Music Box’s 70 mm Film Fest returns with ‘2001,’ ‘West Side Story’ and schlocky ‘Airport,’ all played huge [Chicago Tribune]

Chicago Tribune (IL)

The Music Box Theatre’s regular screen is pretty wide. But for its 70 mm Film Festival, cut short in March 2020 by the pandemic, the theater’s special 37-foot rectangle of dreams, used for epically wide occasions, gets hauled out of storage and placed, carefully, near the lip of the Music Box stage.

And then? The sights! The size. The North African vistas of “Lawrence of Arabia.” Kirk Douglas and Woody Strode, glowering in the gladiator ring in “Spartacus.”

And this year, in a Music Box first, you’ll retro-thrill to a newly struck 70 mm print of the 1970 schlockbuster “Airport,” which offers the tender agonies of Capt. Dean Martin wrestling with chief stewardess Jacqueline Bisset’s pregnancy while suicide bomber Van Heflin wrestles with plans for his wife’s insurance policy payout.

Running June 17-30, the latest edition brings back several audience favorites from festivals past. The Music Box’s own 70 mm print of “2001: A Space Odyssey” returns — it is, to date, the biggest draw festival after festival — as does the 1961 “West Side Story” and John Carpenter’s intergalactic ‘80s romance “Starman.”

Also returning: a near-pristine print of the extravagant Gene Kelly-directed Barbra Streisand showcase “Hello, Dolly!”, first shown in 2020.

“Airport” is another story: more of a glorious all-star cheese wheel than what cineastes might call “a good film.” Undeniably it’s a hugely influential instigator of the ‘70s disaster movie cycle, a key part of millions of high-cholesterol big-screen childhoods.

“I’m really excited about that one,” said Julian Antos, Music Box technical director and fastidious print inspector, “partly because it doesn’t have a great reputation. Those movies are always exciting to reevaluate. Or see for the first time.”

“Airport” is bound to be quite a sight: a beautiful, newly struck 70 mm print, in its second-ever public screening following last month’s TCM Classic Film Festival, of a disaster movie with some of the harshest interior lighting of any Nixon-era picture.

“Yeah, well. Now they underlight everything,” Antos responded.

Another first-time 70 mm for the Music Box festival: director Walter Hill’s 1993 “Geronimo: An American Legend,” which boasts a final, elegiac western vista just made for events such as this one.

June 17-30 at Music Box Theatre at 3733 N Southport Ave., festival tickets go on sale at noon May 20 for Music Box members, and at noon May 23 for the general public. All-festival passes $80 ($60 for Music Box members), individual tickets $14 ($11 for Music Box members) at musicboxtheatre.com

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

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Twitter @phillipstribune

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