European immigrant man and his young daughter, as they
get accustomed to native animals like koalas and kangaroos, and then
settle in for a new life in the "outback". There, they become integral
in stories illustrating life in such isolated areas, including both the
"School of the Air", a classroom conducted over the radio and the Flying
Doctor Service, similarly radio-dispatched.
Unseen theatrically since the early 1970’s, and never before issued on home video, Cinerama South Seas Adventure is
the original road show version of the picture, complete with overture,
intermission and exit music, now newly presented in the Smilebox Curved
Screen Simulation. Now digitally remastered from the original camera
negatives, the picture shines bright emitting both a panorama that is at
times breathtakingly colorful, and a sparklingly clear, seven-channel
sound track, as well as a fascinating time capsule of 1950’s innocence
and quaintness. With a partial narration by Orson Welles, the picture
also, surprisingly may be the first to chronicle primitive bungee
jumping.
BONUS FEATURES:
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Interviews with original participants
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A vintage Renault promotional film as originally presented in 3-panel Cinerama
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Clips from “In The Wake of Captain Cook,” a Carl Dudley short on the South Seas with behind the scenes filming of South Seas Adventure
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Many behind the scene stills and promotional materials
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A booklet reproduction of an original program
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And much more!
