The Coolness that was ShowCanada.

Show Canada is an annual convention of exhibitors, distributors and movie studios. The last few years it's been in places like Halifax or Victoria but this year it was in Niagara Falls so this was the first time I was able to go.
ShowCanada consists of seminars, screenings, lots of meals and some parties.
My main reason for going was to learn more about Digital Cinema, how it works, when it's coming and who's going to pay for it. I learned a lot.
There were also seminars on Internet marketing, movie piracy, posters and trailers and others.
We got to see Shrek 3 which was really cool. It's a lot of fun. We also got to see parts of Hairspray and a couple of the stars were there including Nikki Blonsky who plays the central character. There were a couple screenings I didn't go to , one was Away From Her which is coming out soon.
The meals were each sponsored by a different distributor or Studio. During each meal we got to watch trailers and other footage from upcoming films. Some of the trailers for movies as late as next year were still in rough cut which was cool. There's some really interesting movies coming out in the next while. I think my favorite meal was the lunch sponsored by Fox. The centerpieces on the tables were stacks of donuts similar to the one on the posters. They also had a couple really cool standees, one was a life size couch with the Simpsons on it. There was a spot on the couch where people could sit and have their picture taken.
There were talks by various big wigs in the exhibition industry.
Rick Mercer hosted the final dinner, he was hilarious.
The Swag we were given after each meal was cool. Shrek shirts, Transfomers gym bag, Warner Bros barbecue set etc etc. I'll be posting pics of each item over the next while. Most of the items will be given away as prizes when we play the various movies. I think I'll keep one of the Simpson's mugs though.

Next Week's movies.

There were only 2 new movies available this week.

The Condemmed - so I don't think so.
Wild Hogs - I didn't plan to play this before, I never even ordered any trailers because I thought it looked stupid. However it was a surprise hit so it must be better than it looked. It's also a good movie to play right now since it skews slightly older and until summer school starts the number of students around is about as low as it gets.

I decided to bring back 300 for the late show. There was a lot of demand for it and the week we played it was not the best. It included the tail end of exams and the end of the month when a lot of students have to move. We'll see how it does.

Shrek the Third opens next weekend so I expect Disturbia and or Blades of Glory to come off. I already know Vacancy is available but I don't think we'll play it.

One of my staff mentioned tonight that by the end of the month there will be basically only three movies playing in London, Spidey, Shrek and Pirates 3.

Poster of the Week

For those of you familiar with British comedian Rowan Atkinson and his infamous Mr Bean character you should be looking forward to this film. It's a kind of sequel to his first movie from 1997. Mr. Bean's Holiday is about the infamous Mr.Bean, a lazy buffoon who manages to cause problems in even the simplest of tasks. It's already done huge business overseas and comes out here Aug 31. I'll be there opening weekend.

I don't think Western Film is going to play Grindhouse.

As anyone who reads this blog (assuming there is anyone) knows I was really into Grindhouse but I don't think I'm going to bring it to Western Film for several reasons.

1. For whatever reason it bombed which tends to make people think a movie is bad even if it isn't.

2. Most of the students have left for the summer.

3. I figure it's one of those movies where most of the people who wanted to see it saw it already.

Sorry if anyone was waiting for us to play it.

Someone expects Spider-man 3 to be big!

I looked at the movie listings tonight (Thursday) and noticed something. If you include the midnight shows Thursday night the Silver City at Masonville is playing 18 shows of Spider-man on Friday alone. Considering the movie is 2 hours and 20 minutes plus Famous usually puts 20 minutes of Trailers in front that's almost three hours. I figure they are playing it on 5 of their 12 screens.

BTW Some of my staff and I have a bet as to how much Spidey does opening weekend. The current record is $135 million for Pirates 2. My guess for Spidey is $150 million. We'll see how close I am.

This week's plus last week's movies

This is going to be a combined post for the last couple weeks movie choices. I was away at ShowCanada last week and didn't get a chance to do any posts. For more on the coolness that was ShowCanada see later posts.

For the current week Apr 27 - May 3 there were several films available.

300- I decided to play this one. In a rare move I played the film for both shows when I didn't have to. The demand has been very high for it. As it is we got it the last few days the students were around.

The Hoax- planning to play in the next couple weeks.

The Lookout- good movie but not enough awareness.

The Reaping - an okay movie but not a genre Western Film does well with.

Sharkwater - This needs to be a 7pm show so I pushed it to the next week.

TMNT - too kiddy for Western Film.

Grindhouse. - I had decided to push this to the week after 300, see later post.

For the upcoming week May 4 -10 there were a couple movies available.

In The Land of Women - big bomb, we normally do well with films aimed at women but this one just didn't seem to appeal to anyone.

Perfect Stranger - big stars, bad movie, big bomb.

Shooter - I was iffy on this one as Western Film has a mixed history on basic action movies how I decided to play this one for a couple reasons.
-Mark Wahlberg is popular.
-Mark Wahlberg is shirtless.
-It's a really good, above average, action film with a sensible plot, good acting and special effects meant to support the story not be the main attraction.

Good Casting News and one Unbelievable one.

I received a press release from Warner Brothers that Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway are going to be in a movie version of Get Smart! to be released next year. That could be really good.

On the seems unlikely front the new version of The Incredible Hulk has supposedly cast Edward Norton as Bruce Banner. Doesn't sound like something he would do and I'm not sure he would be right for the part anyway. BTW. This isn't a sequel to the version starring Eric Bana, they are being released by different companies so the new one is a 'revisioning'.

Interesting news from England.

Someone did some research in England about how people talk about movies. Some name drop movies they haven't seen to impress. Others don't like to admit they've seen some movies. Others judge people by what kind of movies they like. I'm glad I'm not the only one that does that.

Top films to lie about seeing:
• Schindler's List
• The Da Vinci Code
• The Godfather
• Apocalypse Now

Top five film 'drops':
• Shawshank Redemption - I guess this helps explain why the poster for this film is one of the most requested at Western Film. It was also suggested for the midnight series.
• Green Mile
• Lord Of The Rings
• The Godfather
• Casino Royale - I'm not sure if this refers to the original or the recent remake.

Top five films people like but dislike admitting to:
• The Sound Of Music
• Ghost
• Dirty Dancing
• Love Actually
• Harry Potter

Which films would you prefer not to admit you liked? For older films it would be Grease 2, for newer ones it would be The Covenant.

Western Film Mini-reviews.

I haven't done this for a while so I may miss a few. These are my opinions of films I have seen over the last few weeks.

PATHFINDER- I saw this tonight and all I can say is bad, bad, bad. Bad acting, truly awful special effects, the story didn't make sense. There was one part the continuity was so bad I thought the projectionist had put the reels in the wrong order. This movie has been pushed back from previous release dates which is usually a bad sign. The copyright at the end of the film was 2006. This won't be playing at Western Film even if it was good since it's from Fox and a type of film Western Film doesn't do well with anyway.

DISTURBIA- Wasn't sure what to expect and was very happy to see a solid thriller. Good suspense and some good scary moments, especially for the girls behind me that kept screaming. The lead actor Shia Labeouf was good and is getting noticed in Hollywood. The National Association of Theatre Owners voted him Male Star of Tomorrow this year. Western Film may play this, the target market is a little younger than we usually get (high school).

FACTORY GIRL - Saw this at the Hyland, interesting biography about the Andy Warhol factory girl Edie Sedgewick. Nothing spectacular but was interesting. This won't be playing at Western Film, not enough awareness.

THE LIVES OF OTHERS- Until I saw it I couldn't understand why this beat Pan's Labyrinth for Best Foreign Picture at the Oscars. It was a really good suspense thriller. Good acting even if I did have to read the dialogue. I expect an American version won't be long in coming. I don't think this will play at Western Film for awareness issues even though it won an Oscar.

SHARKWATER- A really good and somewhat scary documentary about the importance of sharks in the eco-system and what we are doing to them and hence us. Basically the shark is the top predator in the oceans, if we kill them all for friggin soup the populations below in the food chain will explode and this could cause a chain reaction going all the way down to the plankton which generate 70% of our oxygen. The only thing I didn't like was the ego-centric role of the director along the vein of Michael Moore but with too much attitude. I planned to play this at Western Film but I won't be able to get it until after the students have left which kinda sucks.

