Why did Disney do this?

For reasons unknown Disney recently renamed it's home video division to Disney Home Entertainment. Before that I believe it was Buena Vista, the name Disney uses for most of it's distribution.
The odd thing is that Disney has always tried to keep it's name off movies that didn't fit the wholesome kid friendly image it had. In 1984 they created Touchstone pictures specifically to release movies with more adult content and leave off the Disney name.
The reason this came to my attention was the upcoming release of Badder Santa on HiDef DVD for Christmas. Badder Santa is the even more naughty version of Bad Santa which starred Billy Bob Thornton as a foul mouthed, heavy drinking, department store Santa.
So now a movie called Badder Santa will be released under the Disney banner, how long before some unknowing parent sees Santa and Disney on the package and buys it and scares the crap out of a couple kids.

Swag #3 Dead Silence.

This is a plastic cup and two refrigerator magnets given out by Universal for the horror movie Dead Silence. These were the only items given away at the convention for a movie that had already opened. Normally I'd use them for prizes but Western Film doesn't play horror movies. If anyone is interested in them let me know.

The Importance of Trailers

I was thinking about movie trailers (previews) tonight. A trailer is most people first look at a new movie and the trailer can make or break a movie. One of my pet peeves is misleading trailers. I haven't seen it but my understanding is the trailer for Georgia Rule is a bit misleading. It's more dramatic than the trailer would have you believe. One movie for a movie called Home Fries made it look like a romantic comedy. I went to see it on a night when that was wanted to see and and got a quirky dark humour film. I would normally have liked the film but since it wasn't the type of movie I wanted to see that night I was left with a bad impression.

When I was at ShowCanada there was a seminar on posters and trailers. One of the trailers they showed is below. It's a parody trailer for the Shining, it's an extreme example on misleading trailers.



The one below is a great example of how important music is to a trailer. In case some don't get it the footage is from a old sitcom called Perfect Strangers.

Next Week's Movies

I had basically already decided to play Fracture next week. I could have played it the current week but decided to play Disturbia and I didn't want to play two shows. The only other new movies were The Invisible and possibly Georgia Rule. I think the Hyland is planning to play Georgia Rule next week so normally we would have to wait until they were done. As an aside Westmount is still playing Fracture so I'm not sure what would have happened if we had picked it up. Offering it to us was either a mistake or the studio figured we are so far apart from each other there's no competition

So the current plan is Fracture next week and Georgia Rule the following week. Hopefully Spider-Man will be available the next week or things might get interesting from a booking point of view.

I hope Fracture does well, it deserves to despite the relatively low press it got. Both Ryan Gosling and Anthony Hopkins are great and the story was interesting.

Swag #2 Shrek The Third shirt

This is a fairly bland t-shirt with a nice graphic on it. The odd thing is the image is on the back of the shirt, the front is blank. I kinda wondered if a mistake was made on that. My nephew is a Shrek fan so I'm going to give it to him.

Long Movies Pros and Cons.

I just saw Pirates 3 which was about three hours with trailers. I got to thinking about how long movies affect various aspects of going to the movies.

Movie watchers.
-more bang for their buck (literally in Pirates)
-sometimes have to miss part of movie (or hold it) to go to the washroom.
-some may forgo going to the theatre because the movie is so long. That was one of the problems with Grindhouse.

Movie Theatres
-long movies tend to be blockbusters which are usually good for concessions sales, they don't call 'em popcorn movies for nothing.
-fewer shows per day which means less income.
-late shows that start and run really late increasing staff costs. Pirates 3 ended at 1am.

Western Film.

-We usually only have one show a night with a long film, no late show. We can't push our start time any later than 10pm, it never works. This reduces our staff costs but also reduces any income we might have had from a late show of a different movie.
-If I do run a long movie for a late show it increases costs, occasionally even to the point of paying for a taxi home for staff if the movie ends after the buses stop running.
-long movies are a pain in the .. back. A 3 hour film weighs about 100 pounds.

