Safire Theatre Complex
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Safire Theatre Complex
The Safire Theatre complex was India's first largest multi-theatre complex located in the southern city of Chennai that functioned from 1964 to 1994. The theatre complex was located on Mount Road (now Anna Salai) and consisted of three screening halls, namely, ''Safire'', ''Blue Diamond'', and ''Emerald''. While the largest named ''Safire'' screened Hollywood movies, the other two, ''Emerald'' and ''Diamond'' screened Indian films. Safire was considered to be the first 70 mm theatre in India. History Started by the Veecumsee family, Safire opened its door to the public in 1964. The first movie to play in Safire was ''Cleopatra''. Safire was perhaps the first 70 mm theatre in India. It was spacious, if a bit spartan in furniture, and for the first few years screened only English language films. ''My Fair Lady'', ''Sound of Music'', ''Lawrence of Arabia'', ''Funny Girl'', and ''It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World'' were some of the early movies. The Safire complex w ...
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India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives; its Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand, Myanmar, and Indonesia. Modern humans arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa no later than 55,000 years ago., "Y-Chromosome and Mt-DNA data support the colonization of South Asia by modern humans originating in Africa. ... Coalescence dates for most non-European populations average to between 73–55 ka.", "Modern human beings—''Homo sapiens''—originated in Africa. Then, int ...
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Chennai
Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of the Bay of Bengal. According to the 2011 Indian census, Chennai is the sixth-most populous city in the country and forms the fourth-most populous urban agglomeration. The Greater Chennai Corporation is the civic body responsible for the city; it is the oldest city corporation of India, established in 1688—the second oldest in the world after London. The city of Chennai is coterminous with Chennai district, which together with the adjoining suburbs constitutes the Chennai Metropolitan Area, the 36th-largest urban area in the world by population and one of the largest metropolitan economies of India. The traditional and de facto gateway of South India, Chennai is among the most-visited Indian cities by foreign tourists. It was ranked the ...
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Anna Salai
Anna Salai (), formerly known as St. Thomas Mount Road or simply Mount Road, is an arterial road in Chennai, India. It starts at the Cooum Creek, south of Fort St George, leading in a south-westerly direction towards St. Thomas Mount, and ends at the Kathipara Junction in Guindy. Beyond the Kathipara Junction, a branch road arises traversing westwards to Poonamallee to form the Mount-Poonamallee Road while the main branch continuing southwards to Chennai Airport, Tambaram and beyond to form Grand Southern Trunk Road (GST Road or NH45). Anna Salai, which is more than 400 years old, is acknowledged as the most important road in Chennai city. The head offices of many commercial enterprises and public buildings are located along Anna Salai. It is the second longest road in Chennai, after EVR Periyar Salai. There were several flyover projects under proposal along the stretch, many of which have been shelved owing to the construction of the Chennai Metro Rail project, which runs al ...
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Cinema Of The United States
The cinema of the United States, consisting mainly of major film studios (also known as Hollywood) along with some independent film, has had a large effect on the global film industry since the early 20th century. The dominant style of American cinema is classical Hollywood cinema, which developed from 1913 to 1969 and is still typical of most films made there to this day. While Frenchmen Auguste and Louis Lumière are generally credited with the birth of modern cinema, American cinema soon came to be a dominant force in the emerging industry. , it produced the third-largest number of films of any national cinema, after India and China, with more than 600 English-language films released on average every year. While the national cinemas of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand also produce films in the same language, they are not part of the Hollywood system. That said, Hollywood has also been considered a transnational cinema, and has produced multiple lan ...
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70 Mm Film
70 mm film (or 65 mm film) is a wide high-resolution film gauge for motion picture photography, with a negative area nearly 3.5 times as large as the standard 35 mm motion picture film format. As used in cameras, the film is wide. For projection, the original 65 mm film is printed on film. The additional 5 mm contains the four magnetic strips, holding six tracks of stereophonic sound. Although later 70 mm prints use digital sound encoding (specifically the DTS format), the vast majority of existing and surviving 70 mm prints pre-date this technology. Each frame is five perforations tall, with an aspect ratio of 2.2:1. However, the use of anamorphic Ultra Panavision 70 lenses squeezes the image into an ultra-wide 2.76:1 aspect ratio. To this day, Ultra Panavision 70 produces the widest picture size in the history of filmmaking; surpassed only by Polyvision, which was only used for 1927's Napoleon. With regard to exhibition, 70 mm fil ...
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The Times Of India
''The Times of India'', also known by its abbreviation ''TOI'', is an Indian English-language daily newspaper and digital news media owned and managed by The Times Group. It is the third-largest newspaper in India by circulation and largest selling English-language daily in the world. It is the oldest English-language newspaper in India, and the second-oldest Indian newspaper still in circulation, with its first edition published in 1838. It is nicknamed as "The Old Lady of Bori Bunder", and is an Indian " newspaper of record". Near the beginning of the 20th century, Lord Curzon, the Viceroy of India, called ''TOI'' "the leading paper in Asia". In 1991, the BBC ranked ''TOI'' among the world's six best newspapers. It is owned and published by Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. (B.C.C.L.), which is owned by the Sahu Jain family. In the Brand Trust Report India study 2019, ''TOI'' was rated as the most trusted English newspaper in India. Reuters rated ''TOI'' as India's most trus ...
