The Continental Is Gone

[mburlison]

I think that theatre there just west/south of 23rd and Macarthur was just as nice as the Continental...I think they've made a church of out it. Nothing against the Continental. Wasn't there a Drive-In theatre over there too?

[ChristianConservative]

Wasn't there a Drive-In theatre over there too?

Supposedly it was located where the Marriott now stands.

[mburlison]

Yes, that's right... thanks for the location, I recall a ring of cedars around it. Also one was east of where Hertz is on Macarthur/NW Expressway. (Where the defunct Service Merchandise was etc...)

[Pete]

mburlison, the theater that was on McArthur & 23rd was the Westwood. It was nice and similar to the Continental but not as big or grand.


Cinema 70 was the drive-in theater near Hertz on NW Expressway east of McArthur. That old site is now occupied by the shopping center that has a Chili's in the front (used to be Service Merchandise when it first opened but not sure what is there now).




The one where the Marriott is now (across from Baptist Hospital) was the NW Hi-Way Drive-in:

[Pete]

Here's an old photo showing the adjacent Physician's Tower Building (now a hotel with different cladding) that had a similar architectural style and that used the same black brick and white trim, ala Founders Tower.

Those two buildings plus United Founders Tower and the ? Bank (the building with arches on May) were all built around the same time (mid-60's) and made that area quite "modern" and striking at the time:

[mburlison]

Great pics, thanks ! Yes, I remember seeing the "Return of the Pink Panther" at the Continental, circa 1975 or 1976... something like that. It was a nice place. I had not remembered it being so much bigger, but thinking about it, it definitely had a huge screen.

[Bobby H]

There are several culprits to name in why the Continental theater declined and then wound up facing the wrecking ball.

Also, keep in mind there is a sister Continental Theater up in Denver to this one that is also lapsing into a sad state of decline. The last time I saw a good movie there was in 1999 and watching The Matrix. But even then, the 35mm projection was just far too dim for that kind of Cinerama style screen. Now the EQ in that auditorium is just plain bad. You're really better off taking your chances in one of the smaller, THX certified audiotoriums at that Denver site.

Oklahoma City's Continental Theater was designed in mind for the Cinerama format, which was the greatest movie-going format one could see in the 1950's and 1960's. The huge curved screen was also pretty well suited to 5-perf 70mm film formats like Ultra Panavision 70 and Dimension 150. But an ordinary 35mm lamp house just could not squeeze out enough lumens to get that sort of screen properly lighted.

True 70mm film productions all but died out in 1970 with the box office bomb of David Lean's Ryan's Daughter. From then on out most 70mm print releases were blow-ups from 35mm lensed productions. Even all the Star Wars movies made from 1977 to 1983 were shot on 35mm film, not 70mm.

There were few exceptions through the years.

Tron was shot in Super Panavision 70mm and then specially treated through even larger format chromes to get all the glow effects painted onto each plate.

Portions of Brainstorm were filmed in 70mm, but director and effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull really wanted to shoot the movie in his own 70mm 60 frames per second Showscan process. Disney and then MGM declined because they thought the results looked "too real."

Far and Away utilized a revolutionary new Panavision Super Panaflex 65mm camera, along with the equally revolutionary Arri 765 65mm camara. But that went nowhere in 1992.

Baraka was a visually astounding 70mm travelougue of the planet, made with Todd-AO cameras. But it only played in art house theaters, few of which had any 70mm show capability. That was 1993.

Once Dolby Digital, DTS and Sony Dynamic Digital Sound became common for 35mm film prints there was no longer any need on the part of movie studios to support large format 70mm prints any further.

After 1993, only a mere handful of studio releases were made to commercial theaters. Kenneth Brannaugh made a 4 hour long version of Hamlet in 70mm for under $30 million. But it played only in a few theaters.

Warner Brothers made a couple 70mm Dolby mag prints of The Wild Bunch in the mid 1990s. But more theaters played the "restored" movie in 35mm Dolby Digital.

James Cameron had to pay out of his own pocket for the six 70mm DTS blow up prints for his production of Titanic. I was very happy to see one of those prints play at the glorious General Cinemas Northpark Mall #1 THX theater in Dallas. It was one of the original 2 THX sound system theaters personally equipped by Tomlinson Holman. Sadly, that theater was torn down in 1998, paved over by a parking lot, and now a very unremarkable AMC 14-plex with 35mm only projection sits on that site. I'll probably never visit the place.

