Picture House

DavidSimpson on January 25, 2023 at 12:57 am

I visited the Picture House on Wednesday 11th January 2023 when “Mean Girls” (2004) was being screened. At that time, films were being shown every Wednesday at 9pm, with a different theme each month. For my screening, the theme was “2000’s classics” - see my photograph for the themes, and film listings, for January to April 2023.

I have to say that the experience was not entirely satisfactory. In a really nice touch, the screen is above the bar, which runs across the front of the proscenium arch, so the films are projected as close as is currently possible to the original screen. However, no attempt was made to move pub patrons away from the area immediately in front of the screen so, although the pub was not that busy, the ambient noise did frequently drown out the soundtrack. This didn’t matter too much with a film like “Mean Girls”, as it’s a fairly obvious tale of student bitchiness without that much of a plot. But the next week’s offering was to be the psychological fantasy “Donnie Darko”, which would definitely suffer.

The obvious answer would be to show films where the DVD/Blu-ray has optional subtitles - or even show silent films! But the staff didn’t seem that bothered - they put the film on, 15 minutes late, almost as a bit of an afterthought, and I was the only patron to sit through the entire film. Perhaps things are different when manager Jem Turner, who was profiled proudly tub-thumping the shows in the Winter 2022-23 issue of ‘Wetherspoon News’, is on duty.

Ian on June 15, 2008 at 6:42 am

Interior shot as a pub taken in June 2008 here:–

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Ken Roe on January 10, 2008 at 6:47 am

An exterior photograph of the Picture House pub in April 2006:
http://flickr.com/photos/kromanfromcrs/137369216/
The auditorium as the Picture House pub in April 2006:
http://flickr.com/photos/kromanfromcrs/137613301/