Comments from Giles

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Giles
Giles commented about Boutique movie theater coming to North Bethesda on May 27, 2012 at 3:32 pm

ah, gotcha! the area near Walter Johnson High School and the Hamburger Hamlet. Supposedly there is another sight that is getting a makeover according to Bethesda magazine:

“Though completion of the White Flint corridor may take up to three decades to unfold, the future is now for a few leading developers as they proceed with projects that will significantly change the area in the next few years.

The JBG Companies, developer of the nearly 400-unit North Bethesda Market apartment tower on the west side of Rockville Pike, expects to break ground this summer for North Bethesda Market II directly to the north of the first building.

The nearly 350-unit NoBe II, as it’s called, will become the county’s tallest structure when completed in 2015: At 300 feet and 24 stories, it will slightly surpass the 24-story, 289-foot NoBe I, which includes a Whole Foods Market on the ground floor. Dan Malouff, an Arlington County, Va., transportation planner and local blogger, predicts the architectural design of NoBe II will make it “an undeniable landmark.” Also planned for the site is a 14-story office building to which JBG hopes to attract a movie theater.

Farther up Rockville Pike, Federal Realty plans a 45,000-square-foot movie theater as part of an office building at what is now Mid-Pike Plaza."

Giles
Giles commented about Boutique movie theater coming to North Bethesda on May 23, 2012 at 11:39 am

is this supposed to go across the street from White Flint or the plaza where the the Kid R'Us is, further north up on Rockville Pike? There’s mention that two new cineplexes are planned for North Bethesda/Rockville.

Giles
Giles commented about Cinemark Egyptian 24 and XD on May 14, 2012 at 3:02 pm

light output and the 3D of ‘The Avengers’ on the XD screen was great, strangely though the audio didn’t have a lot of oomph in the bass department.

last Thursday’s matinee of ‘Yellow Submarine’ looked amazing – the multitude of colors really gave the DLP projector a work out and the new 5.1 soundmix was a delight.

Giles
Giles commented about Cinerama Hollywood on May 14, 2012 at 2:56 pm

and … and ?? how did ‘Ben Hur’ look on the Dome screen?

Giles
Giles commented about Cinerama Hollywood on May 11, 2012 at 12:50 pm

as a matter of archival purposes, I think it would behove studios to encode the film as it originally mixed with the LE and RE channels on the DCP harddrive edition. DCI (digital cinema initiative) specs have the extra channels in place already, but no one has implemented them yet… With theaters adding more and more speakers/channels into the fray (Barco 11.1 Auro, Dolby Atmos, 7.1, etc), the non-use of the LE and RE seems like a glaring omission and needs to be rectified.

Giles
Giles commented about Cinerama Hollywood on May 11, 2012 at 9:07 am

so I gather since DCP does not encode the left center and right center channels of sound (typical in the standard pre-1977 70mm configurement), Ben Hur’s DCP soundmix mirrors what’s on the bluray – three front channel + stereo surround

Giles
Giles commented about Astor Theatre on May 10, 2012 at 7:40 pm

wow, what great programming, I see that a week long run of ‘Raiders of Lost Ark’ of the new 2K Digital Cinema re-master is happening the first week of July!

Giles
Giles commented about Cinerama Hollywood on May 10, 2012 at 7:36 pm

oh, so they did what Rialto did with the recent rerelease of ‘Lola Montes’ and place the wider aspect ratio image inside a scope 2.35 framing. Isn’t the movie on a DCP hard drive? Is it 2K or 4K?

Giles
Giles commented about Cinemark Egyptian 24 and XD on May 7, 2012 at 8:03 pm

looks like a number of ‘classics’ are being shown in the coming months:

The Exorcist – 06/6
Citizen Kane – 06/13
Cool Hand Luke – 06/20
The Searchers – 06/27
That’s Entertainment – 07/04
North By Northwest – 07/18
Cabaret – 07/25

Giles
Giles commented about Cinerama Hollywood on May 6, 2012 at 8:29 pm

@ Danny: Does the Solaria Christie Duo™ technology projectors correct the bowing of the image on the edges of the curved screen?

Giles
Giles commented about AMC Lincoln Square 13 on May 6, 2012 at 7:53 pm

sadly ‘Into the Arctic’ is not one of the better IMAX documentary films – the 3D photography is hit and miss as is the movie itself. $9, the price I saw it at, was four dollars too much if you ask me – twenty bucks… highway robbery

Giles
Giles commented about Southgate 4 on May 6, 2012 at 7:17 pm

According to an advert I came across online for ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ the theater was outfitted to feature 70mm presentations.

Giles
Giles commented about SIFF Cinema Downtown on May 4, 2012 at 10:58 am

did anyone see ‘Ghostbusters’?? I really want to know if the 70mm print looked any better than the craptastic bluray edition.

Giles
Giles commented about Ziegfeld Theatre on Apr 29, 2012 at 6:54 pm

I see that the Ziegfeld is showing ‘Tommy’ ‘The Song Remains the Same’ ‘The Last Waltz’ ‘U23D’ ‘Shine a Light’ ‘Stop Making Sense’ – are these 35mm prints or DCP’s?