Since then, very few 70mm prints have been made for any release. New OSHA and EPA regulations have pretty much banned the practice of mag-striping film prints with smooth sounding analog tracks. Just about all 70mm prints, anywhere between 15-perf 70mm IMAX to normal 5-perf 70mm theatrical, will simply be time-coded for DTS playback. The American Film Institute, Kodak Theater and Academy Theater in Los Angeles will once in awhile show off a new 70mm DTS dupe of a classic movie, such as Patton or Lawrence of Arabia. However, you never see any of that treatment given to a new movie. And you never see a new 70mm print booked into a regular commercial movie theater environment.

And that finally gets me to a very critical point and problem in movie theaters today.

The "Cine Capris" theater in Harkins' Bricktown 16 theater measures more than 70' across. They have a very good Kinoton 35mm projector in that booth, but it does not throw a sufficiently bright and sharp image on that screen. That theater really needs 70mm projection.

The new Warren Theatres project in Moore promises to build theaters with screens 80 feet in diameter. 35mm just isn't enough for that kind of IMAX-sized movie screen. A 35mm lamphouse can only throw about 4000 watts worth of real light out of that lamphouse hole. An 80' screen needs more than 10,000 watts worth of real light hitting it to have 12-16 foot lamberts of light measured on the screen. Only 5-perf 70mm projection or larger can manage that.

That gets back to why the Continental started going into decline. If you can only show 35mm prints on a giant Cinerama screen, the results are going to look dim and pretty darned cruddy. People will just go to smaller theaters where the image seems better and the location is closer. Much of the 1970's very much had an anti-big movie bent to it. AMC Theaters developed the multiplex during this time.

I guess that sort of comes to some defense of the people running that theater. Powers that be in Hollywood did more to kill off luxurious big screen presentations than anyone running operations at any specific movie theater.

The terrible thing for Hollywood is they really need to get back to making movies in formats like 70mm to secure their future and future-proof their product. I don't think they have the foresight to do that.

The real possibility is Hollywood will succumb to short term thinking and start releasing their movies both in theaters and on DVD "day in date" at the same time. Such a move will kill off the commercial movie industry very quickly. Without the commercial movie industry, Hollywood would have no sense of legitimacy. They would just be a glorified straight to video operation. Essentially they would be like TV networks without any channel from which to broadcast. They would wind up being lesser counterparts to their network parents' output. Eventually they would be sold off and snuffed out to cut costs. In the end, a movie is not a real movie if it doesn't play in a real movie theater.

[Pete]

Wow, thanks for all that background Bobby H.

Certainly the advent of the multi-plex doomed most the great single-screen venues just due to economics. If you got a turkey at a place like the Continental, you had no choice but to ride it out. With a multi-plex you can easily relegate a poor performer to your smallest theater and put blockbusters on multiple screens if need be.

Still, it sure would have been nice to find another use for the Continental. I know I'll have a sick feeling next time I'm in town and go by that site.

[traxx]

There are mixed opinions about many of the mid-century modern buildings around the country. That was certainly the case with the International styled downtown YMCA building that was demolished to make way for a surface parking lot three or four years ago. Some people don't see the value even in the unadorned work of Meis van de Rohe, Le Corbusier or Louis Kahn and may only recognize some of the names from their rather famous furniture designs rather than their architectural work.

I guess architecture is like all other art forms; at least some amount of study and investigation is required to develop even a basic level of appreciation. Otherwise, it just comes down to personal opinion and taste. Perhaps the often quoted saying about art could be slightly rewritten and might apply to this building . . . "I don't know much about architecture, but I do know what I like"

Here is another quote. This one from Walter Gropius, best know for his Bauhaus forms, that seems to apply even to the modest building in question:

"A modern building should derive its architectural significance solely from the vigour and consequence of its own organic proportions. It must be true to itself, logically transparent, and virginal of lies or trivialities."

The odd thing is, I usually like the futuristic mid-century designs and architecture. I especially like the mid-century modernist homes with the sleek lines, floor-to-ceiling glass, simple, uncluttered. I guess I just didn't see anything I like or thought was worth saving in the Continental.

[Pete]

I didn't realize that there was another Continental in Denver.

And guess what? It's still open and operating after a massive renovation and the addition of 5 other screens.

Clearly, people in Denver saw value in keeping the place and that theater complex is very popular these days.

