A Tale of 2 Cinemas

Well that’s another Bank Holiday weekend done and dusted, another 3 days of rain and rain and high winds. It was certainly one of those weekends where going out for a walk/picnic/anything else outside was certainly off the agenda. In the end though it was a rather interesting weekend for my film side as I will explain.

Friday evening we had a phone call from a couple who although effectively “Friends of my Parents” are certainly friends of my wife and I as well, we end up over there a couple of times a year and they come over and suffer my cooking as well. Anyway, to cut a long story short, they had a couple of spare tickets to a special screening of Sweeny Tood, the Johnny Depp version, and would we like to come with them. Well neither my wife or I had actually seen the film, however it was one we had wanted to see and would have actually bought it a couple of weekends back if the shop assistant had not suddenly realised that although it was on the shelf it wasn’t released until the following day, Darn that pesky kid!!!

Anyway this all ended up with the four of us at Pinewood Studios on a wet Sunday night to watch a film, Frank had told me that the room we would be viewing the film in is usually used to show dailies from the films being made on the lot, but that the club he is a member of at Pinewood have regular showings of movies, not the films that are necessarily out at the cinema now, but more usually those that haven’t made it to DVD quite yet, having reviewed the listings, films such as Atonement and Juno were being shown in the next few weeks. When we arrived at the building, we were ushered into a bar area where the standard non-alcoholic and alcoholic drinks could be bought to enjoy during the film, however I was disappointed to note that the large Soft Drink and Popcorn were not available. After collecting our drinks we walked down a corridor that made you begin to pickup on what a different experience this was going to be as this corridor was Noise dead, no echos at all, you could hear peoples footsteps and voices but there was a strange sense that they were not quite normal. When we arrived in the cinema, this had to take the record of the smallest no. of seats for a screen that I have seen, however by no margin was this the smallest screen or room. We weren’t talking reclining arm chairs here, but they were close, loads of leg room and width, each chair had it’s own 2 arms, rather than sharing with the person next to you and also a cup holder for you to put your beer in. How bloody civilised!!!! The best thing though was the sound system, to say it blows the socks of any cinema I have been in is an understatement and if I win the big lottery jackpot, ie. Euromillions, rolled over 3-4 times until it’s around £50-60million, then I’m getting one of these in my mansion!!!

Anyway the film was great, I had been put off seeing it before because it’s a “Musical” and having been forced to watch Evita (in the end even my wife got fed up after about 10 mins) where everything was sung (at least in that first 10 mins) I was not too sure. However this was a lot better, but then again whenever Johnny Depp and Tim Burton start working together, the words “Box Office Hit” are never far behind. Without wanting to spoil it too much, they sing and he kills people. Worth renting the DVD in my opinion, but if you get the chance to see it at a special screening in Pinewood do not say no!!! Anyway lets just say that my membership of the same club is high on my list of things to do!!!

So let us jump forward to Sunday and to our local Showcase Cinema, crap seats, squashed in, no leg room, reasonable sound system, huge screen and the incredible “Indy 4″ to watch. Now I am not going to spoil any plots here, but Russians, Crystal skulls and &%$£@s. Oops, looks like the spoiler filter caught me there, this is a different Indy from who we left at the end of “Last Crusade”, he’s suffering from the fact that both his dad and Marcus Broody are now dead, he’s old and he’s done some things between the two films that he’s questioning. Cue lots of Russians, ancient burials and enough chase scenes to make anyone happy, the ending ticked all my boxes and was bizarre enough to make me wonder if maybe this one was a step too far, having said that the ending to “Raiders of the Lost Ark” was probably on the same level. Anyway this one gets a 4 Whip cracks and 5 Fedora Hats rating, ie. turn off you computer, go get in you car and go and see it!!!