On Saturday May the 5th – the recent 4K restoration/transfer of ‘Yellow Submarine’ is being shown as well as ‘The Beatles: Last Concert’ on Sunday.

Giles
Giles commented about Regal Potomac Yard 16 on Apr 24, 2012 at 8:33 pm

I don’t when they did the change over but all the screens are digital projection now. They still have the audio placards (DTS, Dolby Digital, SDDS) but since digital projection audio is LPCM it’s odd they retained them. I asked if any screen featured 7.1 but management said no, which is odd, since Dolby EX can easily been converted to playback 7.1

Giles
Giles commented about Lee Highway Multiplex Cinemas on Apr 23, 2012 at 8:31 am

an Angelika theater in Virginia!!! oh now that’s exciting news. Thumbs up!

Giles
Giles commented about SIFF Cinema Downtown on Apr 20, 2012 at 2:18 pm

wouldn’t the 70mm have the superior soundtrack five across sound (+ mono surrounds), does the ‘digital’ version retain this? (I doubt it)

Giles
Giles commented about TCL Chinese Theatre on Apr 19, 2012 at 9:27 pm

word was that the 4K DCP (i.e, digital projection) of ‘Singin’ in the Rain' looked and sound amazing at last weekend’s TCM Fest. They also presented the restored ‘20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’ in digital (drat! I’d kill to see that on the big screen)

Giles
Giles commented about AMC Dine-In Rio Cinemas 18 on Apr 14, 2012 at 9:22 pm

was here today for a screening of ‘Titanic’ (IMAX-Digital 3D) and I have to say the volume level is overpowering and not in a good way. The screen is on the small side, so someone must have thought to ‘up’ the IMAX experience it was necessary to amp the sound – well… it doesn’t help. The auditorium here is too small for the volume to be THIS loud – it’s borderline unacceptable.

this is the complex' largest auditorium?? I remember a larger one downstairs when I saw Spielberg’s “A.I.” (it must have been the single auditorium that was split to become #1 and #2)

Giles
Giles commented about Development transforming Merrifield into more walkable community on Apr 4, 2012 at 7:29 pm

Really!! oh now that’s exciting news.

Giles
Giles commented about AMC Tysons Corner 16 on Apr 3, 2012 at 7:32 pm

I saw ‘Mirror Mirror’ last Friday as well at Tysons, and like the commercials on TV, the trailers were obscenely loud – the feature though was not (thankfully!), if the sound levels are pre-determined, then AMC has successfully made the trailers as obnoxious as they can be.

I miss 8-SDDS, they were the equivalent as the (6-track) five front channel mixes of pre-1977 70mm films – since DCI specs can allow 16 channels of sound and some of those are implemented for Auro3D sound features – there is nothing stopping the resurrection of five front channel sound (fingers crossed).

Giles
Giles commented about AFI Silver Theatre on Apr 3, 2012 at 2:02 pm

the ‘Lawrence’ re-release is to coincide with the bluray release (street date TBA but rumoured later this year).

As for ‘Hello, Dolly!’ – I thought this second presentation I saw looked better, in terms of color. although there is still an abrupt odd cut in the opening store scene between Barnaby and Cornelius.

I agree I thought the sound seemed a bit off, notably the surrounds being rather non-present. I also thought the treble from the front speakers was a tad too bright at times. In terms of the audio, Todd-AO sound and most 6-track sound at the time was five front channels plus mono surround, so yes, the music and dialogue has a wide directional presense.

Giles
Giles commented about AMC Tysons Corner 16 on Apr 3, 2012 at 1:12 pm

I saw ‘Wrath’ (in IMAX) last Friday morning I thought it was an excellent presentation. Some of the trailers conveyed that the film was 2.35, but I was pleasantly surprised that the film filled the entire 1.78 IMAX screen (although for one scene, when the Chimera’s tail jutts towards the viewer’s face the image was framed at 2.35). According to guest services, the theater’s sixteen screens are now ‘all digital’

Giles
Giles commented about Bethesda Blues & Jazz Supper Club on Mar 26, 2012 at 1:58 pm

the marque now states the theater will reopen in the Fall (2012) as a Jazz/Blues music venue – I think they’d also might want to branch out and include other musical genres as well – it actually might work.

Giles
Giles commented about AMC Tysons Corner 16 on Mar 26, 2012 at 1:52 pm

that’s too bad about your experience and it seems to be very prevailent problem – the dual projector and the projectionist(s) don’t know how to calibrate it right when they keep switching from 2D to 3D features. The Barco (single projector) systems over at the Egyptian ‘XD’ and ‘Xtreme’ screens (at Rave Fairfax) are top notch and consistently display flawless digital projection (dark inky blacks notably). AMC should have gone with the Christie Solaria systems that are single projectors – the dual systems have nothing been a problem here on the ETX screen from day one. Proper masking?? you’re never going to get that on any of the speciality large screens – even in IMAX (15/70 and digital) any and all scope films will have black borders above and below the image.