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Cleopatra (1963 Film)
''Cleopatra'' is a 1963 American epic historical drama film directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, with a screenplay adapted by Mankiewicz, Ranald MacDougall and Sidney Buchman from the 1957 book ''The Life and Times of Cleopatra'' by Carlo Maria Franzero, and from histories by Plutarch, Suetonius, and Appian. The film stars Elizabeth Taylor in the eponymous role. Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, Roddy McDowall, and Martin Landau are featured in supporting roles. It chronicles the struggles of Cleopatra, the young queen of Egypt, to resist the imperial ambitions of Rome. Walter Wanger had long contemplated producing a biographical film about Cleopatra. In 1958, his production company partnered with Twentieth Century Fox to produce the film. Following an extensive casting search, Elizabeth Taylor signed on to portray the title role for a record-setting salary of $1 million. Rouben Mamoulian was hired as director, and the script underwent numerous revisions from Nigel Balchin, Dale W ...
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My Fair Lady (film)
''My Fair Lady'' is a 1964 American musical drama film adapted from the 1956 Lerner and Loewe stage musical based on George Bernard Shaw's 1913 stage play ''Pygmalion''. With a screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner and directed by George Cukor, the film depicts a poor Cockney flower-seller named Eliza Doolittle who overhears an arrogant phonetics professor, Henry Higgins, as he casually wagers that he could teach her to speak "proper" English, thereby making her presentable in the high society of Edwardian London. The film stars Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle and Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins, with Stanley Holloway, Gladys Cooper and Wilfrid Hyde-White in supporting roles. A critical and commercial success, it became the second highest-grossing film of 1964 and won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor. In 1998, the American Film Institute named it the 91st greatest American film of all time. In 2006 it was ranked eighth in the AFI's Greatest M ...
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The Sound Of Music (film)
''The Sound of Music'' is a 1965 American musical drama film produced and directed by Robert Wise, and starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, with Richard Haydn, Peggy Wood, Charmian Carr, and Eleanor Parker. The film is an adaptation of the 1959 stage musical of the same name, composed by Richard Rodgers with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. The film's screenplay was written by Ernest Lehman, adapted from the stage musical's book by Lindsay and Crouse. Based on the 1949 memoir '' The Story of the Trapp Family Singers'' by Maria von Trapp, the film is about a young Austrian postulant in Salzburg, Austria, in 1938 who is sent to the villa of a retired naval officer and widower to be governess to his seven children. After bringing love and music into the lives of the family, she marries the officer and, together with the children, finds a way to survive the loss of their homeland to the Nazis. Filming took place from March to September 1964 in Los Angeles and Salzburg. ' ...
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Lawrence Of Arabia (film)
''Lawrence of Arabia'' is a 1962 British epic historical drama film based on the life of T. E. Lawrence and his 1926 book ''Seven Pillars of Wisdom''. It was directed by David Lean and produced by Sam Spiegel, through his British company Horizon Pictures and distributed by Columbia Pictures. The film stars Peter O'Toole as Lawrence with Alec Guinness playing Prince Faisal. The film also stars Jack Hawkins, Anthony Quinn, Omar Sharif, Anthony Quayle, Claude Rains and Arthur Kennedy. The screenplay was written by Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson. The film depicts Lawrence's experiences in the Ottoman provinces of Hejaz and Greater Syria during the First World War, in particular his attacks on Aqaba and Damascus and his involvement in the Arab National Council. Its themes include Lawrence's emotional struggles with the violence inherent in war, his identity and his divided allegiance between his native Britain with its army and his new-found comrades within the Arabian deser ...
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Funny Girl (film)
''Funny Girl'' is a 1968 American biographical musical comedy-drama film directed by William Wyler and written by Isobel Lennart, adapted from her book for the stage musical of the same title. It is loosely based on the life and career of Broadway and film star and comedienne Fanny Brice and her stormy relationship with entrepreneur and gambler Nicky Arnstein. Produced by Brice's son-in-law, Ray Stark (and the first film by his company Rastar), with music and lyrics by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill, the film stars Barbra Streisand (in her film debut reprising her Broadway role) as Brice and Omar Sharif as Arnstein, with a supporting cast featuring Kay Medford, Anne Francis, Walter Pidgeon, Lee Allen and Mae Questel. A major critical and commercial success, ''Funny Girl'' became the highest-grossing film of 1968 in the United States and received eight Academy Award nominations. Streisand won Best Actress, tying with Katharine Hepburn (''The Lion in Winter''). In 2006, the Am ...
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It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
''It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World'' is a 1963 American comedy film produced and directed by Stanley Kramer with a story and screenplay by William Rose and Tania Rose. The film, starring Spencer Tracy with an all-star cast of comedians, is about the madcap pursuit of $350,000 in stolen cash by a diverse and colorful group of strangers. It premiered on November 7, 1963. The principal cast features Edie Adams, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Dorothy Provine, Mickey Rooney, Dick Shawn, Phil Silvers, Terry-Thomas, and Jonathan Winters. The film marked the first time Kramer directed a comedy, though he had produced the comedy ''So This Is New York'' in 1948. He is best known for producing and directing, in his own words, "heavy drama" about social problems, such as ''The Defiant Ones'', '' Inherit the Wind'', ''Judgment at Nuremberg'', and ''Guess Who's Coming to Dinner''. His first attempt at directing a comedy film paid off immensely as ''It's a Mad, Mad, ...
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