THE LOOKOUT - a good thriller, good acting, interesting premise. Won't be playing at Western Film because no one but me has ever heard of it. It reminded me of HARSH TIMES as when they throw a good movie out to theatres without enough publicity and it just disappears.

MEET THE ROBINSONS- yes I went to see a kid's flick. I went to a late show the first week it came out and was one of 4 people in the theater. I did this on purpose because I usually can usually only make late shows and I could avoid the noisy kids. The next week it went down to matinees and early show only, the usual for a kid's show. It was a fun movie with great animation but nothing exceptional. Won't be playing at Western Film.

THE NUMBER 23 - Western Film could have had this a couple weeks ago but I decided not to play it since it generally had a bad rep and was a kind of film we don't do well with. I went to see it one night since it was the only movie I hadn't seen I could get to that night. It was better than I had heard, Jim Carrey did a pretty good job, the script was a bit confusing though. The stuff about 23 was interesting. Sep 11 2001= 9th month,11th day + 2 +00+ 1= 23.

THE REAPING - a fairly standard horror/thriller with some bad special effects. Hilary Swank was good but I couldn't help but wonder why she did a film like this. I don't think this will play at Western Film.

SHOOTER - A solid action movie, Mark Wahlberg was good, good action, good effects, story made sense. Marky Mark took off his shirt for the first time in a while. This one will probably play at Western Film as a late show depending on what is available. The straight out action film is a genre that is pretty hit or miss at Western Film.

Next Week's Movies

Next week was a bit of a decision. There were only 2 new films available.

The Hills have Eyes 2- never in a million years, especially since Fox wanted both shows every night.

Premonition.- I have been planning to play this when it came available so I booked it.

The decision was what, if anything, to play with it. I decided to check with Fox and see if they would let us split Night at the Museum now. We could have had it about a month ago but I wouldn't play it because they wanted both shows every night. They said we could split it (one show per night) now.

I decided to show Night at the Museum as the early show. It's kind of an experiment. I'm hoping the students will see it as a study break since it's a fun, no-brainer comedy. It's kind of seen as a kid's show but I quite enjoyed it.

The booker was checking on 300 but it didn't come off. She was also checking on Grindhouse which didn't come off.

I wish 300 had come off, next week is the last full week of exams. The week after that exams are done and a good portion of the students will be gone.

Finally saw Grindhouse.

I finally got to see Grindhouse on Sunday night. It was pretty cool. The first movie, Planet Terror, directed by Robert Rodriguez, was a fun, gory, way over the top B-movie. It was pretty much non-stop action. The fake trailers between the two movies were really funny and one was scarier than the movies. The directors had fun 'damaging' the film as described in an earlier post. I'm glad I've seen it so I'll know what to expect when it plays here.
The second film, Death Proof, directed by Quentin Tarantino, was quite different. It was more dialogue driven which some people didn't like since it came across as slow to them. The dialogue was very Tarantino with swear words and lots of the word Michael Richards regrets saying. The action sequences were amazing. I don't know how they did them, there must have been a lot of CGI erasing of safety harnesses or something.

There was some press because the movie didn't do as well as expected on it's opening weekend. There were several potential reasons given,
-people didn't 'get' the movie, especially in 'middle America'.
-it was too long for people to sit through.
-people didn't understand the concept- apparently some people left after the first movie not knowing there was a second.
-the running time reduced the number of shows a theatre could show per day. You could do 2 shows of many movies in the time it took to do one of Grindhouse.

I think it was a combination with emphasis on the last one, the show I saw was almost full.

So, if you want over 3 hours of fun I highly recommend Grindhouse, just make sure you don't have to go to the bathroom.

Next Week's Movie

The only new movies for next week were:
The Last Mimzy- it looked kinda cute but we don't play kid's movies.
The Lookout- this movie was pretty good but it didn't get enough publicity so I'd get the 'never heard of it' line a lot.

I decided to bring in Letters from Iwo Jima which I had been holding until I had a good spot. There ended up being only a 7pm show this week. Letters is pretty long but I could have played a late show. However there wasn't anything new available I thought would do well. I briefly considered bring back Pan's Labyrinth but while it did well the first week it wasn't huge. At another time of the year I might have tried it but the students are too busy with exams right now.
I also considered bringing in Smokin' Aces but while a cool movie it's the kind of movie that's hit and miss around here. I could have played it about a month ago but have been holding off. It reminded me of Lucky Number Slevin last year which did well but not huge. The final kicker was it comes out on video on Tuesday.

I'm not looking forward to projecting Grindhouse.

The title of the movie Grindhouse refers to old theatres that used to run exploitation movies all day long (grinding). The prints of these films tended to be really damaged due to being played on poor equipment by bad projectionists. The end result was badly scratched prints with a lot of splices and missing frames. The bad projectionists resulted in things like missing switch overs, playing the reels out of order or film jams. A film jam is visible to the audience by the film burning through. As soon as the film stops moving the light burns right through it. (See Image)

Have you ever noticed new films represent old films by simulated scratches?

As is apparent from the trailer and what I've read in various articles the directors of Grindhouse have had a field day making Grindhouse representative of what the audience would see in one of these theatres by artificially adding damage. I even read it's going to be missing reels.

The first time Western Film plays a film, usually Friday night the projectionist either watches it or keeps an eye on it while doing other things. He/She is watching for any mistakes we may have made in putting the film together or problems with the film as it came in.

So the first time through whomever is watching it will have to figure out whether any of the 'damage' is real. For example if the film goes out of frame we'll have to figure out whether we put it together wrong or they did it intentionally and will fix itself.

I can't decide if I should watch it or get one of my projectionists to do it. I would be better at deciding what is real and what is faked but after years or working as a projectionist I tend to almost instinctively react to problems. I think I'd be completely stressed out the entire film.

If you haven't seen it yet watch the trailer below and you'll see some of the 'damage' just in the first few seconds.

BTW There's also some simulated damage in Fight Club.

Next Week's Movies

The decision this week was fairly easy. There were 2 new movies available.

Ghost Rider - I decided to play it, I'm not sure how it will do, might be one of films everyone who wants to see it has already seen.

Number 23 - Decided not to play it, has a general reputation as being 'bad' and isn't the kind of movie Western Film does well with anyway.

So Ghost Rider is the early show and I decided to put in Zodiac which I bumped from last week as the late show.

Normally I would have put Zodiac as the early show since it has more adult appeal as well as students and is more 'serious'. Movies like Ghost Rider are often better as late shows since they appeal basically only to the students. Students tend to be more likely to come to late shows, sometimes after class.

However I decided to play Zodiac as the late show for a couple reasons.
-It's almost 3 hours long so it would have make Ghost Rider a really late late show.
- Much to my dismay it didn't do great at the Box Office so it may tank here. Ghost Rider had a lot more publicity so has a better chance of drawing a crowd.

Drunk people do the silliest things.

There is a bar called The Wave right beside Western Film that's also owned by the USC. We keep a couple things including our juice fridge in their coat check when we aren't set up. Tonight there was a pub so they were using the coat check. In these cases we leave the juice fridge out and I put it away after the midnight movie is done.

One of the things we sell is called a Trough, it's a large aluminum steam pan filled with popcorn. Holds as much as three large bags. No one else sells anything like it so it's a great attention getter. We keep a display Trough with some popcorn in it on top of the juice fridge. In the pic that's two of my staff holding a trough.

Tonight I came out to put the juice fridge away and the display Trough was missing. I assume some of the people at the pub took it.

I actually saw them on the bottom floor and tried to get their attention before they left the building. It's not that I was upset they had taken the trough, it's that it's a display item. The popcorn in it could have been at least a couple months old?!

An answer to one of my questions about GRINDHOUSE

Grindhouse is a movie coming out in April that is a homage to the drive-in and cheap 'grindhouses' of the 70's that played schlocky B movies. It's composed of two movies and some fake trailers. One of the movies is directed by Quentin Tarantino and the other by Robert Rodriguez. It promises to be one rocking time. I laughed harder at the sheer outrageousness of the trailer than I have at many complete movies.

