London Ninja

I finally used my free passes received from the first time I watched a movie in London. I decided to hit up the Odeon on High Street Kennsington. The was something very obviously different with this particular cinema. We received tickets that had a set number on it. In addition, they checked tickets at the entrance of the individual theatres. WTF? I thought the whole movie watching model was that you get checked at the door and then it’s off to the races and you get whatever seat you want based on where you think the optimal seating is. In stadium seating, it’s generally the row of seats right ahead of the path to go across in the middle. So what does all this mean? No double-features, no sitting where you want…wtf.

The first side-effect of the assigned seating is that people don’t need to get there as early as you normally would. As a matter of fact, we tried to get into our cinema 15 minutes early and couldn’t. They open the doors 10 mins before the showing. WTF. Also because I was watching Into The Wild and not Beowulf, our theatre was small. Felt like a living room or something. I don’t even want to talk about the non-THX/Dolby Digital sound system or the screen. I absolutely do not want to talk about the screen that was smaller than the plasma I wish I had.

The movie, by the way, was fantastic in spite of the viewing conditions. Go watch it….although it’s probably not even showing anymore in the US. The brits just have not invested in good movie theatres and it shows. It may have been wise because of the decline of movie-watchers, but it also means I probably won’t be watching anything any time soon.