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Blog Entry 6 of 24 My Life: Beer and Blogs
I'm a new media guy who happens to live in the Napa Valley of beer. This blog will chronicle my adventures through beers, blogs and everything else. Cheers!

And they wonder why people don't go to the movies


Here's a departure from the postings of late, but I need to vent.

Last night Christina, Kelly, Jeff and I went to see the Golden Compass at the Belmar Theaters. I've heard mixed reviews about the film, but it looked like it was right up my alley.

About an hour or so into the movie, the projector stops. It starts right up again, but then the sounds goes away. The sound comes back, but it's the radio-like music they play before the previews/commercials start. At first everyone in the theater laughs because there's a giant polar beer that looks like he's doing karaoke to some pop star's voice.

But then it becomes apparent that no one is going to fix it and we're all stuck watching the movie without any sound except for crappy music. The kid in front of me said he went out and couldn't find anyone. So, I went out to the Guest Services desk, as did some other people from our theater. We stood there for about 5 minutes trying to get the attention of the people at Guest Services to no avail. Finally someone told the woman taking tickets that the movie was broken and she yelled across the crowded lobby to the people in the booth, who got on the phone and called someone.

So we all head back into the theater and the audio track starts again. But, even though we asked the people to rewind the film, they didn't. So we lost about 15 minutes of the storyline. Ugh.

As we were leaving the theater, one of the employees told us that they have been having projection issues in that theater. So they knew there were problems and still showed movies in the theater. I can understand that they have a schedule and all that, but the least they could have done was have someone check in on the movie every five minutes or so.

I was pretty annoyed and we went back up to the desk and asked where we could find a manager. Even though the manager looked like he didn't want to talk to us (or the half-dozen people behind us), he was nice enough to give us guest passes.

I really did enjoy the movie (at least the parts that I saw). And after reading several reviews, which say the movie wasn't true to the books, I want to read them as well.

Anyone else had any bad movie experiences lately?

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Showing 1-6 of 6 comments

Not the theater's fault, but I went to a sneak preview of "Into The Wild," and although we were 20 minutes early, the only 4 seats together were in the front row. The movie was great, but the experience was horrible. A couple people I was with actually got motion sickness. I'm looking forward to getting the DVD when it comes out so I can watch it without vomiting. Still, do the people who design movie theaters ever sit in the front row and watch a movie? I think not.

Katherine, I LOVE red vines!

I like "on demand", my cushy couch with my dog piled next to me and a box of red vines (3 for 3 bucks at Walgreen's) Now that's what I call a "good" movie experience.

Yay for Harry Potter -- they only movies that I'll brave opening night (or near to it) to see. But back to your experience -- that is pretty unacceptable, especially with the cost of tickets, like $9 bucks a pop. And they make you pay to watch not only previews, but commercials, too! I don't blame you for being a bit peeved.

Wow! You don't want to mess with opening night crowds. Opening night is really the only time I get excited about going to movies anymore. We've done all the Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean movies on opening night. It's fun waiting in line and seeing all the kids dressed up!

It hasn't been lately, but when we went to opening night of "Star Wars: Episode 3" (and yes, one of my kids had his light saber,) they started playing "Madagascar" after the suspiciously cartoony previews. Anticipating the pent-up rabid fan dismay, theater representatives blanketed the auditorium handing out free passes while they changed reels.
Showing 1-6 of 6 comments