Some Technical Upgrades / repairs at Western Film.

Last week turned out to be an unexpectedly busy week. A company called K Service came down from Toronto to do an overhaul on our Popcorn machine. It had developed a bunch of little problems that could only be fixed by someone who knew the machine well enough to adjust everything properly. He showed me all sorts of little things to adjust and get the machine running great.

The same day I got as call from a company called CinemaTronix that services and installs movie theatres. I had ordered a new rectifier and they wanted to install it. It turned out between the schedule of the McKellar Room and the technician's schedule the best day to do the install was the next day.

A Rectifier converts the AV power from the grid into DC power that powers the Xenon lamp that illuminates the screen. We used to have a 3600 watt lamp. About a year ago we put in a special reflector that allowed us to drop to a 2000 watt lamp. This saves energy and the bulbs are cheaper (but still $800). Over time it became apparent that even turned all the way down the old 4000 watt rectifier was overpowering the new lamp. The first bulb didn't last as long as it should have and the picture was a little too bright.

So we put in a 2000 watt rectifier last week. The bulbs will last longer and the picture looks even better. It focuses better now and it doesn't strobe any longer. I had noticed it had a tendency to strobe in bright scenes with the old rectifier because the lamp was too bright. It's the kind of thing only a projectionist would consciously notice.

The Technician also checked over the machine, fixed a small misalignment in the sound head etc.

So it was a busy week but at least I shouldn't have to worry about any technical issues for a while, knock on wood.

I missed a week.

I didn't do my usual next week's movies post last week. It was a really weird week (see following post). School for Scoundrels was the only new movie available. To fill the other slot I inquired about Half Nelson and some of the other lower profile Art films but all were slated to play at either Rainbow's Art Series or the Hyland. So I put in Bon Cop Bad Good as a kind of experiment. I wasn't sure it had enough awareness to do much business. To my mild surprise it's doing better than Scoundrels (but still not great).

Next Week's Movies.

I was mildly surprised to find I was able to get good movies for next week. The pickings have been pretty slim lately. There has been so many bad movies coming out the first run theatres are holding onto the good ones forever. Some of the good ones playing now we may not get until after Christmas.

Jackass 2 was available, I didn't think we would get it quite this fast. It's a good time of the school year to play it, short and funny, good for a stress reliever.

The Illusionist is finishing up at The Hyland on Thursday so we are starting it Friday. It's a good movie, should do well here.

The only other new movie available was Gridiron Gang, which I would have played but only if I had no other choice. It's not the type of movie we usually do well with.

Independents owned by Studios, an oxymoron.

A while ago Western Film played a film which was distributed by a new company whose name I thought was ironic.

With media companies Independent is generally thought of as being separate from the big conglomerates, this applies to both movies and music.

A while ago when it became apparent Independent companies could make some real money producing and distributing smaller, usually art house type prestige pics. The big studios started buying up the small ones. One of the first was Disney buying Miramax which had a proven track record of releasing Oscar winning films. Warner brought up New Line which started with horror movies but eventually moved into more prestige pics.

So now pretty much any 'independent" company is owned by a Studio, Universal owns Focus which released Brokeback Mountain.

There's a couple that are still Independent as far as I know. Lion's Gate which started in Canada made Crash. The brothers who started Miramax left and started a company called The Weinstein Company.

There's several small companies in Canada that are still independent, Mongrel Media and Equinox. Alliance and Odeon distribute the majority of the arthouse and some of the Hollywood stuff in Canada.

The film reference at the beginning of the post was A Scanner Darkly. It was distributed by Warner Independent. Warner is the largest media company in the word with revenues of something like 40 billion a year. Talk about an oxymoron.

Next Week's Movies.

I had a few choices this week. It wasn't too hard a choice though.

There's a couple leftover from last week.
Crank
Black Dahlia

New ones were
World Trade Center
All the King's men
Covenant
Bon Cop Bad Cop

I decided to go with All the King's Men as the early show and Black Dahlia as the late show. I think All the King's Men has broader appeal and since Dahlia has a darker subject matter it makes an obvious choice for the late show.

