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Author
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Topic: A Trip to the Showcase Cinema De Lux
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Mark Lensenmayer
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1605
From: Upper Arlington, OH
Registered: Sep 1999
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posted 07-11-2005 08:18 PM
I chose to put this under Ground Level, as it is about theatre operations. It's also about why it's getting harder and harder for me to go out to the movies.
I drove down to Cincinnati today to check out the Springdale Cinema De Lux from Showcase Cinemas (National Amusements). I bought my tickets online (a very smooth process) and drove down to see a film in the "Director's Hall" and to check out the Imax theatre.
I began my day in the Director's Hall. This features leather seats, reserved seating and supposedly an upscale presentation, along with a $2.00 extra fee.
Let me speak about reserved seats. It is silly to have reserved seats when there are only 5 people in the theatre. No one even checked where I sat, so it seemed to be irrelevant. The computers idea of where I want to sit differs greatly from mine, as the seat assigned to me was 5 rows closer to the screen than my preferred seat.
A pre-show film was running when I arrived, but there was a loud high-pitched sound in the room, sounding like some kind of alarm. I tracked it down to the fire alarm box in the front, and reported it to the ticket taker. A couple of guys in ties arrived and fixed it. While they were there, the first trailer came on. It was a scope trailer being shown flat. Lovely! I mentioned it to the guys in ties, and they said that they knew about it, but not much could be done. The film was WAR OF THE WORLDS, which has been running over a week now. Since this was the first show of the day, and the tie guys knew of the problem, they had been running this trailer for some time. I can not understand why this hadn't been fixed. Some delux presentation this is starting out to be.
During the trailers, things don't seem to sound quite right. The surrounds were too loud, and I was hearing splice pops, like a analog presentation. This continued into the feature, so I'm not sure the digital sound was turned on. I heard pops and mono surrounds. (I can't imagine a sound mix this good would have no split-surround sound at all.) I didn't tell anyone about it, as I usually get looks of puzzlement when I complain about the sound.
Also, the projector was quite loud, louder than I've heard at any theatre in a long time. It was disturbing during some of the quieter parts of the film.
If this was a local theatre, I would never go to that location again. I would also tell my friends to avoid it, and certainly would advise everyone not to spend any extra money to sit in a somewhat smelly leather chair. (The chair was nice, but not as comfortable as many other seats.)
OK, so much for that. I also checked out the Imax. This is one of the newer Imax theatres that is for DMR prints only. The screen is about 1/2 the height of a traditional Imax screen. It looked to be about 55' wide, with proportional width. The presentation was what I would expect from an Imax...rock steady picture with very good sound. I don't know the sound format (DTS?), but it was clean and clear, with only a slight wobble now and then. The film looked terrific, but I have to wonder if 15/70 isn't a bit of an overkill for a 55' screen. A 5/70 print would look just about as good on that size screen, and would be a lot easier to work with.
There was some projector noise, but not as loud as the 35mm room.
Sound was excellent, and used the Imax left and right rear speakers. The theatre also had standard surround speakers, but they did not seem to come into play.
So, it was 1 "film-done-right" and 1 "film done wrong." I would go back for the right Imax film, but, in truth, the Marcus UltraScreen looks almost as good, and it is a lot closer to me.
From a business point of view, I think the UltraScreen model makes a lot of sense. Since it is 35mm, you are not at the mercy of the distributor for product. Marcus usually puts the hot film in its UltraScreen, and will sometimes only play a film there for a week or 2. The audience, which is used to only seeing the latest pictures, will come more often. With Imax, the product is still "few and far between". I could see the business being good during the first weekend, but dying off quickly later. I really miss the Imax at Marcus, but I think it was a very good business decision to move to 35mm in the former Imax room.
Oh, the reserved seat in the Imax theatre was 5 seats away from center. There was no one in the seat I wanted, so I just moved down.
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