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When the ad people came to our theater, they implied that the ads would be tasteful and well done (production-quality wise), and there would only be one or two. In fact, they tried to give us the idea that the ads were being made especially for the theaters. And at first they were, ("The Power of One" was one of them) but it didn't take too long for the 'quality' idea to go downhill. Now, I'm running a air freshener ad I see on TV. I keep wanting to hit the 'mute' button and go get a beer.

Some of the commercials are good regardless, we actually got big laughs off of the Visa ad with the George Castanza charachter, and also the green M&M one as well, but that chevy ad mocking bad horror films, all we get is snickers and sneers. Would love to dump them on a case by case basis and tell the ad people "what are you kidding, get outta here".

As for local ads? We have a new theater here in town owned by Larry Miller, who also owns just about every car dealership in town and the Utah Jazz. He used to use the Jazz to sell cars, you know give away free tickets when you buy a car, but now hes sold out from now until Y3K, so hence the movie theater. I went down to check it out, and you have to sit through 10 minutes of Larry Miller dealership ads before the movie. OH MY GOD!!! He gives away years of free movies and food when you buy a car now. What a creep ass. Thats the only reason he built the place, evidenced by the fact they sell day old and two day old popcorn that tastes like shit, literally, and the sound is so badly eq'd that I had to leave a movie half way through I couldnt take it. That and they refuse to turn off the overhead light during the movie, they call it mood lighting apparently, as one overly paid usher explained to me. Well It put me in my mood allright.

Thank god I was able to get to my own little run down theater and enjoy a nicely eq'd movie with the lights OFF!!!

Sorry to rant, but that place just bugs me.

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Some things I think I can understand. The just say no drug campaine in the late 80's, "short" charity drives and the like BUT big corprate give us your money ads just do not belong in the theaters!

I do believe if the viewing public were vocal enough and not just to the poor people at the theatres but the actual companies advertising and the corprate offices of the theatres, that the ads would be but a fading memory.

NATO needs to lobby congress to pass legislation to enusure that theater owners can keep a better portion of that ticket price so they can meet financial obligations without having to show commercials for Denny's and Burger King.

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Hope u all made it thru the Y2K phase with no hic-ups............

It all starts in the lobby with the CineTV monitors. Once a month we get a hideous videotape that plays on a loop. It has its good points: segments on upcoming movies, behind the scenes interviews, trailers, and trivia. But the good is outweighed by the bad -- the annoying people they hired to host the tape, the ads for Febreze, Salon Selectives, that address you can write to Santa Claus at (granted, that one's seasonal), and the dumb questions they ask the "man on the street" (i.e. If you had to pick a cartoon character to play the Y2K bug, who would it be?).

Now we move into the auditorium, where the CineMusic CD plays. We were bought out by Sony last summer, so we only play Sony artists. That's not a problem, except that it's been the same damn Sony artists singing the same damn songs for 3 months in a row. If I have to hear Ricky Martin shaking his bon-bon one more time (what's a bon-bon, anyway?) I may have to puke. Not to mention that Celine Dion's "My heart will go on" (the Titanic song) was added to this month's CD, in some sort of nebulous connection with The Beach (yeah, both movies had DiCaprio in them, but I'm going to need better justification than that!).