Cinerama restoration

A few days back, I got an email from one David Strohmaier, including a couple of Youtubue links to trailers for Cinerama restorations. David is the man behind the 2002 documentary Cinerama Adventure, which aired on TCM last October, and which he wrote an directed. Cinerama the company is apparently going through the process of restoring some of its old features, with Strohmaier a part of the project.



The above, as if you couldn't tell, is the trailer from the restored South Seas Adventure. I must say that the smileboxing doesn't look nearly as severe as it did on my TV screen when I watched Cinerama Adventure last October. Back then, I mentioned that I had seen some of the smileboxing in the Merian C. Cooper documentary that TCM ran several years earlier. (Strohmaier is, in fact, acknowledged in the credits for providing the smileboxing.) These Youtube trailers are much less problematic. That, and the seams where the prints from the three cameras meet up aren't quite as obvious either. To be fair to Strohmaier, though, ten years ago he wasn't working with a restoration print. I should also point out, since I don't think I did after watching Cinerama Adventuar last October, that it's a worthy documentary, and the portions about what the Cinerama creators were doing during World War II, years before the process was called Cinerama, was quite interesting.

I doubt if we're ever going to get home theaters with a ~150 degree radius of curvature and a multiple source setup so that we can all watch Cinerama at home the way it was meant to be seen in the theater, though.