Done with delays, Academy movie museum rolls out red carpet

LOS ANGELES – The projectors are rolling. The ruby slippers are on. Many an Oscar sits glistening. The shark has been hanging, and waiting, for astir a year.

Nine years aft it was announced, 4 years aft its archetypal projected unfastened date, and 5 months since its past planned motorboat date, the U.S. movie academy's depository is acceptable to unfastened to the nationalist connected Sept 30.

“I’m precise moved to beryllium capable to accidental to you, finally, astatine last, lad howdy hey, invited to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures,” Tom Hanks told reporters Tuesday astatine a media preview of the Los Angeles gathering and its exhibits.

Hanks, a subordinate of the committee of trustees, led the fundraising for the task on with chap histrion Annette Bening and Walt Disney Co. enforcement president Bob Iger.

“We each know, films are made everyplace successful the world, and they are fantastic films," Hanks said. "And determination are different cities with movie museums, but with each owed respect, created by the Motion Picture Academy, successful Los Angeles, this depository has truly got to beryllium the Parthenon of specified places.”

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The archetypal happening astir visitors volition announcement connected entering the gathering is Bruce, a 1,208-pound (548-kilogram), 25-foot-long (7.6-meter), 46-year-old shark made from the “Jaws” mold. Bruce hangs supra the slope of main escalators and was hoisted determination past November successful anticipation of what was past a planned April opening.

The featured inaugural grounds celebrates the works of the legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki. Others analyse the enactment of directors Spike Lee and Pedro Almodovar.

Some galleries absorption connected the Oscars, with existent statuettes won crossed the decades, and speeches projected connected walls.

Projected scenes are a taxable successful each the museum's galleries, with exertion from 18th period “magic lanterns” done soundless films to the 3-D integer tech of today.

Costumes from “The Wizard of Oz” to “The Wiz” are connected display, including Dorothy's ruby slippers.

Announced successful 2012 and archetypal slated to unfastened successful 2017, the depository was beset with delays that are emblematic for specified a project, but they were compounded by a brace of pandemic postponements.

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Designed by designer Renzo Piano, The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is simply a 300,000-square-foot (27,871-square-meter) abstraction made up of 2 buildings, 1 old, 1 new, astatine the country of Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue adjacent to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

“It’s shiny and caller and enormous, and it’s crammed with astir 125 years worthy of ideas and dreams and life-changing cinematic experiences,” histrion Anna Kendrick said astatine the media preview.

The older operation is the 1930s Saban Building, erstwhile location to the May Company section store. It's linked by bridges to a caller gathering that is topped by a terrace and a concrete-and-glass dome that has a distinctiveness that could pb to a nickname.

Piano said Tuesday that helium hopes it's “the soap bubble” and not thing much cinematic.

“Please," the designer said, "don't telephone it the Death Star.”

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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton connected Twitter: https://twitter.com/andyjamesdalton

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