AMC Boston Common 19
175 Tremont Street,
Boston,
MA
02111
175 Tremont Street,
Boston,
MA
02111
11 people
favorited this theater
Showing 51 - 75 of 118 comments
I walk by the Boston Common Cinema almost every weekday and it has a sign hanging in its window about IMAX coming there soon. I started wondering how AMC was going to squeeze a five-story-tall screen into one of the theaters there, so I did some research on the Web.
I found some interviews with IMAX executives. It seems IMAX has been downsizing their theaters to make them more affordable to build (IMAX MPX). It’s knocked the build price down to about $1.5 million by shrinking screens and making theaters smaller with seats closer to the screen to provide supposedly the “same” IMAX experience. The head guy said the company does extensive consumer testing and consumers couldn’t tell the difference.
The next evolution for the company is Digital IMAX, which it’s now rolling out. The company signed a deal last year with AMC and Regal for 100 screens and 35 screens respectively.
Basically, Digital IMAX is two Christie DLP digital projectors with 4k resolutions where the images overlapped for greater brightness which can be installed in any theater with a slightly larger screen. The company says the cost of an IMAX print is $22,000 ($44,000 for 3D) and by using digital projection, it can reduce the cost to an $800 hard drive (and make more money). The projectors are suppose to have special processing in them that would make them look just as good as an IMAX film presentation, the company claims, and that consumer testing once again showed people would feel they had the same IMAX experience.
Now almost all the other digital projectors currently installed in theaters are 2k, but Sony, Christie, Barco and NEC already have 4k projectors which should be out next year. If you figure that the number of digital cinemas have been roughly doubling every year, and some chains are already building all digital megaplexes, IMAX’s advantage will be short-lived.
Kodak says the resolution of 35mm film is 4k, so Digital IMAX will basically have the same resolution as regular 35mm movie film, not the 16x resolution of IMAX 15-perf film.
MIT Media Labs some years ago did studies that indicated that most people couldn’t tell the difference between standard definition and high-definition, and that’s what the IMAX folks seem to be banking on.
I think the company is ruining everything it originally stood for for short-term profits. The company will still insist theaters charge $3 extra for tickets, that the studios pay it 12.5% of the IMAX grosses, and that theater owners kick back 3% of their ticket price to IMAX. In return, all the consumer will get is two modified digital projectors instead of one as in the other digital theaters. They may think that they will be getting the “IMAX experience,” but they really won’t be.
Of course, the IMAX theater at Boston Common will be opening soon, so I hope people will give their opinions here.
You can read an interview with IMAX’s CEO at more at: View link and a good overview of the company and of the new digital system at View link .
Now that the Circle Cinemas have closed, this is one of only two remaining movie theatres within the city limits of Boston. (The other is Regal Fenway 13.)
pmont: also worth noting are three multiplex cinemas that opened after 1977, but closed before 2008, and are therefore not on either of your maps: Copley Place, Nickelodeon, and Assembly Square. (I think that’s the entire list.)
pmont – I have a great framed photo of the original Harvard Square entrance circa 1941 (I believe it is one of the MGM Theatre Report photos that Ron Salters often references. Either way, it was known as the University Theatre then) It was a gift, so I don’t know where it came from, but the CHS does have old photos you can xerox or have printed; they are in the little municipal building to the left of city hall.
This is a reply to rockne. When AMC took over the Loews theaters only some of the theaters had their SDDS units replaced with Dolby Digital. At most theaters now owned by AMC theatres, many of the SDDS units are still in place. The cost of replacing all of the SDDS equipment is way too high.
Usually an average old AMC theater probably has a few Dolby Digital units for backup. These are used if a particular movie is not encoded with SDDS or if the movies is in DLP digital projection. The only sound system compatible with digital projection is Dolby Digital. AMC installs Dolby Digital EX on all screens at their new theaters.
Some AMC theaters show movies in Closed Captioning. When a movie is listed as Closed Captioned, they have to use DTS because the captions are stored on the DTS discs.
From the Fandango listings for this theater, the two movies in DLP are definitely Dolby Digital and the Closed Captioned movie should be in DTS. The rest of the movies could be in SDDS. You can check imdb.com to see if the movie that you want to see has SDDS. Some movies are not encoded in SDDS such as independent films or art films.
What matters most with regard to sound quality is what type of speakers are used. JBL and QSC make high quality speakers with great sound. However, Klipsch on the other hand makes speakers that lack power and dynamic range. The official speaker provider of Regal Cinemas is Klipsch. It is very difficult to tell the difference between the different digital sound formats. Since most theaters use different brands of speakers you can’t really compare. What matters most is that a movie theater sounds good to you.
