hanshotfirst1138

I'm still surprised that celluloid exists anywhere at this point, when with the efforts of high-profile directors batting for it, it's still disappearing so rapidly. It sounds like it's all over but the crying at this point.

Supermallet

I know that Cinemark is planning to turn the IMAX I worked at into some other kind of large format screen. And with that decision, I'll never have a reason to go there again.

hanshotfirst1138

You'd think that the cache of having IMAX would bring them a lot more than whatever they're planning on replacing it with.

Matthew Chmiel

Cinemark is ditching IMAX? Especially after IMAX's lawsuit against them? Surely, you jest.

I'm assuming it's the Rave 18 + IMAX? That sucks, especially as it's one of the 15/70 projectors left.

Nope. They'll save money as they won't have to pay IMAX for licensing, projectors, etc. It'll cost more upfront to renovate the auditorium for XD (4K projector, XD's specific all leather seating, etc), but they'll be able to recoup it.

Supermallet

Yeah, it's the Rave 18. It's a shithole now. The IMAX was the last thing they had going for them. But even if there hadn't been a lawsuit, I can see why they're dumping it. So few movies are getting the 15/70 treatment these days that the auditorium sits empty most days and it costs a shit ton of money to run every show and maintain the equipment. They were running Elysium when Gravity was selling out every show at Mann's Chinese digital IMAX. So sad. I'll be one of the last ones to have run 15/70 film.

Why So Blu?

Damn. I haven't been over to the Rave since the Sinister private screening 2 years ago. I did not know they were abandoning the IMAX legit format.

I hear Unversal now had reserved seating at their 15/70 screen. The last flick I saw in actual IMAX was Dark Knight Rises at the Rave, so sucks that they went downhill this fast.

Solid Snake

Wait. What? What happened to Cinemark and IMAX?

Supermallet

IMAX had a deal with Cinemark, and much of their technology and processes are proprietary. Then Cinemark began rolling out XD, which is a competing large screen format, and IMAX sued them, claiming that they used trade secrets that IMAX had given them.

Also, Rave would have gotten rid of that IMAX if they could. When they bought the National Amusements theaters (the owner of the Bridge and several other theaters across the US), they got four film IMAX theaters, and gutted three, leaving only the Rave 18 + IMAX still functioning. And my god how corporate hated us. They hated that shows were so expensive, they hated that they had to pay people to work full time to stay in the booth while the shows ran. IMAX is about high quality and doing things right, even if takes more time and money, which was wholly antithetical to Rave's penny pinching philosophy.

Once I had to stay for an entire weekend to build a print of Transformers 3. I probably racked up 30 hours of pure overtime. The print had come in late and the chief projectionist was on vacation in Europe. I was literally the only person that Rave had in their employ who was capable of building an IMAX print. So my manager told me to do what I had to do. I slept in the booth in a sleeping bag. Finally, I got it built. When Rave went to process the payroll, they called my manager and said that there must be a mistake, because someone on the payroll had worked for 70 hours that week. He said it wasn't a mistake and explained the situation. Well, the shit he got for that was unbelievable. And finally he told corporate, "If you want all the money you're going to make from running Transformers 3 in IMAX 3D, then this is the price you had to pay." A few weeks later they fired him and brought in somebody that they knew would cut costs in every possible area.

And, amazingly, it sounds like Cinemark (who bought Rave out entirely) is even worse. I still have friends who work there and it sounds like corporate rules the place with an iron fist. They'll not see a dollar of my money ever.

Alan Smithee

Cinemark bought Century Theatres over here- before Cinemark got them, they were promoting that they did NOT show commercials, though they did show ugly slide ads. As soon as Cinemark took over, first thing they did was start showing commercials. I kept hoping that whoever bought Century would restore the two large domes in Sacramento, which were built in the 60s but were divided in half in the 70s, but Cinemark's left them as they are and I'll never patronize them that way.

Jaeger

day one blind buy for me.

hanshotfirst1138

I assumed that the jacked up prices for all things IMAX were beneficial to the theaters, but I guess that depends on the cost of keeping it operating.

In other words, they believe that you should employ projectionists instead of running movies by computer and actually project them at the highest possible quality to respect the film and give the audience the best possible experience for their money?

Disgusting, but hardly surprising. That's the corporate philosophy isn't it?

I have a Cinemark fairly nearby, and they run mostly older shows for cheap tickets. I was excited by this until I went in and actually saw why it was so cheap. The way you got treated as a valued employee is pretty disgusting, you have my sympathy. I'll try to avoid Cinemark and Rave when I can after hearing this story. And people wonder why the film industry is in such a state.

Supermallet

I'm lucky to live in a city where I could go my whole life without walking into a national theater chain if I chose and still see all the movies released in a given year in a quality theater.

Solid Snake

I dunno. My Cinemark seems to be doing ok. I've never seen the kids here treated like shit. Granted... The managers or people i thought were managers from what I'VE seen are like no older than 30 from what they look like. Maybe they have an older fuck somewhere in an office.

hanshotfirst1138

My local AMC is where I usually go, they're easiest to be get to, luckily my experiences there have been pretty positive. Most of the smaller theaters over this way are struggling for a variety of reasons, as far as I can tell.