The trailer says it has 2 full length movies but some of the industry stuff I saw said it was two 60 minute movies so I wasn't sure. However I got an e-mail from the studio that the film's running time is 191 minutes, over three hours. So I guess it has two full length films plus the fake trailers.

I'm so looking forward to this movie.

One of my least favorite parts of my job.

Today I did one thing I really hate doing. I changed the lamp in the projector. The lamps are highly explosive and can do serious damage (to me and the equipment). The old lamp was showing signs of failing, igniting more than once, not coming up to full brightness right away. Eventually it would have just not come on at all or possibly exploded.



New lamps are about $800 each but we get over a year out of each one.



The bulb I put is was a 2000 watt xenon bulb made in Germany by Osram.

A quick overview of the process.
Make sure the power is off. (obviously)
I open the lamphouse and take the old lamp out which requires loosening some nuts and a set screw.
Then the scary part, I take the old lamp out and put it back in it's protective case. I can relax once the case is closed.
At this point I clean the mirror that concentrates the light from the lamp onto the film.
Then I put the new lamp in with the reverse of the above. I have to be very careful so I don't drop it, nudge it too hard etc. I also have to be careful I don't touch the glass part of the lamp. The oil left over from my fingers can melt into the glass and create a weak spot which makes it more likely to explode.


Once the new lamp is installed and I close the lamphouse up I have to turn it on for the first time. I've been told the first time a lamp is turned on is the time it is most likely to explode so I made sure there was solid metal between me and the lamp when I hit the switch.

It actually ignited beautifully. The last part of the process is to adjust the lamp. There are controls on the back to adjust the up/down back/ forth of the lamp within the mirror. Using these controls I adjusted the lamp to get the best image. The light is uniform over the screen without dark corners or a too bright 'hot spot' in the center.

I may be biased but I think I can safely say the picture focuses even more perfectly than it did before. It looked amazing tonight.

The first clip gives you an idea why I dislike changing the lamp. In all fairness, in 15 years I've never seen a lamp blow. A friend of mine did have one go but after he had it in it's protective case. He said the air was full of tiny specs of floating glass.

The guys in the second clip are crazy!

Next Week's Movies.

There were two new movies available this week.

Zodiac - great movie created by a great director David Fincher, didn't get the press or marketing it should have. I'm planning to play it but not this week.

Dead Silence - a fun little horror movie but Western Film doesn't play horror.

I decided to bring in Notes on a Scandal which I've been holding in reserve for a couple weeks. I bumped Music and Lyrics last week so I decided to play it for the late show next week.

My current plan is to play Zodiac as the late show the following week but I don't know what the early show will be.

Ghostrider should be available soon. There's lots of new movies coming out so older product is being pushed out and becomes available to us. There's even a possibility we'll get 300 before exams end. It's the second most requested movie this year after Borat.

Hollywood does wierd things.

Fox has done something weird. There is a really cool looking sci-fi film coming out called Sunshine. The director Danny Boyle also did Trainspotting and 28 Days Later and is known for doing solid work. The film was supposed to come out in March but for some reason Fox pushed the US release back to Sept 14th. The odd thing is they are still releasing the film in most other countries in March!?

The general reason why films get pushed back, especially that far, is they aren't done yet or suck and they want to rework them. Neither applies here since it's still coming out elsewhere.

There seems to be two trains of thought on why they moved it.
-To avoid the summer movies- this doesn't make a lot of sense since March is outside the summer as well, maybe they think in September it will be able to stand out better since few good movies come out in September.
-So it has a better chance of getting oscar noms- except for technical awards the Academy dislikes sci-fi only a little less than comedy.

Sci-Fi fans are one of the groups most likely to want a movie bad enough to get a pirate copy. By September a lot of the American and Canadian fans will have already seen it.

I just watched the new trailer. I'm so pissed at Fox for making me wait until September, this movie looks great!

Poster of the Week

We got in this poster for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer a couple days ago. I think it's a really cool poster but then I'm big on comic book movies. I'm curious about this movie as I thought Silver Surfer was a good guy in the comics but in the movie he seems to be the bad guy. I'm also curious if the Surfer is entirely computer generated or will some scenes be an actor with CGI effects to make him look like the Surfer.

No kids for Pan's Labyrinth please.

I just hope no one brings any kids to Pan's Labyrinth. Despite it looking like a fairytale it is definitely not for kids. I think it's based on a real fairytale?

I'm going to tell my staff to tell anyone who brings kids that it is not for children. However, we can't stop the parents from taking the kids if they want. It's rated 14A which means anyone under 14 can go as long as they have someone over 18 with them.

We've had this problem with a few movies in the past and told parents the movie playing wasn't for kids. Sometimes they got pissed off. They were of the attitude the decision is up to them what to bring their kids to. I'd rather they get pissed off at us for telling them the movie isn't for kids than coming out all pissed because we didn't tell them and their kids are scarred for life.

Pan's is quite violent is both the real and fairy worlds. There's one scene that I know would have really disturbed me as a child.

Next Week's Movies.

Next week was mildly interesting to book. At first there were a couple new movies to choose from.

Music and Lyrics - I figure this will do well as a late show since it's more youth/student oriented. This a good thing since so many of the movies coming up are ones that would only work as the early show.

Because I said So- I'm not sure about this one, it did only okay business and got mixed reviews. I thought it looked good though. I'll play it if I get an open spot. In general we do well with movies aimed at women.

Fox said they would let us split The Last King of Scotland which was cool.

So originally I had booked King of Scotland for the early show and Music and Lyrics for the late show.

I was then told we could play Pan's Labyrinth which I definitely wanted since I think we will do really well with, I've had a lot of requests.

So I decided to put Music and Lyrics off to next week, move King of Scotland to the late show and put Pan's in for the early show. Being the late show might hurt King of Scotland some but I figured since it's so violent it should be the late show.

Friggin' trained monkeys

When I was a projectionist at Famous and Cineplex we needed a licence to run 35mm film. To get a licence you had to do an apprenticeship and write a test. The licenses weren't really necessary anymore, they were a holdover from when films were on Nitrate film which was highly flammable. However at least there were trained projectionists in the theatres.

Since the government removed the licences the exhibitors have 'trained' their managers and some of the staff to run the projectors. These are what I call trained monkeys. In multiplexes each theatre is automated so all the staff person has to do is thread up and push start. The machinery dims the lights, turns on the sound etc. Literally a actual trained monkey could do this. The problems happen when problems happen. Most of the time the staff don't know what to do if anything goes wrong.

I'm ranting about this because of an experience I had last Friday. I went to see Zodiac at a theatre which shall remain nameless. I've been looking forward to this movie for ages. However the film was shaking side to side enough to drive me crazy. It wasn't noticeable when the camera was moving but when the camera was stationary it was really bad. I knew I couldn't take watching it for 2 1/2 hours. I didn't want to miss any of the movie to let them know and figured the odds were good they didn't know how to fix it anyway so I left and got my money back. I did tell them about the problem on the way out.

I worked on the same projectors when it was a Cineplex and if the problem was what I think it was it would have taken me about 1 second to fix it. There's a small pad on one side of the film that is supposed to keep it from moving side to side. If not cleaned regularly it can get stuck open. A real projectionist would know all you have to do is give the pad a little push and it will loosen but would a trained monkey?

Next Week's Movies

No surprises this week. Blood Diamond was already booked in. I had pencilled in Pursuit of Happyness but wanted to wait in case something more interesting came available. There were basically no new movies available. There's only one first run movie opening this weekend (300) so nothing got dropped. So I booked Pursuit for the early show.

Did get some good news, Fox is going to let us split Notes on a Scandal so it's pencilled in for Mar 16th. If they hadn't let us split it we couldn't have played it. Hopefully they'll do the same thing for Last King of Scotland.

