Digitisations, Restorations and Revivals (26) - IL BOOM, Randwick Ritz, Disaster at the Cremorne Orpheum

Associate Editor (Restorations and Revivals) Simon Taaffe has come across the following screenings and other information. Click on the links for times, more detail etc where indicated.

Billed as Vittorio De Sica’s ‘lost’ film, ‘lost’ apparently meaning ‘never released in the USA’, Il Boom is screening at New York’s wondrous Film Forum in a restored DCP with freshly-minted subtitles. The film was so lost that it screened at MIFF in 2014 but who can hold that against a screening in the Big Apple.

But now to hi jinx and fun and games at the beloved local Randwick Ritz where a concerted effort has been embarked upon to carve out a niche screening ‘classic’ restorations. Note as well that The Ritz is about to join that elite group of Sydney movie houses which present programs in the Sydney Film Festival. Quality presentation is assured and the screen in Cinema 1 is a good size. You wont get the impression of peering at a postage stamp if you get seats up the back of the Dress Circle. We are looking forward especially to seeing a new Oz comedy that is getting its Oz premiere at the coming SFF. That's Not Me is a debut feature by writer/director Gregory Erdstein and lead actor/writer Alice Foulcher. It was produced by a number of people on an absurdly low budget. One of the producers is a friend but don’t hold that against it.

Randwick Ritz

The Ritz’s restoration programme includes The Godfather, the “Director’s Cut”(!!!!) of Saturday Night Fever, The Fifth Element, Singin' in the Rain, An Affair to Remember, The Graduate, All About Eve, Some Like it Hot and North by Northwest. Now I freely concede that we’re a long, long, long way from the Film Forum or even ACMI, but great oaks. At some point you run out of popular titles or you just might be tempted to run the DCP of the remains of Greed to see what happens.

Not to be outdone, on the other side of the harbor the Cremorne Orpheum, also now well-established as an SFF venue, is screening what it calls the ultimate disaster double and advertising it as AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE: THE FIRST TIME EVER PERMITTED TO BE SCREENED TOGETHER ON THE BIG SCREEN!", see The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. My goodness, who thought that up.