Thanks for the catches Ron. Those out-lying theatres (I’m a child of the northern suburbs) in Hyde Park, Dorchester, W. Roxbury haven’t really been filled in yet. There are ads in the Globe & the Phoenix for them, so they’re coming. Great help on the locations of the Pussycat and the South Station — I’m thinking of adding their newspaper ads as images (South Station Theatre has a particularly nice one), if only the microfilm would print something a bit nicer. Would be lovely if the Globe digitized its pages a la the NY Times (I’ve used ads from that in presentations before).
Ian — I’ve been meaning to move the Harvard Sq. around the corner — wish I could find an image of its entrance (have been meaning to check with the CHS).
Also worth checking – were any of the following still open in May 1977?
Fresh Pond Cinema (General Cinema, Cambridge)
Fresh Pond Drive-In (Cambridge)
Neponset Drive-In (Dorchester)
Good stuff! I look forward to the essay.
The Garden Theatre on Arlington Street definitely operated into the mid-late 1970s, but I’m not sure exactly when it closed.
The Park Cinema, in Fields Corner, was NOT also known as the Hyde Park Theatre.
I think the Puritan Mall Cinema in Dorchester was also still operating in 1977.
The Fairmount in Hyde Park may have been operating as the New Pixie or Nu-Pixie.
The theatre you label “South St. Theatre” was actually South Station Theatre. I recall it being south of the Central Artery, not north of it as shown on your map.
I think the theatre you label Brookline Village was called either Cinema Brookline or the Plaza in 1977, but I’m not positive.
One theatre that’s missing from your 1977 map: the Village Cinema in West Roxbury.
West End Pussycat was on the south side of Causeway, not the north side as shown on the Google map.
I should also add – that is a very cool google map! Nice work!
My only kvetch with the 1977 one – the Harvard Square Theatre did not have the address of 10 Church Street then – it would have been 1432 Mass Ave or thereabouts.
This, for now, seems like as good a place as any for these…
As part of an essay I’m writing, I’ve made googlemaps showing all of the theatres operating in Boston-Camb-Somerville in May 1977 and May 2008, including screen counts, what was playing on those screens, who distributed those films, what became of the cinemas, etc. CT has been very helpful in creating these, so it is only fair that I provide links. Here they are:1977 & 2008
These maps are still works in progress, especially around the edges of Boston, but I figured I might as well post them now, for anyone who is interested, might want to let me know if anything’s missing, or has suggestions of layout/methodology… if you’ve any feedback, please email me (addy linked to my profile). I’d like to keep the comments feature unused until I’ve got the things completed.
Well, if the IMAX screen at AMC-BC gets as much attention as the rest of that theater does, it should be thoroughly unbearable and unwatchable within, say, six months or so.
I’ll stick with the Jordan’s IMAX theaters, they know how to take care of those…
To answer rockne’s question of June 22, 2008, the reason so many SDDS units were removed is because Sony stopped supporting them. I agree the sound, to me, was even more dynamic than Dolby Digital, but it also was the most expensive of the 3 digital formats. DTS, in the industry, is known as the poor mans digital. I hope this answers your question.
Now, this is fascinating. Today’s Boston Metro says that the Boston Common will be adding an IMAX screen, which would make it the first IMAX screen in Boston dedicated solely to Hollywood film exhibition. The IMAX house is expected to open in September of this year.
Here is the article:
View link
Does anyone know if this theater still shows movies in SDDS sound format? I know AMC ripped out a lot of the SDDS after the merger in favor of the DTS format.
SDDS has much better dynamic range and separation than the compact disc system of DTS.
IF anyone knows, can you let me know which screens in this theater have it?
I remember Black Hawk Down in theater 2 when it was Sony Loews Theaters and the sound was incredible.
Any info would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Well…Thank you Ian M. Judge. FINALLY there is someone in this world, other than me, who gets this whole 35mm vs. digital thing, as well as having a REAL projectionist vs a popcorn popper running the films. Having been (and still am) an IATSE projectionist for 33 years, I can tell you that everything said above is 100% correct. These big chains care nothing about presentation, and everything about how much candy they can sell. I always give my all, and yet 4 years ago, while working for a chain here in the NY/NJ area (I won’t name them) and getting consistant mystery shopper screen scores of between 96 and 100%, my union was let go to save a buck. Now, they pay 2 people a combined salary more than what I made, and their films are constantly scratched, or even worse. Add to that starting an “R” rated movie to a house full of 6 year olds, and well you get the idea. I for one hope film stays around for a very long time.
