The First New Cinerama Film In 50 Years

One of the highlights of last weekend’s Cinerama festival at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood wasn’t a vintage movie but a brand-new short-subject called In the Picture, shot with one of the same cameras that photographed How The West Was Won and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm. It’s a consciously corny travelogue of Los Angeles featuring two couples (just as in Cinerama Holiday) taking in the sights: Mulholland Drive, the Griffith Park carousel, Griffith Observatory, historic Angels Flight funicular railway in downtown L.A., and a pair of brigantine sailing ships in San Pedro harbor. It so happens that one of the locals showing his visiting friends around town is Stanley Livingston, the former child actor who appeared in How The West Was Won… and when he and his troupe reach their ultimate destination, the Cinerama Dome, they encounter Debbie Reynolds (who played his aunt in that movie) signing autographs in the lobby. A movie can’t get more self-referential than that.