Zodiac / David Fincher - me annoyed

One of the movies opening today is Zodiac directed by David Fincher. I'm so annoyed at Paramount for not promoting this more. I never saw a trailer in a theatre and only a few commercials on TV. Fincher is the director behind some modern classics like Se7en and Fight Club. This is his movie in years and it's not getting near the push it should. It stars a few high profile actors as well. Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., Anthony Edwards, Brian Cox, Elias Koteas, Chloe Sevigny.
I hope it does well it's opening weekend anyway and hangs around for a while. Unless it turns out the movie completely sucks it will be coming to Western Film.

Next Week's/ This Week's movies.

I got a little behind on the blogging, it's been a crazy couple weeks. I'll give a quick rundown of what's been happening with the bookings.

I had booked Half Nelson in for Feb 23 - Mar 1. I figured it would appeal to more than just the students which would be good since most of the students won't be here this week. I added Volver for a similar reason. It seemed to work, attendance was almost what I would have expected for these movies on another week.

We have gotten behind on movies available so the next couple weeks were somewhat planned in advance.

Mar 2 -8 is Casino Royale and Children of Men. Both of these could have been played the previous week but I didn't want to play them while there were few students here. I expect to be very busy this week.

Mar 9 -16 Blood Diamond is already booked in for the late show. Unless something changes the early show that week will be Pursuit of Happyness. Again we could have had these earlier but I choose to hold off.

Some of the other movies that were available.
Alpha Dog- not enough interest.
Smoking Aces - I'll play this if a spot opens but it's not my first choice. It's a cool movie (I saw it twice) but it's one those movies where most of the people who want to see it will have seen it.
Happy Feet - too kiddy.
Epic Movie - Fox wanted all shows so this wouldn't have played even if it wasn't a horrible, horrible movie.

Night at the Museum is available for Mar 9th but again Fox wants all shows. We have too many other movies that I would prefer to play right now. It's seen more or less as a kid's movie. if Fox let's me split it I might play it later.

I expect Little Children, Pan's Labyrinth, Letters from Iwo Jima, to come soon. Dreamgirls and Ghost Rider should come before too long.

I don't know if we will be able to play Notes on a Scandal or The Last King of Scotland since they are from Fox Searchlight which sometimes has the same annoying rules as Fox.

Western Film Mini-reviews.

Here's my opinion on some of the movie's I've seen recently.

EPIC MOVIE- I went to see this on a night I wanted to see something funny and had seen everything else. I knew it wouldn't be great but I thought it would be at least funny. Boy was I wrong, it was truly one of the worst, unfunny movies I've ever seen. I think I giggled a couple times, that's about it. They didn't bother to follow normal movie patterns like plot and continuity. One character has her head kicked off and in the next scene is back as if nothing has happened. This movie will not be playing at Western Film. It probably wouldn't even if it was better since it's from Fox.

CATCH AND RELEASE - I went to see this one night because I wasn't in the mood to see anything heavy and it looked cute and funny. For the most part it was interesting but not exceptional. Kevin Smith was pretty funny. I'm already having trouble remembering it which shows how pedestrian it was. This wouldn't have come to Western Film even if it was better. It's gotten practically no promotion.

CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER - I saw this Chinese movie at The Hyland. It was along the lines of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Interesting story, large scale battle scenes, cool martial arts. It didn't get much buzz going and has kinda vanished already.

PAN'S LABYRINTH - I think I already mentioned this one but it deserves a second mention anyway. It was a truly great film. The world it creates is utterly involving. I didn't even notice the subtitles, the visuals were amazing. This will be coming to Western Film.

SMOKING ACE'S - It wasn't a great movie but it was a lot of fun if you appreciate really really over the top violence. There was more than a hint of Tarantino in this film. It was a little hard to follow since there were a lot of characters, it seemed like every male actor working in Hollywood was in this movie. I don't know if this will be coming to Western Film. We tend not to do too well with heavy action films any more plus it has relatively low awareness.

Western Film's cyclical nature

One thing that makes running Western Film interesting / maddening is the unusual cycles it operates under. We are starting to get some of the Oscar product and the Christmas hits and here comes Slack Week which kills all of one playweek and most of another. We have to play as many good movies as we can in March because as soon as exams starts attendance drops no matter what we are playing. The next couple weeks I have good stuff to play but there won't be any students here to see them so I'm holding off so good stuff will start to back up. It may mean smaller movies I would like to play like Little Children might get dropped.
On the other hand we have times like November and sometimes February when we end up playing less than stellar movies only because there isn't anything better to play.

It is better than it used to be. The studios sometimes hold off on letting us play films that are Oscar Nominated. If the movies win they often get rereleased. The Oscars used to be at the end of March so we weren't able to get most of the nominated films until April. Now the Oscars are in February so we can play most of the films in March.

There are no or few students here at what are usually two of the peak movies seasons, summer and Christmas. It kinda works out for Christmas though, the first run theatres would hold anything that is doing well so Western Film probably wouldn't get anything good. The playweek that covers Christmas and New Year's is two weeks long so we would have to play the same movies for two weeks which wouldn't work too well. Plus I get two weeks extra vacation.

No Outside Food/ Yuck!

Like most theatres we have a no outside food or drink policy. A theatre cannot operate on just the money from the ticket sales.

I always find it funny that people object to this policy, especially with us. To me it's the equivalent of buying a Boston Pizza and taking it into a McDonalds to eat. How many people would do that?

Unfortunately we have a higher problem than most with smuggled food. In most theaters one looks a little out of place taking in a bag or backpack. However with classes, the gyms downstairs, etc. we get a lot of people who bring bags in.

The thing that really burns my britches is what people do when they do smuggle in food. They often leave it for us to clean up. Here's some examples.

We have to clean up Harvey's and Tim Horton's stuff all the time.
I find beer bottles in there occasionally, once I found 12.
Banana and Orange peels.
nut shells.

There's been a couple gross ones.
Chinese food sauce all over the seats.
A couple weeks ago we found the bones from Chicken Wings scattered under a couple seats.

I'm getting really sick of arguing with people who want to bring their Tim Horton's coffee in. I don't know what they put in that stuff but it makes people crazy.

Next Week's Movies

This week was an interesting one to book. I had already booked in The Holiday since we bumped it from last week. There were some movies available.

Manufacturing Consent
Casino Royale
Blood Diamond
Happy Feet - We generally don't play kid's movies, especially during the school year.

I've had a lot of interest in Consent and the prints are in high demand so I had to grab it this week. It's the 7:00 show and Holiday is at 9:00.

The following week ( Feb 23 - Feb 1) is hard to book since it's almost all slack week and there are very few students around. So I try to book in a movie that appeals to adults. Painted Veil is a good example, the crowd has mostly been off campus adults, faculty and seniors.

For now I've booked in Half Nelson. I'll find out on Monday if there is anything to play with it. It might be a one movie week.

I booked in Casino Royale for Feb 2- 8. The adults tend to come on the weekend which is still Slack week but the students tend to come later in the week.

My boss asked me to book Blood Diamond in for Feb 9th to coincide with a conference or something.

Scary sounding but could be true.

TMZ.com is reporting Tom Cruise and Ben Stiller will team up in a comedic movie version of The Hardy Boys?! Sounds a little crazy but I can see Cruise trying to tone down the serious image he has gotten recently. I bet Ben Stiller will want a ton of money to take the risk of how badly this could backfire. Who knows, it's probably one of those ideas that get leaked just to see what public reaction might be.

Next Week's Movies

This was a bit of a pickle of a week to book. The Holiday was available as well as Alpha Dog. We could also pick up The Painted Veil coming off rainbow. The problem was both Holiday and Veil basically had to be a 7pm show, especially Veil. Alpha Dog fits as a late show but I didn't think there would be a lot of interest.

Painted Veil is one of these movies there are few prints of so if I didn't play it next week I may not be able to get a print the following week.
I decided to put off The Holiday until next week and play Painted Veil. Babel has done extremely well so I moved it to the late show for next week. I think I can safely say a second week of Babel will do better than Alpha Dog would have.

A very Cool Movie Poster.