Matthew Chmiel

Universal Citywalk? Sorry to break the news to you bro, but that bitch is all digital now.

Century Theatres weren't the greatest company to begin with. Their game plan was to originally purchase land, build a theater on said land, once the land was worth more they paid and invested into it they would sell it while tearing down said theater. Rinse, recycle, and repeat. The original Century Theatres owners, Syufy Enterprises, still operates all of the original Century-owned drive-ins. If it were up to them, they probably would've done the same thing. However, in Nevada for example, the state has declared all remaining drive-ins a landmark so they get government backing to keep them open.

Based upon all this Century and Cinemark hate, it sounds like a shooting is in order.

Too soon?

AMC took over the local Rave theater here in town.

The quality stayed the same. While the theater is "newer" (opened late-2007), AMC hasn't spent a dime into renovating the theater from its shitty Christie 2K projectors that were installed prior to opening while every other theater in town is rocking 4K Barco or Sony systems. To make matters worse, the "pre-show" always goes past 5-10 minutes of the film's advertised start time and they have a tendency of showing at least 20-30 minutes worth of trailers now. AMC is just as bad as the rest of the chains.

hanshotfirst1138

I've had better luck at my local AMC, all of their screens have a 4K logo displayed before their screenings, according to the logos, it's DLP from Sony and TI. The commercials, though annoying, have never run into show times before over this way. My local AMC looks like it's the definition of part of a big multiplex chain, it's generally clean and it seems like their projectors are up to date, but it's totally impersonal. I assume it's rolling in money judging by the 4K projectors and LIEMAX though. I don't buy anything there except movie tickets, the price for things at cinemas is ridiculous, so I imagine I'm not real well-liked for that reason . They even have a bar, for God's sake, apparently if the movie was had enough, alcohol will wash it away. They do have a fairly good selection of esoteric stuff there from time to time, Blue is the Warmest Color was there for about a week, and it had the NC-17 badge. I asked what kind of DCP system they had at guest services, and the guy was totally clueless as to what I even meant, sounds like the proverbial "I just work here" Joe. But I've never had issues with the film being poorly projected, I've been refunded a couple of times when I asked, and I suppose it could be much worse. One of the local college town theaters I attended recently was much nicer and the employees who introduced the stuff seemed to know what they were talking about, by they've taken to projecting DVDs for some of their shows because one of them can't get DCPs and the cost of going digital is hurting them. Kermode is right, cinemas need projectionists. It's looking like Interstellar is going to be celluloid's last stand.

Why So Blu?

Bummer.

Alan Smithee

Sure weren't- they were the first chain to get rid of dedicated projectionists entirely and make running the film part of the managers' jobs- reason they changed their name from "Syufy" is because that name became synonymous with bad projection and damaged prints. Plus they had a lot of great big dome theaters (see my pic) with 70mm built in the 60s, only to split most of them in half by the 70s. I worked for a few months on floor staff at their Sacramento theater back in 1992, and it was a very depressing experience.

I'm sorry, were we talking about "Gravity"?

Giles

yeah... yeah it was... but it's been highly educational.

hanshotfirst1138

Hey, the death of celluloid may be sad, but it's damned interesting. This stuff is all fascinating to me, it's a shame I didn't know it. It's also a shame it has no practical use . If there were some way to harness all of my useless knowledge, I'd be much less unhappy at work .

Chrisedge

http://in70mm.com/newsletter/2000/62/cinedom/index.htm

This is where I saw all my movies in the 70's and 80's (although I missed Star Wars there)

I sat through Tommy (as mentioned in the link) 5 times in one day here.

Giles

Matthew Chmiel

Henderson has the last remaining Cinedome left. Like all Cinemark locations now, they've switched completely to digital. The location, despite offering a lot of amenities we now take for granted with theaters, still gets plenty of business due to Cinemark continue to price tickets for (far) cheaper than other surrounding theaters (all owned by Regal).

Surprisingly, it's also one of the very few theaters in Las Vegas that I have not been to. However, I have been to Cinedome locations in the past when I was a child.

manicsounds

Checkdiscs coming out show the US disc of Gravity (3D and 2D) have the English dts-HD MA track at 5.1 / 48 kHz / 2369 kbps / 16-bit
Also seems that the "Silent Space" extra is not on the menu, so it may be an easter egg extra.

Giles

Sony's systems do not use DLP technology it's a separate system known as SXRD (Silicon X-tal Reflective Display) which initially was referred to as LCoS "liquid crystal on silicon" - but is in fact 4K. Most of Sony's higher profile releases are 4K encoded DCP's. 4K encoded DLP though is much rarer for some odd reason.

or Warner's is dicking us around and going to rerelease the film with an uber-deluxe edition with even more supplements, and hell maybe a commentary track (... and 7.1 [hey I can dream can't I?]) at a later date and time (i.e, 'Argo')