[Bobby H]

The problem is the company running that theater (United Artists, a division of Regal Entertainment) is not maintaining the Continental to satisfactory standards. As I stated earlier, you do actually get better show quality from some of the smaller screens at that theater.

At the very least, they need to re-EQ that auditorium. At best, they need to start showing movies in 70mm on that big curved screen or install some custom-designed digital projection system with multiple lamps and a lens that can throw the image properly onto that very curved screen.

[SoonerDave]

New OSHA and EPA regulations have pretty much banned the practice of mag-striping film prints with smooth sounding analog tracks.

Okay, I'm going to ask this question, although I suspect the answer will do nothing more than to renew and reinforce my loathing of both these governmental organizations....

Why on earth does the EPA care about the soundtracks of movies? Does it endanger some sort of idiotic bird in the Adirondacks?

-SoonerDave

[John]

Found this online at Cinema Treasures about the Denver Continental...

United Artists' Continental Theater stands as Denver's last remaining giant screen movie house. Along with the Cooper and Century 21 theaters, The (then) Commonwealth Continental was one of Denver's premiere showcase theaters throughout the 70s and 80s, with a screen that measured 35'x 83'. Seating for the theater was originally 916.
The theater played host to dozens of large screen 70mm presentations over the decades including "Die Hard", the original "Star Wars" trilogy, "The Abyss", and "Terminator 2". With the right booking, the Continental could be responsible for 35% of a film's business in the city of Denver.

In 1983, during its run of "Return of the Jedi", the theater fell victim to a fire that destroyed part of it. The following day's Rocky Mountain News contained a front page photo of theater workers rushing the 70mm print of "Jedi" out of the theater to safety. During the fire, all of the projector lenses (except the 70mm lens, which was in use) were destroyed. The new lenses for 35mm put to use after the fire were inadequate for the theater's long throw distance and, because of this, all 35mm presentations on the screen would require severe masking on all four sides to accommodate the smaller image size. The estimate is that 35mm reduced the screen size to 23'x 55'.

In 1994, for an exclusive engagement of "The Shawshank Redemption", lenses from a recently closed drive-in were put to use at the Continental for the 35mm presentation and all films shown since 1994 have again utilized the full screen size.

In November 1995, the Continental closed for an extensive remodel/expansion. The theater reopened in June of 1996 with five new screens (several THX approved) built around it. During this remodel, the seating was reduced to 869 to accommodate new handicap accessible seating.

Cinema Treasures | Continental Theater

[Bobby H]

The Continental in Denver has some new competition. Harkins Theatres opened a new multiplex in Denver this past summer. It features a giant screened "Cine Capris" auditorium much like the one in Bricktown. Although, I have to say the one in Bricktown is a bit larger and has a better quality film projector.

Like the Continental, those Cine Capris screens need 70mm capability or at least something to throw a bright enough image.

Why on earth does the EPA care about the soundtracks of movies? Does it endanger some sort of idiotic bird in the Adirondacks?

OSHA and EPA did not single out the film industry. They just had tougher rules developed for some widely used chemicals and materials that also happened to be used in the mag-stripe film print making process. Some of those chemicals can be pretty harmful and create both airborne hazards and hazards to the water supply.

The movie industry didn't protest the move at all either. They haven't mag-striped any 35mm prints in more than 20 years, and they all but stopped making mag-striped 5-perf 70mm prints after Dolby Digital, DTS and SDDS came available for 35mm in 1992 & 1993.

The mag-striping process is very expensive and time consuming. The tracks must have time to dry properly and then the audio has to be recorded to the film print in real time. By contrast Dolby Digital data, SDDS data and time code for DTS can be printed to 35mm film in high speed.

A 2-hour 5-perf 70mm mag-stripe print could cost $15,000 to $20,000. A standard 35mm release print with DD, DTS, SDDS and Dolby SR optical analog tracks costs $1,000 to $3,000.

DTS time code can be printed to any film format from 16mm to 15-perf 70mm IMAX. The downside is DTS uses a lossy form of data compression. Its compression is not nearly as severe as Dolby Digital, but still may be seen as inferior to Dolby SR mag tracks. New DTS XD-10 processors allow for uncompressed Linear PCM audio in 5.1, 6.1 and 7.1 channels up to 24-bit/96kHz. Emerging formats like 10.2 surround are possible with that processor.