I got a couple copies of this poster in this week. I love getting new posters in, it's like opening presents. The Spiderman 3 poster is one of the more elaborate I've seen. Most movie posters are on heavy paper and double sided for backlit display cases. This poster is on really heavy paper. The black and white part is extremely glossy, almost silvery. The dark area in the color section is embossed in a rain like pattern.
It's going to be a shame to put pins in it to put in our display cases. I have some big plastic bags I sometimes put posters I don't want to damage in. I hang the poster by putting the pins in the bag. The last time I did it was the last Star Wars movie since I wanted to keep one for my collection.

My opinion of Pop Culture's most influential figure.

See post below to know what I am talking about if you don't already.

I thought of two figures I would nominate, one for 'software' and one for 'hardware'.

William Shakespeare- He is all pervasive in Western Culture. Not only are there innumerable versions of his plays on stage, screen and tv but there are tons of things that take their structure from a Shakespeare play. I think 10 Things I Hate About You was based on Taming of the Shrew. Last year's She's the Man was based on one of his plays.
There's also tons of references in everything from The Simpsons to Star Trek.

Thomas Edison- Almost everything that generates pop culture was invented by him including movie cameras and projectors and recorded sound. There is some disagreement though. There was a man in France who is supposed to have invented movie equipment first.

Next Week's movies.

This week was a pretty easy choice. The only two new movies available were Babel and Rocky Balboa. I decided to bring in Babel for the early show and bring back Borat for the late show since it did so well the first time. I didn't think Rocky would do much business here.

Casino Royale must be doing solid business since it's still not available.

The Oscars

Once thing that surprises some people who know me is that despite my interest in and knowledge of movies I'm really bad at predicting Oscar winners.

So I'm not going to predict winners but I thought I'd mention some nominations I thought were surprising and who I think should win.

Nominations list here.
Best Picture-I haven't seen Letters From Iwo Jima so I can't say for sure but my choice of the others would be The Departed. I thought Little Miss Sunshine was a surprise nomination.

Best Actor - I was quite surprised to see Ryan Gosling get nominated. Half Nelson didn't make a big splash and it was out ages ago. I'm surprised voters remembered it. I haven't seen all the films so I can't say for sure but I would vote for Ryan.

Best Actress - one unusual thing is Penelope Cruz was nominated for a role in a non-english movie. I think Helen Mirren has a lock on it. She did a great job of making the viewer believe she was the Queen.

Best Supporting Actor. The big surprise here was Mark Wahlberg. His part in the movie wasn't even that big. I'd vote for Alan Arkin.

Best Supporting Actress- this is a tough one, I would vote for either Adriana Barraza or Abigail Breslin.

Best Director- Even without seeing it I think I'd vote for Clint Eastwood. Normally I'd vote for Scorsese but I really didn't think Departed was his best work. He should have got it for Goodfellas.

Best Screenplay, written for the screen- Pan's labyrinth is unusual here again since it's not in english. I would think it would be hard to evaluate a screenplay when it's translated. Of the ones I've seen I would go for Babel, it had a intricate and interesting story.

Best Screenplay adapted from another source- The big surprise here is Borat. Not only is it a comedy but it's hard to tell which parts were scripted and which were ambush bits. I'd vote for Children of Men.

Best Makeup - How the heck did Click get nominated???! There was some standard old age makeup and that's about it. From the stills I've seen Pan's labyrinth should win.

Best Special Effects- Poseidon sucked as a movie but did have amazing special effects so it's a bit of a surprise nomination. I'm a big fan of Superman Returns which I thought did a great job of creating a world and then destroying parts of it.

Best Animated feature. - I though Monster House was the most original but I think Cars will get it.

Best Foreign film.- Water is a nice choice since it's Canadian and a really good movie.

Best documentary- An Inconvenient Truth is the only one I've seen but it will probably win since it is the most widely known and has had a real effect on people.

Anyone who disagrees with me feel free to post.

Next Week's Movies

Sorry for the delay in doing this post. My new computer died rather spectacularly and I usually do the posts at home since I never seem to have time at work.

Next week was a bit of a hard choice.

Apocalypto
Eragon (Fox -full shows) - no way.
Good Shepherd
Bring back Borat since it did so well.

I'm not sure about Apocalypto but decided to bring it in and keep Borat as an alternate.
I didn't know until I booked it that The Good Shepherd is almost 3 hours long! Apocalypto runs at 10:05, the latest we've ever run a regular movie. Most of the time I would have just played one show of Shepherd. There's only about one more week before the students start getting busy again so I wanted to play 2 movies.
The one thing that sucks is both movies are long. Apocalypto won't end until about 12:35. This really screws up the Friday Midnight movie Sin City, it won't be able to start until 12:45. I was expecting a good crowd for that one but now I don't know.

Anybody heard of FIRED! ?

The distributor for a movie called Fired! contacted me about playing the film at Western Film. I'd never heard of the film before I got his e-mail. The movie is a semi documentary from a woman who got fired by Woody Allen. Various people and celebrities talk about getting fired in the past. It also has a social commentary aspect addressing the growing gap between the rich and the poor in the US. Did you know the average CEO makes 435 times the wages of the average worker?!

The film looks funny from the trailer. The distributor said the woman from the movie had been on some TV shows and the movie had been reviewed in lots of papers. Has anyone seen any of these?

I have a couple dilemmas about whether to play it at Western Film.

In general if people haven't heard of a film they won't go see it. Western Film can only really tell people what we are playing, we can't make them want to see it. That's generally the job of the distributor and marketers.

The film isn't on film but only video. I have had a policy against ever playing anything but film since the quality difference is so vast between film and video in the theatre. For those of you that have been to Western Film the slideshow is played on the video projector. One reason I don't want to play video is in case anyone thinks that is what Western Film always plays.

However there are more and more interesting small films that aren't available on film so at some point I may have to relax the policy.

So I have a question, would you pay $4.24 to see an interesting movie on a video projector?

Next Week's Movies.

The decision this week wasn't too hard. There were only three new movies available.

Santa Clause 3- never in a million years
We are Marshall - kinda bombed.
Deja Vu - a solid action hit so I decided we'd play this one.

I also picked up The Prestige since we hadn't played it yet.

Since The Prestige is a better fit for the early show I decided to play it at 7pm. It's fairly long so the late show of Deja Vu is at 9:40.

My only dilemma was whether to keep Borat for another week. As of Monday it had already done more business than a lot of movies do all week. However I decided not to keep it. We are giving it both shows for a week at a prime time of the year for Western Film. It will also make a good back up if there's a empty spot in the next couple weeks. Since there isn't a lot of (good) new movies coming out the First Run Theatres tend to hold their films.

Casino Royale should come off soon. I was already told Apocalypco will be available Jan 26th. I haven't decided whether to play it, it will depend on what else is available.

More Western Film Mini-reviews

I've seen a few movies lately so I thought I'd make another entry.

Night at The Museum- I can sum up this film in one phrase. Predictable but a lot of fun. It's from Fox and they will likely want both shows all week and generally considered a kid's pic so I'm not sure it will play at Western Film.

Driving Lessons - a British movie playing at the Hyland. Stars the kid who plays Harry Potter's friend and Julie Walters who I've always liked. It was the age old story of young man and old lady develop an unusual friendship but was still interesting to watch. Won't be coming to Western Film, not enough awareness.

Children of Men (minor spoiler) - I loved this movie. It was extremely interestingly done. I can see why Universal is having a hard time marketing it. It's not a normal movie. Some of the people I saw it with were a little WTF on the way out. They are marketing it as sci-fi but other than taking place in the future there's no sci-fi element to it. It seems to appeal most to the more film literate. One person I know has already seen it twice. Personally I think this movie could be like Bladerunner, unappreciated in it's time but eventually considered a masterpiece.

minor Spoiler---- One thing I hate in reviews is when a major plot point is given away. One reviewer at Cinematical gave away a major event in the film when he said...just kidding. I would never do that. There is one thing I found really fascinating that I can say but if you haven't seen it you may not want to read it until after. I was trying to figure out why they did one scene in a particular way. The main characters are running from a situation and stop to see what happens where they just left. I realized that as far as I can remember the entire film takes place within earshot or eyesight of the main character (Clive Owen). I can't think of a single scene that takes place away from him with other characters. It's shot sorta documentary/reality even down to some blood spots on the camera in one scene. Fascinating movie, I highly recommend. It will definintly be coming to Western Film.

