Anyway what was interesting about this is that I first called the AMC Empire in Manhattan (had to go thru the entire MovieFone babble to get a manager's phone number) to find out if there were seats left for the 11:20p screening in the IMAX Theatre. "No, the next show was at 9:15p." "But it says in MovieFone that there is an 11:20p show." "No, we don;t subscribe (?) to MovieFone and all their listings are wrong." "Well, that's helpful. Anyway can I buy tickets for tomorrow." "Yes," she says, but now get this, she adds, "but you don't want to see it in the IMAX Theatre; the screen is smaller in there than in the regular theatre where we are running it." "Smaller how?", asks I. "Oh, it doesn't fill up the screen." "Well, I know, it isn't an IMAX film, but are you saying it is bigger in the other theatre?" She never answered that but said, "Well, we have been getting complaints about the IMAX theater." Since there were no shows left anyway, I just dropped it figuring she wasn't going to be able to give me any useful information; I decided to give the UA Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn one last change (my last outing there was terrible -- no air conditioning and out-of-frame for all the trailers and a door or something like it banging every minute or so during the entire film).

Yes, the UA was running SIGNS but there was the question of the sound. It wasn't in digital and the analog was so misaligned that we could hear no center channel at all -- we could barely understand the dialogue because what little of it was left in the left and right channels, was completely muddled with the left channel containing no top end at all -- I mean none -- it sounded like Gibson's voice was being reproduced by an old Altec with a blown horn voice-coil. But to make it worse, you would hear the high-end sibilence from the right channel. So you would hear the bass component of a word in the left channel while the high-end sound of say the "s" connsonet would sound like it zoomed over to come from the right channel. What an abortion. I will never EVER go back to that crap hole again.

John Durliat, Director of Facilities Engineering, would be another contact at Regal.

Anyway what was interesting about this is that I first called the
AMC Empire in Manhattan.... to find out if there were seats left
for the 11:20 pm screening in the IMAX Theatre.

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Did UA buy out Regal

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I also try to send them the occasional atta-boy comments too, which also get to the theater manager.

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Now I haven't been in the projection booth, but I'm sure that every screen is equipped for digital, at least DTS. And you know they're getting digital prints on all major films. So there's absolutely no excuse for a film not to be playing in digital; it's just sloppiness.

They also don't have much in the way of competition. There's a Loews Cineplex 6-screen (originally a twin built around 1970, split into six) in the Kings Plaza Shopping Center a few miles away, but that's about it. The closest new multiplex is the Regal-UA Court Street 12, but it's way on the other side of Brooklyn.

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Instead of the old slide projector, the ads seemed to be coming from a video projector, since they were animated, but it didn't seem to be a DLP that could be used for "movies", because the animated portion only took up a very small portion of the screen.

Screen brightness could have been a little higher, but at least it was very even and there was no falloff in the corners. Picture was rock steady even during the credits..shutter was synched. And for the first time in that theatre, I could actually hear the surrounds.

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