The Wizard of Oz on the big screen

[Lzcutter]

Well, it was prompted heavily and we got our tixs early. Which was a good thing because the screenings sold-out.
TCM and Warner Home Video sponsored a nationwide screening in theaters across the country of the The Wizard of Oz this week. Why? In anticipation of its release on Blu-Ray no doubt next week.

I saw it Wednesday evening at a sold out event at the AMC chain in Century City. They had to schedule another 10:00 screening to accommodate the demand. So they said.

The color was breathtaking and the sepia book-ends were beautiful as well. The crowd loved it. Cheered after Robert O's intro and outro.

Everyone put away their cell phones and such and just enjoyed the movie. One lady in the audience had seen the film back in 1943 and was very pleased with it on Wednesday night.

A poster over at TCM City mentioned film noise. I'm guessing he means film grain as "noise" is a electronic term for videotape and digital.

The film grain wasn't obvious.

My only beef was that they seemed to have airbrushed out the wires controlling Bert Lahr's cowardly lion's tail.

But they preserved the proper aspect ratio so I won't complain too loudly.

At the end there was a logo for Dish NetworkHD which made Mr. Cutter and I wonder if the "prints" were delivered via satellite.

Mr. Cutter's only complaint was that the image seemed a bit soft (which if the satellite transmission is true, could lead to the slightly soft image he saw) but other than that, we were happy campers as was the rest of the audience.

The Burbank screenings were sold-out as well with a 10:00 screening to boot.

I hope TCM and WBHV co-sponsor more evenings like this. Seems like there is a demand for special events like this.

[CineMaven]

Hi there. I've read "The Wizard of Oz" was getting the big push. Sounds like your audience got into it. It's a great old film and deserved this revival. I've always tried to imagine what 1939 audiences must have thought of seeing this spectacle. I like reading you and Mr. Cutter having a "date night."

[Professional Tourist]

According to reports from members of the Yahoo group 'The Judy Garland Experience,' this special event was a mixed bag, with image quality varying highly from theater to theater. A few people reporting said the image quality was very good, but I'd say at least two-thirds reported the image was very dark and muddy and color being very off. Everyone seemed to report good image quality for the sepia sequences and good sound.

From what I've read this was accomplished by satellite transmissions that occurred in advance of the screenings, over a period of a couple of days. The participating theaters had opportunity to capture one or more of the transmissions and save them to a local storage device, and that device was used for playback on the 23rd. This may be why image quality varied so much from theater to theater, or perhaps it was due to various quality of digital projection equipment in general. One member even reported that the film was cut off before the end, due to an incomplete reception of the satellite transmission which the theater had not checked before the screening (those folks had their money refunded).

All in all, most people seemed to think that the image quality would be better by playing the upcoming 70th anniversary Blu-Ray disc on an HD television; that the large screens in theaters were too large for the amount of resolution in the digital streams.

[Moraldo Rubini]

I was at the San Francisco screening that same night. Similar enthusiastic crowd. They loved it so much, I felt somewhat like a curmudgeon, because I was sorely disappointed with the quality of the image. It looked like a projected video. But I loved that Liz and I were seeing it at the same time; as it reminds me of childhood, when every kid was watching the movie simultaneously. There was such a feeling of anticipation before it was aired on television each year, and it was the talk at school the next day. It was an event that we looked forward to every year. It's great to have it on DVD, but this killed what was precious about these screenings.

[GaryCooper]

*The Wizard of Oz: Hollywood premiere was on August 15, 1939, at Grauman's Chinese Theatre.