Pop Culture's Most Influential Figure?

I'm taking a Pop Culture course at Western which I find quite interesting. Most people think of Pop Culture as mostly Tv, Movies and Music. It includes other stuff such as fashion as well. However being the movie guy I am I tend to think of pop culture as mostly movies, music and TV.

I had a interesting little mental discussion the other night. I was trying to think of who would be the single most influential person on Pop Culture? I'm curious what your thoughts are. I'll post who I think it is in a few days. A couple qualifiers.

I'm thinking of all time not just current. If anyone says Britney Spears I'll have what they used to call a coniption fit.

It can be anyone, a writer, actor, tycoon, King, Queen, musician, street mime.

Just as an example, if you were doing the same exercise for psychiatry I would think the answer would be Freud.

2007 at Western Film

This should be an interesting year at Western Film. There are going to be renovations at the Wave, the restaurant right beside the theatre. As of this writing a permanent concession stand for Western Film is in the plans. I'm not sure what the final layout will be yet. I think the renovations are going to be done over the summer.

As far as attendance goes it should be a good year. There has been much talk about how good next year looks in terms of movies. There's several movies that are almost guaranteed to be huge hits.

Pirates 3
Shrek The Third
The next Harry Potter.
Transformers.
Spiderman 3.
Ratatouille (Pixar)

And some that will likely do well.

Fantatsic 4 Rise of the Silver Surfer.
Meet the Robinsons
Evan Almighty
Simpsons movie (I will so be there opening night)
Bourne Ultimatum
Rush Hour 3 (this one may suck)
National Treasure 2

plus the usual crop of smaller movies and art product.

There has been talk of 2007 being the biggest year ever at the Box office. When you have several movies that are almost guaranteed to make $200-$300 million I wouldn't be surprised.

Next Week's Movie.

I had already booked Borat for next week before Christmas so I didn't have to book anything today. Fox wouldn't let me split Borat so it's the only movie.

That's kinda a good thing since there nothing new available. There's still The Prestige waiting in the wings. It will likely play the week after Borat depending on what else is available.

Mini Movie reviews.

Here's my opinion on some of the movies I have seen over the last little while. I don't want to give too much away but if anyone has any question you can e-mail me at wfilm@uwo.ca

Apocalypto - An interesting movie, very, very violent and graphic. The advertising was a little misleading, it seemed to be about a larger story that it turns out to be. There's at least one major scene in the trailer that's not in the movie. Western Film will be playing it.

Babel - An interesting movie, several interconnected stories. Good acting, looks great, not as long as it felt. This was the point of the movie but a couple times I felt like yelling at the screen 'just explain the situation', especially with the Mexican story. One of the stories had a very tenuous connection with the others. I think Western Film will play this.

Blood Diamond - Great movie, I was surprised how good it was considering it didn't open well. Leonardo Dicaprio was good and I normally don't like him. Djimon Hounsou was great as usual except for a couple scenes where he overdid it a bit. Western Film will most likely play it

Deck the Halls - I probably should't admit to seeing this movie. I went to see it Christmas day because I had nothing else to do. It was sorta entertaining but generally deserved the horrible reviews it got. I'm really starting to hate Matthew Broderick and his wooden/stage acting. Whatever happened to the guy who played Ferrris Bueller? There is absolutely no chance this film will ever, ever play at Western Film.

Eragon- This movie really disappointed me. I was looking forward to a good old fashioned fantasy film with dragons. I got what I wanted but in a badly done manner. The acting was good for the most part, especially Jeremy Irons. The Dragon was absolutely amazing. On the other hand I think they spent all their effects money on the Dragon as some of the other effects were not well done. I lay the blame for this solely at the feet of the director. I could tell all the elements for a great movie were there it just wasn't put together right. It was another movie that was obviously designed to have a sequel as it kinda just stopped. Since it's from Fox it likely won't play at Western Film.

Keeping Mum- This is a small British comedy with Maggie Smith and Rowan Atkinson. I saw it at the Hyland. If you like British style comedy you'll enjoy it. Especially Maggie Smith, she's always great. It's not high profile enough to play at Western Film so catch it at The Hyland.

Snowcake - a nice little Canadian / British coproduction starring Alan Rickman and Sigourney Weaver. It was a drama with some comedy. Alan Rickman is always great. I wasn't sure Sigourney quite caught the character properly, too often it was obvious she was 'acting'. I saw it at the Hyland and it also won't be playing at Western Film.

I think that's it. I've held off on seeing Night at the Museum because I may be going to Toronto and I can see it in Imax there. Another reason I want to go to TO is to see Children of Men. I wanted to see it since I saw the trailer months ago. The critics have loved it, some are throwing around the word masterpiece and we all know how critics hate to admit they loved a movie. It's one of the silly things about this business, a movie with all this acclaim is playing in only one theatre in all of Canada?!

Can you tell I've been on vacation? I've seen even more movies than usual.

A new trend in movie trailers or a blip?

The Devil Wears Prada had an interesting trailer. Rather than the usual edit of scenes from the movie it was basically one long scene of the two main characters meeting. I'm not aware of any other trailer that was one scene until now.

The new trailer for Rise of the Silver Surfer AKA Fantastic Four 2 is basically one chase scene between The Silver Surfer and Johnny Storm. It's quite effective and surely made me want to see the movie.

I wonder if future trailers may follow this format. Hopefully we'll get away from trailers like these:

- Comedies with all the funny parts in the trailers. (Man of the Year)
- trailers that basically outline the plot of the movie including the ending (The Holiday)
- trailers that mislead what genre the movie belongs to. One example that's always bugged is a movie called Home Fries with Drew Barrymore and Luke Wilson. The trailer made it look like a romantic comedy but when I saw it it turned out to be a somewhat vicious little black comedy. I normally like black comedy but I wasn't in the mood for it that night.

At least trailers have improved over time. Western Film used to have a 35 mm trailer for Bladerunner. It was about 4 minutes long and didn't make much sense. No wonder the movie bombed in it's original release.

Christmas at the movies.

Way back when I wondered why some movies open on Christmas Day. I figured no one would be going since everyone was doing Christmas stuff. I have since found out Christmas day is one of the singlest busiest days of the years at movie theatres. I figure it's a combination of the following.

-The movies that open Christmas Day. I'd be curious to find out how this trend got started. It wasn't all that long ago movie theatres couldn't be open on Sundays.
-People who don't celebrate Christmas go to the movies because there isn't anything much else to do.
-People who don't have anyone to celebrate Christmas with for whatever reason go for the escapism if they feel lonely.
- Family members who get together for the holidays go to the movies. I figure sometimes it's because people feel they have to get together because it's Christmas but don't really want to spend time together, so they go to a movie.

Anyone have other ideas to add?

Next Week's nonexistent movie.

Western Film will be closed for the holidays starting Dec 22 until Jan 7th. There's a few reasons we close over the holidays-

-Few students around hence less business
-My staff are all students hence less staff. The ones that are here would have to work pretty much every night.
-This is one of the peak times of the year for moviegoing so anything remotely good the first run theatres keep. The only new movie I could have played next week was Unaccompanied Minors.
-The University is closed for some days so I wouldn't be able to open anyway.

Next week is the start of a two week playweek because of the holidays. Everything that opens on Friday and Christmas day will be the only movies playing for two weeks.

I did book a couple movies for after the holidays.
Stranger Than Fiction will be playing both shows Jan8th (the Monday when classes resume) until Thursday Jan 11.
Borat will play both shows starting Jan 11. Fox wouldn't let us split it. For this movie I don't have a problem with that as I expect it to do well. There is however the possibility that everyone who wants to see it has already seen it. Although my sense is it will do really well and I'm almost always right about these things.

Midnight Shows/ Anyone want 1/2 of 40 feet of Top Gun?

On Fridays during the school year Western Film runs a midnight classics series. Mostly comedies that have a cult following and are fun to watch with a group (Zoolander, Monty Python) and movies that are cool to see on the big screen again (Kill Bill, Top Gun).

