Some interesting differences between movie-going in Canada and England.

This was the first trip I had taken outside North America. I've visited the States a few times and overall it's similar to Canada, although I did get some funny looks when I asked for vinegar for my french fries in the US.

There's some interesting differences in England, some good, some bad. I was in enough different cinemas that I think it's safe to say these are probably common to the entire country.

They are called cinemas only, whereas we often use cinema and theatre interchangeably. If I said theatre over there they assumed I was talking a live show. This makes sense to me, I often calls for people looking for the live event theatre on campus.

No cinema I was in had a pre-show, they all had curtains which stayed closed until the film started. I can't decide about that. I kind of like an interesting pre-show and since Western Film has one I'm in a bit of a conflict of interest. On the other hand it was kind of nice being able to relax and just wait for the show to begin.

They play way more commercials and fewer trailers. One show I checked and there was half an hour of commercials and trailers. The proportion was different. Here you usually get about 5 minutes of commercials and 15 minutes of trailers. There it was about half and half. It wasn't all bad though, most of the commercials were quite entertaining, even multiple times. I did wish they played more trailers though as I really like trailers.

As an example, around here we get those boring Telus ads with the fish etc. asking us to turn off our mobile phones. In England they have this.

In some cinemas they have assigned seating. Some of the bigger prestige cinemas, most notably the big Odeon in Leicester Square have assigned seating. It also has different levels with different prices. I'll do a post on it later. The cinema closest to my sister's place had an interesting arrangement. Most of the cinema was general seating but there were a few rows in the middle that had assigned seating and were bigger chairs. They cost extra but it was nice to be able to book tickets for Indiana Jones online and know I would get a good seat.

There's a lot more digital presentation in England, I'll be doing a post on this later.

This one was my sore point. Every cinema had stale popcorn!? I never saw an actual popper as we do here. They seemed to get it in from somewhere in big plastic bags. It was dumped into a bin under the counter and served from there. It was interesting they had a choice of salted or sweetened popcorn. They didn't have butter or similar products. They also didn't have the seasonings we have, white cheddar, dill pickle etc. If I wasn't such a popcorn addict I wouldn't have bought it, especially when it was outrageously expensive once the money exchange was factored in.