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Located near the southwest corner of Sunset and Vine, the theatre is housed in a giant, white geodesic dome. (Buckminster Fuller would be proud.) Inside the 72 foot-high dome, the Cinerama is a circular auditorium featuring a huge, curving screen, seating for almost 1,000, somewhat spartan decor, an upstairs balcony, plush comfortable seats, and one of the best sound systems extant.
The Cinerama Dome is one of the few round movie theatres you will ever see. It was built in 1963 to present special "Cinerama" movies. Cinerama was a wide-screen format of the early 60's, which used three separate 35mm projectors and a vast curved screen to present realistic travelogues. It was a huge success at first, and hundreds of domed theatres were planned, but the wide-screen process proved too expensive, and the Cinerama movie fad soon faded from popularity.
The Cinerama Dome, however, remained. It now shows standard Hollywood blockbusters in standard modern film formats; nevertheless, this is still one of the best places in town to see a movie.
And it is also one of the most identifiable Hollywood landmarks. It's hard to miss the giant white dome at Sunset & Vine. (It's the only geodesic dome in the world built entirely of concrete - 316 interlocking concrete hexagons.)
