Tonight I tried and failed to see Frank Miller’s The Spirit at one of the five total daily showings spread across the three remaining theaters still showing the movie on Long Island–failed because the picture quality was so bad that I got up, got a refund, and left.

When the trailers were shown in seemingly the wrong aspect ratio, I thought “uh-oh,” so I ran downstairs and asked the guy at the concession stand to let someone know to fix it. Then the movie started and while the picture didn’t look so badly accordionned inward anymore, it was still ran waaaaay past the top and bottom borders of the screen–credits disappeared right along with the top third of characters’ heads. The picture was also crooked, which I was subsequently informed was due to the angle of the screen, meaning all the movies they charge people to watch in that particular theater are at least that screwed up. To top it all off, what you could see of the picture was murky, and the surround sound wasn’t working to boot.

I know I was a film studies major, but this was in the era of VHS, so I feel like I’m not hugely particular when it comes to things like picture quality. I still don’t have a hi-def TV or a Blu-Ray player, for example. But I also feel like maybe every third time I go to the movies there’s an enjoyment-destroying, super-obvious problem with something. This time it was the picture being all screwed up. When I saw Doomsday it was the sound not being fully switched on. When I saw Let the Right One In it was the theater being north of 80 degrees. And I’m not even getting into the behavior of my fellow moviegoers. It’s to the point where each time I go to the movies, one of my favorite goddamn activities in the goddamn world, I sit down dreading whatever the hell will ruin it this time.

This is the kind of stupid extrapolation from personal anecdotal evidence that makes blogs so, so awful, but I can’t help it: Surely this sort of thing can’t be good for business? I mean, especially in this case, where the movie theater knowingly has a screen set up so that every single thing they show on it will be tilted to one side like you’re in the hideout of Frank Gorshin’s Riddler. That’s some chutzpah, my friends.

Anyway, I’m really angry that I didn’t get to see The Spirit, because I can’t possibly have a lot of time left to catch it in the theater. The end.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 12th, 2009 at 7:53 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.