I usually do the projection for these myself for a few reasons.
-Since these are older prints these shows are the ones we are most likely to have technical problems.
-I'm always up late so I don't mind working until 2 or three in the morning.
-I usually want to watch the movie, I was quite disappointed I had to cancel Kill Bill Vol 2 because of the snowstorm.

I've had a few interesting experiences doing the midnight shows.

We played Top Gun a couple weeks ago, about 30 minutes in the film suddenly started splitting down the middle. Half was still running through the projector, the other half was piling up on top of the film on the platter. I was sitting beside the projector so I shut off the light and sound and turned off the projector. The weird thing was half the film stayed threaded up instead of breaking as it normally would. I removed the part that had split off and slowly ran the film through until everything was ready to go again. Took me about 5 minutes. Seen in the pic is the half I removed, it's about 40 feet long. When we took the film apart to go back I had to cut out the other half so it would play fine for the next theatre. It will, however, be missing about 20 seconds at that point.

The only other time I had something as drastic happen was Army of Darkness. It did bascially the same thing but the film broke completely. That one only lost about 12 feet.

There have been some interesting prints come in.
Taxi Driver was the worst print I had ever seen. It was full of splices and there were entire sections of the film where the outer edge was missing. I almost cancelled the show, it was so bad I didn't think it would ever play through. I was truly shocked when it ran through without breaking. Too bad we only had 14 people, we won't be playing it again.

The Shining is one of the films we have had really good attendance for but I refuse to play it again. It's an original 1980 print. It's not too bad for splices but some kinds of film go 'pink' as they age. The blues go away leaving the film with a pinkish tone. The Shining is the worst I've seen for that. The entire movie is nothing but shades of pink and red.

Two of the most popular films for the Midnights have been Monty Python's Holy Grail and Life of Brian. A few years ago a Toronto company called Creative Exposure got the rights to both and made new prints. I tried to book them for this years midnight series but couldn't. Both owners of the company had recently died so it was for sale. Not knowing what would happen to the rights or prints as a result I couldn't book them. Maybe next year.

Sorry I've been bad.

I knew I was getting a little slack in the posts due to time constraints. I'm a pretty bad typist/speller/ grammatician so it takes me a while to create an interesting post. It took me a about 50 minutes to create the 4 I did just now.

My staff told me a couple people at the theatre asked about why the blog wasn't updated more often so that at least lets me know people are reading it.

I just got a new digital camera so I've been playing with it. I have a few ideas for interesting series of posts. The first one will be following the sound system through, so readers see how movie theatre quality sound is generated.

Anyway, please bear with me.

Anybody want a pink umbrella?

This is a pic of the Lost and Found at Western Film. We get all sorts of interesting items. Lots of umbrellas, I think there's about 10 in my office. In the winter we get lots of hats, scarves and gloves. Lots on pencil cases too. We have lots of pens and calculators now.

Very little of it is ever picked up. Every few months I go through and give the older items to Goodwill.

There are sometimes quite interesting things lost. We've found wallets, purses and bus passes quite often. I usually try to notify the owner that we have their item.

Sometimes I get surprised by what doesn't get picked up. A couple times I've found set of keys, you would think they would realize when they tried to get into their car or home they had left them behind.

their was one situation that could have gotten real interesting. A woman left her laptop behind but someone else must have snagged it. I vaguely remember two or three guys rapidly leaving through an exit door near where she was sitting. She came back three times looking for it and didn't seem to believe me that I hadn't seen it. She was quite freaking out, I think it had her thesis on it. She kept asking me about it but there wasn't anything I could do. I couldn't help but think that she should have remembered to take it with her rather than arguing with me. I half expected her to call the campus police on me.

Last Playweek for 2006.

Bobby/ Tenacious D is the last playweek for Western Film for 2006. We close for the holidays on Dec 22nd and reopen on Jan 8th.

Since we don't open until Monday we get a partial playweek which is fun to deal with. Since everything is closed up there I can't really advertise the way I normally would. What I've done the last couple years is book something we already did well with for the 4 days. Last year it was Wedding Crashers.

unfortunately there no obvious movie to do that with this year. We've had a bunch of movies do well but nothing as big as Wedding Crashers. The biggest movie this fall was Inconvenient Truth but we played the crap out of it and it's out on video.

What I'm planning to do is see if Fox will let me book Borat for the first 4 days and continuing into the next playweek. We'll see if they go for it.

Next Week's Movies.

There were a few choices for next week. None were must-plays which is kind of good. I didn't really want to play anything 'good' next week since most of the students will be either busy with exams or gone.

The choices were:

Flushed Away- not enough adult appeal, though it was fun.

The Nativity Story- This became available really quick, big bomb, so much for the supposed Christian movie market.

Turistas- horror

Van Wilder 2 - horrible movie

Bobby- I decided to play this for the early show. Didn't do great First Run but seems the kind of movie we often do well with. Has more adult appeal which will offset the lack of students.

Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny- I decided to play this as the late show. I'm not a big Jack Black fan and this movie looked bad even for him but supposedly it has a cult following (just a small one). Normally I probably wouldn't have played this but it seemed like a good movie to play as a stress release for the students still writing exams, fairly short and presumably funny. I don't expect huge business but maybe Jack Black will surprise me.

Next Week's Movies.

Next week was one of those interesting weeks where I have some to choose from but no obvious ones I 'have' to play.

The only two new movies were:

The Fountain- I heard some people liked it but it bombed.
A Good Year- bombed spectacularly, in my opinion due to bad marketing. Also we couldn't split it so that wasn't even an option.

I decided to bring back the Departed. It did really well last week. Also it was the late show last week so moving it to the early show will appeal to some people who couldn't go to the late show.

The late show for the week was a dilemma, I could have brought is one of the movies I've been holding back on. I checked into some smaller art films like Little Children but no prints were available. Art films tend to work better as the early show anyway.

There was one art film that would make a good late show, Shortbus. Because of the explicit content I didn't want any one trying to bring kids. They couldn't get in anyway since it's rated R. It's sort of an experiment since it does have low awareness. It's an awesome movie. I've seen it twice already.

There's only one playweek left before we shut down for Christmas. It's traditionally a slow week since the students are either busy with exams or leaving. I may bring in a short funny movie like Employee of the month. They make good exam breaks plus I wouldn't want to 'waste' a good movie.

I was given a date when The Prestige is available but it's the day after we shut down so it will be playing right after Christmas.

Screwy Justice System, I'm glad I'm not American.

These items were all reported the same day on one of the studio news items I read.

A man was sentenced to 7 years in prison for camcording a movie in a theatre. Seems a bit extreme, it wasn't even a hit movie. it was The Core.

A man who bilked at least 70 investors out of millions of dollars for a non-existent TV show was given a sentence of one year and a day. The judge in this case deserves to have his money bilked by some other phony scheme so he knows what it feels like.

There was also a story about a man who had sold thousands of copies of pirated DVDs and also got about a year.

Does all this seem a little inequitable to you?

Western Film mini-reviews.

Here's my opinion on some of the movies I've seen recently.

Casino Royale- Extremely cool, Daniel Craig makes a great Bond, taking the character back to his darker, grittier roots. I really liked the fact that most of the action was done by Craig and real stuntmen not CGI. CGI special effects can look spectacular but seems soulless in a way. The movie slowed down some in the middle but not enough that I was looking at my watch. I suppose I might have found the middle more interesting if I knew how to play poker.

Happy Feet- Technically stunning but not as entertaining as I thought it would be. Robin Williams' characters were hilarious as usual but that was about it. Fairly heavy environmental tone for a kid's movie. I still find it weird the man who directed the Mad Max movies ended up making kid's movies. He also did Babe: Pig in the City.

Shortbus- I saw this movie at the Hyland last night. I'm not sure Western Film will play it as doesn't seem to have a lot of awareness. I thought it was an amazing film and I'm actually planning to go see it again. It just goes to show how things have changed. Not long ago this movie would have garnered huge controversy because it shows actual hardcore sex complete with moneyshots. However the sex was such an integral part of the film it didn't come off as exploitive or shocking. (well, maybe the first few minutes were a bit of a shock.)

