This is what I must call an "unbrand" theatre. It is one of the former Cinemark theatres that was spun off from the main chain, but not too far. The word CINEMARK is removed from all materials, but everything else remained the same.

If anyone knows an address for the head office of this mystery chain, I'd appreciate knowing it.

Why was I so upset? The problem started with a LONG line in the lobby for tickets. The theatre was staffed by one ticket seller/ticket tearer, one manager, trying to handle money AND run the booth, and one popcorn seller. This was a Sunday afternoon. The ticket seller moved in semi-slow motion, and also had to handle the complaints of patrons who were waiting for their movie to start...only 20 minutes late.

After waiting in the LONG, SLOW line, we got our tickets and proceded to the theatre. At one time, this was the finest theatre in the area, originally with a well-tuned THX system. Screen size is small (26'...1990 construction), but well lit.

OK...the film starts just a few minutes late. Out of frame, but adjusted. Then, later in the trailers, it pops 2 sprocket holes out of frame. I complain and it keeps running for a few minutes with no intervention. Then, the film stops completely. I wait to see if anyone is taking care of the problem before complaining. After a reasonable time, I go to the slow ticket taker to complain again. This time, I'm told by the popcorn seller to "calm down, it's not really a problem." I replied that I did not consider this acceptable and I would be complaining to the head office. More laughter on the part of the popcorn purveyor.

OH, I forgot to mention the piece of dirt that fluttered around the right edge of the screen during the trailers, and continued for the entire film. Very distracting.

The film finally returned to the screen. Listening closely, I heard only center channel and surround. I don't know for sure, but I would be very surprised if the film did not have left/right sound content. It's always possible...if any of you are running TRAFFIC, is there left/right main sound? The theatre has DTS, and the film was threaded through the DTS reader.

About 10 minutes before the end of the film, the film breaks. We all got to enjoy the lovely spiderweb of melting film. The film stopped, but it was at least 2-3 minutes before the screen went dark...bet that lens was happy!

It took about 10 minutes to fix the film, and everything ELSE seemed to run OK.

I don't think the problem was lack of skill, I think it is lack of staff. 3 people is just not enough for a Sunday afternoon.

On top of all of that, I found TRAFFIC to be pretentious, poorly written, poorly photographed and only fairly acted. (Can you tell I didn't like the picture?) That didn't add to my mood either. I don't think my wife and I were ever so happy to leave a theatre.

As for the above movie review, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Mark Lensenmayer

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Your assumption about the sound in TRAFFIC is correct, or at least from what I experienced. The audio track is HORRIBLE. I had a DTS print and had to raise the fader to 7.5 in order to get *close* to a comfortable listening level. This should not be the case on a print which contains nothing more exciting than a bunch of dreary dialouge anyway. How the critics say this is one of the years best is BEYOND me. What certify's a critic anyway?

Oh, and btw, I found the color variations in the film deplorable as well. I can think of many, many other things I could have done with 2hrs 40 minutes of my time than sit thru this film.

There are two theaters near me, in towns that are known for having money. The theaters are dumps, and have been for 20 years. Yet, eveyone in those towns think the theaters are (maybe not the most modern, but) generally good, quality places. They've been dumps for so long, people there think that's the "norm."

The theaters are close (to where the people who go there live,) moms feel OK about dropping their kids off there, etc.

In a city where there are a few theatres and they're all mediocre in quality, people that never go to other cities to watch movies get used to it and probably assume that all theatres are that way.

The general public is, for the most part, very uneducated concerning film and projection. I doubt that many people under the age of 30 (I'm 32) have ever touched or seen an piece of motion picture film or operated any kind of projector unless they've worked for a theatre. I use this age because I used to see 16mm films in class in school one or two times a week, on the average, and students in the class often operated the projectors, so everyone was familiar with film. After 1982, instead of having a 6-foot screen in the front of the room big enough for everyone to see, we had videotape and 19 inch televisions for an entire class to watch. The public's exposure to film was over. Most of the younger generation that goes to theatres now probably think that some sort of "super videotape" or "super DVD" is used. With these ideas in their heads, how could they even recognize many of the minor problems that occur?

Evans

First, in my ticket window (where you lay your money down) I have installed a plate of glass, under which I have some strips of film cut from old Disney trailers laid out in a decorative fashion. Kids love to look at the clips and try to figure out what movies they're from, while the adults ask questions about the soundtracks, etc. It's cool.

I also have an old "frame" area in the lobby that's too narrow for a one-sheet, so I turned it into a "welcome to the movies" display. In the top corner is a house reel with about 500' of old trailers on it...the film comes off the reel and makes a frame around the display. I get endless questions about the film -- "what movie is that?" etc.

Just part of educating the public that "it ain't tape!"

During my 7th and 8th grade years when I was at Cedartown Junior High School, before and after school, I helped in the library. I did the film projectors and the overdue book slips. First, I took a projector and the films to be shown to each teacher that needed them. When a teacher was ready to show the film for first period, the projector was there, threaded and aimed and ready to go (just turn it on). That was one less chore the teacher had to do that morning. I learned the personalities of all three of the school's projectors and knew the tricks to get each to work properly when they gave trouble. The funny thing was during my 8th grade year, when a teacher would have trouble with a projector, sometimes they'd get me out of class instead of sending someone to the library to get the librarian. I was age 12 and 13 these two years when I did this.

During my high school years, I think I saw a total of 3 films run on projectors and all the rest were from videotape on a 19 inch TV except "Romeo and Juliet" in early 1983 which was on the type of videodisc system that used a stylus (RCA Selectavision?).

After 1982 in Georgia, I'm sure "film awareness" slowly went down considerably, since students entering the system for the 1982-1983 school year would seldom see film or projectors anymore. Someone age 6 in 1982 would be 24 now.

Evans

In elementary school, we had a bunch of "auto shred" B&H 545 projectors (with tube amps). The ones we had actually worked pretty well and I don't remember ever personally damaging a print (most of the teachers probably would have, though...).

The other Bell and Howell we had was called by our librarian a "slot load". You'd just push a lever, run the film through the slot, then turn the lever back up. This type of projector jammed much less often than the autoload types.

Until I got to junior high school, all projectors I saw were of the autoload variety. At that junior high school, the history and science departments had their own autoload projectors, which were slightly different models than the older machine we had in the library. I think that school had 27 classrooms, and had 5 16mm projectors at that time, with 2 or 3 in use nearly all day every day (1980-1982).

Our students have been told "film is dead so we're teaching you digital." This is a group that enjoys theatres because of stadium seating and *advertised* digital sound.

~GLB