What kind of CRACK are they smoking at Buena Vista?? These movies are as good as DOA and we are playing them again MONTHS later??

Possibly Worse, it seems that our booker passed on 'Highlander:Endgame' for *THIS*? At least 'Highlander' would make a little money over the weekend... Sheesh!

Anyone know why BV decided to reissue these titles?? It's a joke IMO.

I originally ran two prints of this and I BETTER GET A DAMNED GOOD PRINT BACK! Think I could avoid playing it the entire week as TES keeps sending me replacement print after replacement print after replacement print until I get a good one?

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I know that those two films have played in many areas of the country on a 2nd run (prior to discount),but the Philadelphia area (all of eastern Pa.)has no 2nd run so to speak. Only first run and discount, even though there aren't many discount theatres left. If you aren't first run you must wait untill the national subrun (which is the discount run). It doesn't matter who the booker is...there is no run between first and national subrun in this territory. I have been arguing this for years. I have tear sheets and internet listings for theatres all over the country showing that they have an inbetween run in many areas, but they always have an excuse why it's different in those areas, and can't be done here. There are probably a dozen bookers serving this territory...yet no one gets a 2nd run date.

And pertaining to percentages...Disneys policy here is to charge % based on what a picture grossed first run. That policy up until recently has been if a picture grossed under 75 million first run we paid 40%,then 35% for all additional weeks; if over 75 million we paid 50%, 40%, and then 35% out. We NEVER got a picture for a first week for less then 40% EVER! This policy has been changed just recently...it has been relaxed a bit. I don't have the new % at hand, but they are better...I'll post them later. I assumed they were a national policy. At least that is what we have been told.
We do have new people at Disney handling our territory now and they have expressed a willingness to conform to other areas. I will give them the benifit of the doubt and see what happens in the future. I can not explain why things have been different here. We (the subrun exhibitors have discussed this for years)are at a loss as to why we have been treated differently. Maybe something happened many years ago that got them mad at eastern Pa. subruns. None of us know what it could have been...but it wasn't us, and it's time for a change. It appears it is coming.

Are there any other areas that have had the same hold back as we have had here?

Well, I got 'Dinosaur' this afternoon and opened the semi-beat-up cans...

Print #3417, "integrity inspected" yesterday by a "temp" named "Enrique"...

A mix of reels, Reel 2,3, and 4 were in one can, reels 1 and 5 in the other, The reel bands were stringless and the tiny piece of tape that held the bands on reels 2 and 3 had come loose, and were wrapped around reel 4, along with part of the leaders of both 2 and 3.

One of the reels came on a green Paramount reel... Which I thought odd for TES to do... Until pulled it out of the can and it promptly broke in two. So now TES is using other distributors' broken reels!!

As for the condition of the print of '60 Seconds' Well... I wont know until noon tomorrow when the $%^&# print arrives. Upon calling TES today it seems that they showed no booking of this feature for this location.... GRRRrrr...

Aaron

Gone in 60 arrived in good condition, all reels heads up, head and tails neatly spliced back on, no scratches or other problems...

Dinosaur looked like someone ran it through sandpaper... multiple green and yellow scratches (and a tone of black ones, for that extra special flavor), several minutes of missing footage scatterd abot the print, and to top it all off, the credits are full of sections of stripped sprocket holes..

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Thanks Technicolor! You guys are doing a GREAT job! So great in fact it seems everyone in the country was calling in tonight to congratulate you on your fine work on this re-release because I couldn't even get through on the 800 phone number to express my sincerest gratitude for this lovely pile of poo you sent me. I ask yet AGAIN, it is really so hard to send the prints back to their ORIGINAL theaters that played them? I sent back two absolutely flawless prints on the original release of this title and this is how you express your gratitude for taking care of those prints, eh?

I will post a couple of pictures of this fine print as soon as I remember to bring the disk home.

The copy that I got of "Gone In 60 Seconds" was actually in pretty decent shape, I didn't notice any extra splices or irritating scratches.
"Dinosaur" was another matter all together! IT had scratched causing a few yellow lines, a fair number of green lines and more black lines than I could keep track of. I found myself halfway wondering if someone had taken that print and unrolled it across a parking lot! I most displeased as I know that both copies that I had originally were in much better shape when I sent them out!

*grumbling* rassin-frassin careless people!

You all know that there is no way that Technicolor could possibly inspect all the prints that they have in their facilities. Getting prints with eaten footage proves that.

Think of this: There are thousands of chump theaters that are getting these nice new prints, then running them through their meat-shredder Century-Simplex-Christie-Holmes-Zeiss-DeVry-Brenkerts that are never cleaned until something goes wrong and they have to work on them. These theaters get away with wrecking prints because Technicolor (and others) do NOT inspect the prints.

Theaters with gorillas in control just make it harder on the rest of us (including collectors) by not taking care of the prints.

I just inpected a print that has been in the can for 12 years. The theater that had it WRECKED all of R5, and 6 and rewound it and returned it even though it would not wind tightly on the reels. Oh yes, thanks 12 years ago, for throwing the leaders in the bottom of the cans and dumping the reels on top of them. You really made me want to drop a few curses.