Fast Food Nation- Interesting but nothing really happened, some good acting, definitely makes one want to be a vegetarian. I don't think Western Film will play this, it's not well known and it's from Fox Searchlight and they can be hard to deal with.

Flushed Away- I saw this because I wanted to see something entertaining and funny on that particular night. I mostly got what I wanted. It was funny and had lots of action. Like Happy Feet it's amazing the worlds they can create with computer graphics. It didn't have quite the dual level of appeal to both adults and children that a movie like Shrek has but it was entertaining.

Harsh Times - Even I had never heard of this film when it showed up at the Westmount cinemas a couple weeks ago. Christian Bale did a good job of playing a character slowly burning out his fuse. Ultimately it didn't seem to have a point though.

Current Movies.

The Queen is doing really well with both students and off-campus. I think we set a record for the number of seniors at the show on Friday. The Departed is doing really well too. Sunday is usually a quieter night but this Sunday was busier than most nights are.

Next week's Movies.

This was one of those nice weeks when I had multiple good films to choose from.

The ones available were
Saw 3 - I don't think so
Let's go to Prison- I even more don't think so.
Marie Antoinette -
The Guardian - I'm not sure about this one so I'm keeping it in reserve.
Little Miss Sunshine.

I chose Little Miss Sunshine for 7:00 and Marie Antoinette for 9:15. Little Miss Sunshine is the kind of move we do well with, a relatively small but good movie that has good word of mouth. It's been playing in various First Run theatres around London for at least a couple months which is longer than most big Hollywood films. Marie Antoinette has beautiful visuals so it should look great on our screen. It's primarily aimed at women and we often do quite well with 'chick flicks'.

My Fav James Bond Movie.

It's Sunday night and the wait to find out how the new James Bond movie does is almost over. Will it beat a bunch of dancing penguins to be #1? I'm going to see it later tonight and hope it's as good as I heard. My favorite Bond film is still Octopussy from 1983 though. It's later as the Roger Moore ones got silly but still creates a neat atmosphere. Some great stunts. It's also got my second favorite James Bond theme song sung by Rita Coollidge, ' All Time High'. The magazine cover is from one of the great movie magazines of the time.

Poster of the Week

I have to admit I'm a little biased on this one. It's the only poster I have framed and one of my favorites. Movie posters are bloody expensive to frame becuase they are so big. This is a poster from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom from 1984. This isn't the main poster it's a less common B poster. This poster is for sale at movieposter.com for $150 but seems to go for less on ebay. However one never knows about the originality of items on ebay. I have a couple extra copies, maybe I should sell them?

Badly designed Poster of the Week

Some may disagree with me but I think this poster for The Departed isn't well designed. It's hard to make out the faces of the stars and with the text split over multiple lines it's hard to read the title. I got two in a stack of posters and had to stop for a second and figure out what movie it was for. I suppose the intent might be to catch people's attention and make them think about it for a second. However, we get so much visual stimulation these days I think a better idea is to keep it simple so one glance can catch your attention.

Current movies.

I can't be too specific in this section for business reasons but I thought I'd give an update on how each movie has done.

Pirates 2 has done quite well, about what I expected. Lots of Popcorn sold.

Who Killed the Electric Car? has done surprisingly well for a 9:55 show. On Friday it did about 4 times what I expected. Tuesday it did more than Pirates.

Thursday has become the busy night of the week so we'll see what they do that night.

Next Week's Movies.

I had an unusual number of choices this week. There were 5 new movies available.

The Marine (Fox- so had to play both shows every night) - guess what my decision on that one was.

Employee of the Month. Was fairly funny but we don't do well with these kind of mid level comedies.

The three I was considering were:

Man of the Year
Flags of Our Fathers
Trailer Park Boys.

My boss asked me to check on Death Of a President and to my mild surprise it was available. I figured it would go through the art circuit before we could get it.

So I booked DOAP for the early show and Trailer Park Boys seemed a better choice for a late show plus it's Canadian and I try to support Canadian films when I can.

Depending on what is available next week I'm planning to play Flags of Our Fathers.

An interesting Marketing problem.

There's a documentary coming out titled F@Ck or something to that effect. It's about the history, use and meaning of the F word. I wouldn't want to be the person assigned to market it, most newspapers will probably refuse to run ads, same for TV. I may face the same issues myself if Western Film ever plays it. I'm not sure when it comes out or if it will play in Canada yet.

Next Week's Movie

It was an interesting week for booking, see previous post. Who Killed the Electric Car? has been booked in for a few weeks and I had planned to play it at 7. However with the changes I was able to pick up Pirates 2. I decided to play it at 7 pm since we'll have people wanting to bring kids and more people will want to see it in general. Hopefully the people who want to see Electric Car are willing to see a late show. Pirates is so long Electric Car doesn't play until 9:55!

The only other new movie available was Man of The Year, I may play it next week depending on what is available. It didn't exactly storm the box office.

Friday is going to be interesting. There's no 7pm show because a conference is using the McKellar room for a play. I think they got bumped from somewhere else. So all the advertising says there's no 7pm show of Pirates on Friday. However, no matter how hard I advertise it we always get some people showing up for a cancelled show. And just to make things a little more confusing there is a late show of Electric Car on Friday. We've never tried to split a night like that before.

So anyway, if you want to see Pirates don't come Friday!

Some Movie Theatre News for London.

On Friday Nov 10th Rainbow downtown will switch to first run and the Huron Market place will switch to second run. Basically Rainbow will now play movies as soon as they come out but will be raising it's prices. Huron will lower it's prices, probably the same as Western Film's but will have to wait to get movies.

I'm curious to see what happens for Western Film. The most immediate effect is we can now play Disney product since we are no longer in the same zone as Rainbow. So I was able to book Pirates for next week and we'll be able to play The Prestige etc.

Huron is a bit of a distance away and I don't think a lot of students live in that area so attendance at Western Film may go up. We may also get some off-campus people who used to go to Rainbow but don't want to pay the higher prices.

I'm glad I don't work at Rainbow right now. They are going to have pissed off customers for a while.

An interesting Cineplex Survey

I went to a movie at Cineplex the other day. With my ticket they gave me a contest entry to fill out a survey and win something. I don't remember what the prize was.
I filled the survey out partly to give some input and partly to see what they were asking.

Most of the questions were the usual, was the seating comfortable (no) was the picture okay (no-out of focus even after I told them), did you buy any food (no-too expensive)?

There was one that caught my attention. They asked what my reaction would be to movies that were always subtitled, even movies in English. I can see where they are going with this. The theatres have been under some pressure to figure out some way to offer a movie theatre equivalent of closed captioning for the hearing impaired.
Subtitling all the films would be the cheapest and most effective way to do this. Right now the only way to do it is a system called HV. One of the theatres at the Silver City has it. An LED sign across the back runs the captions in mirror image. Anyone using the system puts something like a mirror in their cupholder and reads the text off it. Besides being a bit awkward the system has two other downsides. It requires a CD-Rom to play the captions. If the CD doesn't arrive with the film the system doesn't work. The other item is cost, I've heard these systems are $20,000 each. Considering what some other theatre equipment costs this could be accurate.
I don't think captioning everything would bother me personally, I've seen a lot of subtitled movies. I don't even notice that I'm reading the movie any more. I do have 2 questions.

What happens in a dialogue heavy scene, would they have to simplify the text to compensate for slower readers. That could get really distracting.
Would the general public go for it? Quite often if I tell someone at Western Film the film is subtitled they won't go see it.
Any thoughts?

Movie Poster of the Week

Spotted this on a website selling movie posters. It's $25.00 US but I'm tempted, it's one of the funniest movies of all time. I suppose I have enough movie posters though. Note that it's been folded, up until the late 80's or so all posters were mailed folded. It is pretty rare to find an older poster not folded. To the point I've seen reprints made of older posters that included the fold lines. With the advent of backlit display cases the posters started being shipped rolled since they looked better.

BTW: Backlit cases are also why most original posters these days are double sided. If only single sided they tend to look washed out when backlit.