Interesting video about Copyright Law.

I thought this video was neat. Must have taken ages to put together. I don't completely agree with it's message. I fully believe in 'fair use' of copyright material but I don't agree with it's thesis that copyright should be reduced. If I create a character/book/work of art it should be mine to control and/or make money from. Just because things like films and books are reproducible shouldn't mean they should be subject to different laws. Why should films fall into the public domain when an original painting by Warhol, Rembrandt or DaVinci doesn't? I'm sure the Louvre would be quite happy if I came knocking and said the Mona Lisa is public domain now, can I have it to put over my mantle?

Movie Poster of the Week

I think everyone has seen this movie. If you haven't, go and rent it, now, run. It's one of the funniest movies ever made. We played it as one of the midnight films a couple years ago and it did really well. The print was getting rough so I'm not sure if we'll play it again.

I picked this one because I was looking through the new arrivals at movieposter.com which is in Toronto. They have an excellent condition, folded copy of this for sale. For $460!!

I'm pretty sure I have a mint copy of this poster at home. Anybody want to buy it? Only $400.

Annoying customer #413 / Hot Building.

Theatre is a bit hot today which reminded me of an incident from a couple years ago. It might have been a Tuesday but in any case it was a very busy night around the beginning of summer. This building is heated with radiant heating using liquid not by heating the air like most houses do. So when the outside temperature changes the insides of the buildings take a bit to catch up. The physical structure (concrete) of the building has to either warm up or cool down before the temperature inside stabilizes.

On this particular night the room was about half full and very hot by the end of the movie. As we learned in The Matrix human bodies produce a lot of heat. One older guy comes out after the movie and starts yelling at me about how hot the theatre is and he's had two heart attacks. I tried to be as nice as possible to him and explain the situation and how the temperature of the room is beyond our control.

I couldn't help but think though, why didn't he just leave before the movie was over if it was that big a deal for him?

Next Week's Movies

There were a few movies available today.

The NameSake- I hear it's good but Fox wanted all shows which I couldn't do for this movie even when the students are here.

The Ex- Wasn't promoted at all. Plus it wasn't a good movie.

Fracture- I am planning to play this next week.

Disturbia- I decided to play this one. Only one show at 7pm. I wasn't planning to play this film before it came out as it looked like a standard teen thriller. However when it came out it turned out to be a really good movie and was a surprise hit. It's actually still #4 on the North American top 10. We only got it already because Pirates 3 will be playing on about half the screens on the planet.

Part of the reason I decided to push Fracture off to next week was we have so few movies coming off in the next couple weeks I want to play until Spider-Man is available. Basically there's Fracture and Georgia Rule. Hopefully Spidey is available the week I think it will be or I'll have to get creative. Maybe experiment and play Meet the Robinsons. We may get a better response to kid's movies now that Rainbow has gone first run. We pretty much lost the family market when they opened.

Movie Poster of the Week

The poster for Jaws is one of the most iconic posters ever produced. Anything that has been parodied as much has got to be iconic. It's also one of the best designed in my opinion. In one glance it tells you exactly what the movie is about despite being so simple. It's also one of the best movies ever made.

This just goes to show why movies are important.

There was a story on the news today about a single mother who found $10.00 on the ground and bought a lottery ticket with the money. She won a million dollars! How did she celebrate? She took her family to the movies.

SWAG #1 Transformers gym bag.

This was one of the more interesting swag items we got. It was useful to carry some of the other stuff home too!

The movie looks like it could be good or bad, hard to tell from the trailers. In either case I'm pretty sure Western Film will play it. The gym bag will be given away as a prize that week. Everyone who comes to the film will get a ballot to fill out if interested.

Swag!

Swag is stuff that is given to people at conventions, awards shows etc. The presenters at the Oscars get swag bags worth thousands. I'm not sure what the origin of the term is, someone told me it stands for Stuff We All Get.

