Wednesday, September 22, 2010

3D Discrimination - Jackass 3.

UPDATE: Paramount moved the 2D release back to Oct 15th, the same date as 3D. I find it funny I never heard anything about this anywhere else but somone must have complained pretty loudly.


I just found out that anyone who can't play Jackass 3 in 3D has to wait 3 weeks before they can play it in 2D. 3D runs open Oct 15th but 2D runs open Nov 5th. This is new, up til now 2D always opened the same day as 3D. Yet more discriminatory practices against smaller theatres that can't afford the $100,000+ it takes to convert one screen to 3D.

I think they are doing this because more and more people are choosing 2D screenings over 3D because it's cheaper when given a choice. They are attempting to make more people pay the 3D surcharge as most admissions for any movie are in the first two weeks. However this movie is actually shot in 3D, not converted, and is probably one of the films that the 3D will be beneficial. Although I'm not looking forward to what they 'throw' or 'point at' the audience, I imagine gross substances and body parts not normally seen on screen will be involved.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. I don't think Western Film will play the movie anyway, we'll see how it does.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Midnight Movies return.


We used to run a series of cult films Fridays at Midnight. It was quite popular however most of the films people wanted to see were no longer available on 35mm film for various reasons, mostly age and worn out and not replaced. I couldn't do the series on video because the video projector in the room generated a small, dim picture I would have been embarrassed to try to charge money for.
That's not the case any more.
The USC has invested in a new, high end video projector for the McKellar room for Western Film to use as well as other users of the room. It isn't a Digital Projector like some theatres use, those are still about $100,000. One of the main reasons I listed in my business case for buying the projector was the possibility of bringing back Midnight movies and playing them on video. People still ask about midnight movies all the time.
So now we can play the films off a DVD or Bluray. The new projector makes an image almost as good as the film projector and fills most of the screen.
Now we can play anything available that we can get the rights for. We can also play some movies that were never available on film in Canada such as Donnie Darko.
There's still some movies we can't play. Fox and George Lucas have all the Star Wars films out of service which means we aren't allowed to play them.
The most requested film is Rocky Horror but it's too messy to play in our nicely renovated theatre.
I've booked the first few films, however as of this writing only Holy Grail is confirmed so the list may change. I'm having trouble finding who owns the Canadian theatrical rights to Evil Dead, it's not the same as who owns the DVD rights which is unusual.
Now hopefully people show up. I'll be quite embarrassed if I've talked this series up to get them to invest in the new projector and not many people show up.
In the previous series we had more than 100 people show up for a few of the movies, however almost all of them were the movies with horrible prints. (Shining, Clockwork Orange)
If anyone has any suggestions please e-mail or leave them in the comments. However, take note, I reserve the right to ignore suggestions. I kept track of the movies suggested before, one of the most requested films, Taxi Driver, has one of the lowest attendances. I've had 4 people suggest a movie called The Room which I had never heard of. Since three of those requests arrived in one day I suspect one person had his or her friends request it as well. I'll embed the trailer below. Anyone think I should play it?




I'm a sucker for this kinda film...

My favorite genre is science fiction and I hate to admit but I like the cheesy ones as well as the good ones. I can't quite decide which one Skyline is. It could be good like District 9 or a low rent version of Independence Day. I'm not sure how big a release it's getting, hopefully it will play here.