Thanks so much for explaining this. Yes, the projection at MIT, which is usually very good, looks absolutely great with deep dark reds and very black blacks. I recently saw Taxi Driver in 35mm & of course it was a damaged copy but the colors were absolutely glorious. I never notice the colors while watching the films at Loews—the picture is always clear but as you say doesn’t pop. Having seen No Country for Old Men, Gone Baby Gone, and Darjeeling Limited at both Loewes & MIT, the difference was so striking. Interestingly enough, my plasma tv screens a similar image with very strong blacks and deep colors. Does anyone know how many theaters are projecting digital images already?
Automation would have nothing to do with how the image looks.
More likely than not, you have probably seen some digital presentation at the Loews. There is no such thing as ‘partially digitalized’ in terms of projection; the presentation is either in film or in digital format. Digital tends to of course be ‘cleaner’ looking because there are no scratches or lines in a digital presentation, but 35mm film tends to visually ‘pop’ off the screen more than digital and is a different experience for our eyes and brains than digital. In film, the colors are better defined (black colors look black, not gray, for example) and in digital there is less depth to the color. Of course so very few labs know how to print film properly anymore, especially when the crank out 3000 prints in a row, so print quality today is poorer than it used to be in film (a conspiracy from the studios perhaps to force theaters into digitalization? I wouldn’t be surprised!). A 35mm IB Technicolor print from 40 years ago will always look better than digital if it is kept in good shape and projected properly.
Thanks to AMC/Loews well-known lack of attention to projection quality, you are more likely to see a good 35mm presentation at a college than downtown, so what you are seeing at Loews is probably digital.
Another issue is that colleges are getting ‘second-run’ or hand-me-down prints, meaning that by the time they receive the movie to play, whatever theater it first played at has already damaged the print to begin with. So while Loews gets a brand new print, which they are then free to ruin, the colleges (and second-run theaters) get the damaged print delivered to them when the Loews is done.
It is my personal opinion that 35mm remains superior to a digital image if the 35mm film is projected PROPERLY, i.e. with good equipment, a trained and experienced projectionist, and equipment tweaked to get the best presentation possible out of a particular set-up (such as a properly focused bulb, calibrated lenses). Large theater chains tend to not care about these particulars, especially when it comes to projection staff – they would rather have the popcorn staff hit a button than hire a professional in the booth – so they have created a culture in the industry where bad presentation is such the norm that people are willing to sacrifice a good format like 35mm for a lesser one like digital because ‘the image is clearer with no lines or scratches’. They don’t realize that a good projectionist and equipment can prevent that from occurring. The chains are also under pressure from the studios to switch to digital since it saves the film companies billions in print costs.
It’s not that one is better than the other (I do prefer the MIT projection though) but that it’s so different. Watching the MIT films, I’m more aware that I’m watching 35mm film projecting. With Loews, I don’t even think about it. Maybe the projection system at Loews is cleaner or perhaps automated or even partially digitalized? But whatever it is, it’s like two different films. Sorry that this is so unclear & vague but it’s difficult to describe.
Well it that’s not it…
I really am unsure what you mean by “flatter, clearer, cleaner” at AMC Loews vs. “evocative & poetic” at MIT? It sounds like you prefer MIT projection, but “clearer” and “cleaner” are normally adjectives that mean good things as do “evocative & poetic”
Yes, MIT, Harvard, & MFA show 35 mm, not DVDs.
MIT has shown 35mm film for many years. Harvard Film Archive also shows exclusively film, to my knowledge.
I’m guessing the colleges & museum are showing DVDs, and previously showed 16 mm film. Real movie theaters show 35 mm or digital with much higher resolution than DVDs. That’s what you get when you pay commercial fare, along with the opportunity to buy popcorn, soda, and other snacks in huge amounts at high prices.
I would like to ask a question about projection. I watch films at Loews Boston Commons as well as at MIT (LSC series), Harvard, and the MFA. The films screened at Loews appear so different, much flatter, clearer, cleaner. I watched No Country for Old Men and Gone Baby Gone at Loews & MIT & it was like watching 2 different films. I don’t think it was the bigger screen, the different sound systems but the actual projection itself. The image at MIT is more evocative & poetic. How does Loews BC project its films? Is it automated? I know it’s equipped to do digital projection but this is only for special occasions—right? Can someone explain these differences to me & tell me about projection? Thanks!!
I would like to see AMC clean the rugs or get new rugs upstairs. I was at Showcase Randolph Saturday night. That is kept up to date vs what AMC is doing to this location. Showcase just put new seats in the auditorium I was at. Never would see AMC do that. I went and saw Berwolf in real 3-d. You had to pick up the real 3-d glasses at the snack bar. When I purchased my ticket, I was not told this. I had to ask another patron where he picked up his glasses. I always say it is the little things that count.