Bob's movie adventures
March 17th 2008 14:29
Hi there again. After last weeks introduction to The Issue, it's time for another recurring section: Bob's trip.
In this series I'll write about my movie going experiences or film related visits, set reports etc. It may contain film reviews but only in trails, not in the regular sense when a filmcritic writes a piece. So grab your popcorn, and 'ere we go!
Last Sunday I had the pleasure (?) to see 10,000 B.C. or as it's called around here i.e. 10000.
Well the pleasure turned out to be more like pain, or snooze if I want to be specific, but let's not jump to "the movie" just yet! It started as an early morning mission, when I tried to persuade my best friend to join me in my crusade to the passion of the Emmerich: it was clear that the movie itself is, well... sparse in quality. Haven't actually seen the flick, but read wonderful reviews in the 20-30 percent range about it, so I wasn't expecting high entertainment.
Why then? Well as a small country coming up like groundwater, here in Hungary I had the fresh opportunity to try out several things for the first time: namely online ticket purchase (wow!) and digital projection. To be fair, I had some experience in both, but only limited and a few years back in a different theatre.
So back to the persuasion: I failed, and my buddy turned out to be the wiser man in the long turn. He preferred to stay home and play WoW instead. (He'll deny it if you'd ask him) Anyway, I've bought the ticket online, it had the same system I've bought pizza and sushi before! (small country, as I told ya) No problem, even the confirmation SMS arried on my cellphone... about 5-10 minutes later.
As I headed for the place of my future suffering, previous fond memories ran through my mind: you know, this screening room is Hungary's first and to this day only RealD 3D screen, that opened a few months ago. I did an unpublished report on that, so be warned: you might get a dose of that later!
It still plays Beowulf 3D with much success, and occasionaly when they get a digital version of a movie, they use this room for that. So far AvP 2 and 10,000 B.C. was on the menu, so it's quite blehh, but the good news for us is that U2 3D will premiere exclusively here on 28th of March.
So I arrived at the theatre in a huge shopping mall called Westend, here in Budapest. The SMS said that I can receive the ticket(s) in the buffet, just next to the popcorn under the E-Ticket logo. Ok. What I found was a cashier BEHIND a pillar and some cardboard promotional stuff blocking my path. I was like: umm, that's professional! So I received the ticket halfway leaning over the counter and the cardboard thingy. The guy even had to check with his collegue how this thing works: shall I say this method of ticket ordering is still underused?
Anyway, soon I went in the screening room, and watched "the movie" with like 10-12 people. I was here before, watching Beowulf 3D and a 3D promotional clip and I had no complaints on the technical quality. Now it was a bit different.
After a couple of minutes of silence someone quietly mentioned that they could show some ads for a change. The answer came shortly, they've cut in a U2 song (don't ask me which) as background entertainment, but so loudly that a few of us jumped. I get the hidden promotion aspect of U2 and the 3D concert movie, but what the hell? The tech dude soon realised the volume error and turned it down, just to reveal that the quality was like the worst tape recording you could imagine... something was still fishy. After a few tries, the music vandered to the left speakers and then the right. The quality got a bit better, but soon it was turned off at the middle of the song, so it remained a strange dream.
A few seconds later, a small promo for Christie projection swooped in, followed by a Palace Cinemas promo then the movie. To this point I was satisfied, crystal clear image and sound (don't count in the Chewbacca voiced Bono).
The movie turned out to be just in the same quality range mentioned before, but I was eyeing it more with a technical point of view. Pros were the scratchless and quiverless image and the sound was ok as well. The biggest con was that in the night/dark scenes the image was grainy as hell, imagine what you see sometimes on DVD, and multiply that by hundred. I hope digital HD will improve this aspect, because I'd rather choose a good 35 mil film with some scratches than this. I guess I'll see that with U2, since it was shot with the HD Fusion 3D Camera System, similar to the one in my previous Avatar article.
Overall the experience was ambiguous: shitty movie, and a tumbling ticket system, with a nice, but still not perfect glimpse into the future: digital cinema. So what came with me after this? Two things: man, I'm looking forward to see U2 3D, and man, Roland Emmerich is an unimaginative dude!
In this series I'll write about my movie going experiences or film related visits, set reports etc. It may contain film reviews but only in trails, not in the regular sense when a filmcritic writes a piece. So grab your popcorn, and 'ere we go!
E-ticket for the digital cavemen
Last Sunday I had the pleasure (?) to see 10,000 B.C. or as it's called around here i.e. 10000.
Rasta-cavemen very afraid!