I'm going to do postings of the items I got at ShowCanada. Some I'm going to keep, others I'm going to give away with contests when we play the relevant movie.

The pic is a nice bag we were given to tote around our notebooks etc (and our swag!)

The eternal question, what time should we start a single show?

One thing that gets brought up quite a bit is whether we should start the movie at 8pm instead of 7pm during weeks we only have one showing. I've tried a bit of both and I tend to leave it at 7pm.

Pros of an 8 pm movie.
-patrons might come who couldn't make it to a 7pm.
-it's an unusual time so it might make us stand out more and be remembered for future moviegoing.

Cons of an 8pm movie.
-patrons might not notice we changed the time for that week and show up at 7pm or vice-versa and assume all summer or single shows will be at 8pm.

- not all of the single summer shows would be at 8pm, long movies (Spider-Man 3) would still have to start at 7 as well as anything that children might come to (Shrek).

-When I have run 8pm shows in the past I noticed concession sales were lower presumably because people have had more time to go out for dinner beforehand. Since we pay a large portion of our expenses from the food sales this isn't a good thing.

-even short movies starting at 8pm might run too late for some people.

When I have tried it in the past I have found the cons outweighed the pro. Please feel free to leave a comment if you disagree.

Single / early shows only?

During the summer there are a lot of weeks we only have one show at 7pm with no late show. There's a few reasons for this.

-With fewer students around there are fewer movies that are worth playing, for example I might play something like 28 Weeks Later during the school year but probably won't during the summer.

-The crowd is different, we tend to get a lot more faculty, off-campus, and families during the summer. As another example I probably wouldn't have played Wild Hogs during the school year. This crowd tends not to go to the late shows.

- last year it seemed like almost every week there was only one movie I wanted to play anyway. During the summer you tend to get big movies and lots of small movies that don't do well. This summer may be different, it looks like there's going to be lots of good movies.

- long movies- Spiderman, Harry Potter and Pirates 3 are all almost three hours long with trailers. That makes a late show at 10pm which doesn't always work for the reasons listed above. Even during the school year that's getting late for us.
A couple of my staff and I were talking about whether to play a late show of Spiderman when we get it. I honestly couldn't decide whether I should or not. I figure I'll wait and see how long it takes to get it. I may also use it as an experiment. Play a late show and see how it does to gauge whether I should show late shows of the other big movies.

Next Week's Movies

Actually there is only one movie next week. There were three movies available:

Lucky You- big bomb, bad movie.
Next- looks like an okay movie but didn't do very well and not a type of film Western Film does well with.
Blades of Glory- I decided to play this one but with only one show at 7pm. (see next post about singles shows).
Coming the following week should be either Disturbia or Fracture.

Poster of the Week

I don't know what this movie is about, looks like Ping Pong but I think the poster does a good job of telling you it's a comedy and exactly what kind of comedy it is.

ShowCanada preview Screening of Shrek The Third

The first day of ShowCanada (Apr 25th ) we got to see a preview of Shrek the Third. The schedule listed the event as a Paramount movie. Paramount had a movie opening later in the week, Next with Nicolas Cage, so I figured that was what we would be seeing. However I neglected to take into account that Paramount bought Dreamworks which is releasing Shrek. It was a working print. The final color correction wasn't done but it wasn't too noticeable. There were a couple spots where actions were missing.

Overall the movie is really funny and one of those great movies that works both for kids and adults. I predict huge business.

There was only one small disappointment for me, there's a moment in the trailer where a certain piece of music that seems perfect is used. The same song played an important part in Kill Bill. It's called Battle without Honour or Humanity. In the scene in the movie different music is used. Probably no one else would notice, I suppose I noticed because it's one of my favorite songs.

The song is at 1:00 (one minute) in the trailer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aZXVzUQGA4

I tried to embed the trailer but it wasn't working for some reason.

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.