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.