I may pick them up later but these are the reasons I didn't chose the others.
World Trade center- more of interest to Americans than Canadians, didn't do great box office.
Covenant- fun but bad movie, target market is younger than the crowd we get.
Bon Cop Bad Cop- A Canadian movie, was fun, low awareness though. I got the "never heard of it " line a lot when I mentioned it. Did huge business in Quebec though.

I did get news last week that all the prints of Who Killed the Electric Car are booked right up til Nov 14th. I think there's only 5 prints in Canada. We'll probably still play it.

Trailer Park Boys is #1, yay Canada.

Last weekend was one of the fairly rare weekends when the Canadian Boxoffice didn't mirror the US one. The #1 movie in the US was the Departed but in Canada it was Trailer Park Boys. It's great that Canadians chose to patronize a Canadian movie. It did about 1.3 million on 200 screens, a pretty good number. I doubt the budget was very high so it may already be considered a hit.

Trivia: Ever wonder why Canada isn't mentioned when newspapers etc, say how movies did in various foreign countries? Canada's box office is dumped in with the US numbers. Every night Western Film faxes it's numbers to a couple of the box-office tracking companies and they get added to the North American Box office totals.

Next Week's Movies.

My plans for next week got a little messed up because there wasn't a print of Who Killed the Electric Car? Available. I decided to keep Talladega and Inconvenient Truth for another week but switch the order. Since most of the students were gone for most of Talladega's first week I figured enough would still want to see it. The same sort of logic goes for Inconvenient Truth plus it's first week had Homecoming in it and still did very well. It's very unusual for Western Film to play a movie for three weeks so I hope I'm not wrong on the demand for Truth.

There were a couple new movies available, Crank and Black Dahlia. Crank is the kind of low profile action movie we don't usually do well with. I'd play it but only if there was nothing I thought would be more popular. I'm planning to play Black Dahlia the next week.

I've already been told World Trade center will be available the next week. Not sure what to do about that one.

Nest Week's Movies.

Today was a somewhat interesting day to book. Inconvenient Truth has done well but not what I expected. However it was Homecoming and the weather was bad. I figured it will pick up later in the week. Looks like I may be right as today (Monday) was busier than Saturday. The weekend numbers normally wouldn't lead me to keep the movie for a second week but I decided to keep it. The other movies available were:

Material Girls
Talladega Nights
Barnyard
Flyboys (already!, big bomb!)

I decided to pick up Talladega for the first show and keep Truth for the late show.

There was another option. Who killed the Electric Car was available but I decided not to play it this week. Since it's Thanksgiving the campus will be pretty much deserted so I didn't want to "waste' it.
My current plan it to play Electric Car the following week and move Talladega Nights to the late show unless something good becomes available.

There's some interesting movies coming like Hollywoodland but there's no 'hits' coming in the next couple weeks.

Nest Week's Movies.

Today was a somewhat interesting day to book. Inconvenient Truth has done well but not what I expected. However it was Homecoming and the weather was bad. I figured it will pick up later in the week. Looks like I may be right as today (Monday) was busier than Saturday. The weekend numbers normally wouldn't lead me to keep the movie for a second week but I decided to keep it. The other movies available were:

Material Girls
Talladega Nights
Barnyard
Flyboys (already!, big bomb!)

I decided to pick up Talladega for the first show and keep Truth for the late show.

There was another option. Who killed the Electric Car was available but I decided not to play it this week. Since it's Thanksgiving the campus will be pretty much deserted so I didn't want to "waste' it.
My current plan it to play Electric Car the following week and move Talladega Nights to the late show unless something good becomes available.

There's some interesting movies coming like Hollywoodland but there's no 'hits' coming in the next couple weeks.

Recent Best and Worst Trailers

In the last couple weeks I've seen one of the best and one of the worst movie trailers ever.

BEST- Little Children starring Kate Winslet and Jennifer Connelly. It's mostly scenes from the movie with only a little dialogue, the interesting thing is the background sound of a train approaching, it's intercut with shots of the male lead and a little boy playing with trains and eventually colliding. As it goes the editing becomes faster. It's hard to explain but cool to watch.

WORST- Marie Antoinette starring Kisten Dunst. The trailer is scenes from the movie set to some horrible 80's song. The images don't even seem to be synched to the song. Just awful.