Well the pleasure turned out to be more like pain, or snooze if I want to be specific, but let's not jump to "the movie" just yet! It started as an early morning mission, when I tried to persuade my best friend to join me in my crusade to the passion of the Emmerich: it was clear that the movie itself is, well... sparse in quality. Haven't actually seen the flick, but read wonderful reviews in the 20-30 percent range about it, so I wasn't expecting high entertainment.
Why then? Well as a small country coming up like groundwater, here in Hungary I had the fresh opportunity to try out several things for the first time: namely online ticket purchase (wow!) and digital projection. To be fair, I had some experience in both, but only limited and a few years back in a different theatre.
So back to the persuasion: I failed, and my buddy turned out to be the wiser man in the long turn. He preferred to stay home and play WoW instead. (He'll deny it if you'd ask him) Anyway, I've bought the ticket online, it had the same system I've bought pizza and sushi before! (small country, as I told ya) No problem, even the confirmation SMS arried on my cellphone... about 5-10 minutes later.
As I headed for the place of my future suffering, previous fond memories ran through my mind: you know, this screening room is Hungary's first and to this day only RealD 3D screen, that opened a few months ago. I did an unpublished report on that, so be warned: you might get a dose of that later!
It still plays Beowulf 3D with much success, and occasionaly when they get a digital version of a movie, they use this room for that. So far AvP 2 and 10,000 B.C. was on the menu, so it's quite blehh, but the good news for us is that U2 3D will premiere exclusively here on 28th of March.
U2 3D poster
So I arrived at the theatre in a huge shopping mall called Westend, here in Budapest. The SMS said that I can receive the ticket(s) in the buffet, just next to the popcorn under the E-Ticket logo. Ok. What I found was a cashier BEHIND a pillar and some cardboard promotional stuff blocking my path. I was like: umm, that's professional! So I received the ticket halfway leaning over the counter and the cardboard thingy. The guy even had to check with his collegue how this thing works: shall I say this method of ticket ordering is still underused?
Anyway, soon I went in the screening room, and watched "the movie" with like 10-12 people. I was here before, watching Beowulf 3D and a 3D promotional clip and I had no complaints on the technical quality. Now it was a bit different.
After a couple of minutes of silence someone quietly mentioned that they could show some ads for a change. The answer came shortly, they've cut in a U2 song (don't ask me which) as background entertainment, but so loudly that a few of us jumped. I get the hidden promotion aspect of U2 and the 3D concert movie, but what the hell? The tech dude soon realised the volume error and turned it down, just to reveal that the quality was like the worst tape recording you could imagine... something was still fishy. After a few tries, the music vandered to the left speakers and then the right. The quality got a bit better, but soon it was turned off at the middle of the song, so it remained a strange dream.
A few seconds later, a small promo for Christie projection swooped in, followed by a Palace Cinemas promo then the movie. To this point I was satisfied, crystal clear image and sound (don't count in the Chewbacca voiced Bono).
The movie turned out to be just in the same quality range mentioned before, but I was eyeing it more with a technical point of view. Pros were the scratchless and quiverless image and the sound was ok as well. The biggest con was that in the night/dark scenes the image was grainy as hell, imagine what you see sometimes on DVD, and multiply that by hundred. I hope digital HD will improve this aspect, because I'd rather choose a good 35 mil film with some scratches than this. I guess I'll see that with U2, since it was shot with the HD Fusion 3D Camera System, similar to the one in my previous Avatar article.
Overall the experience was ambiguous: shitty movie, and a tumbling ticket system, with a nice, but still not perfect glimpse into the future: digital cinema. So what came with me after this? Two things: man, I'm looking forward to see U2 3D, and man, Roland Emmerich is an unimaginative dude!
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Comment by Harry
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What are you doing in Budapest?
Comment by Bob Kovacs
Movie Stripe
In the near future I plan move to Australia, it depends on my possibilities, but I'd love to.
Until then I'll report from the northern hemisphere.
BTW: Do you have similar experience with digital screens? I mean the graininess, especially in the darker scenes? I hope that newer HD content won't be as grainy, but it makes me wonder: 10,000 B.C. was probably shot on film (not sure) then it was converted to digital format. Is the process that could be blamed for the graininess?
I'm also eager to hear about the quality if Digital IMAX. the first public projector will be installed around June I think in the US, this year. Early screening tests say that majority of the viewers thought that it's at least as good as analog IMAX, and some even said that it's better than that. Now in case of IMAX I doubt that any graininess would be acceptible at all.