You hear that, Mr Andersen?

Games, Empire Cinema, Antman

A box of goodies has just arrived from the States, including Illuminati, Who Killed Doctor Lucky, and James Ernest's Totally Renamed Spy Game (originally "Before I Kill You, Mr Bond"). Unfortunately, I was at the dentist this morning, and so can't really justify scooting off and collecting it until this evening. It also underlines the fact that the stuff I ordered from Amazon Canada isn't here yet -- and it was meant to arrive on the 2nd at the latest.

But putting that aside for the moment -- lots of cool presents for me! And since I'll have paid off the credit card ages ago, they're almost the same as free! ;)

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Meant to mention it before, but I've now been to the Empire Cinema in Island Bay. They took a long time to fill our hot-chocolate order, but I got the feeling that they were still finding their feet, cafe-wise. The building was originally built as a cinema, but had been a hardware store for as long as I could remember; they've converted it into three smallish theatres (the one we were in would seat 65-70). The seats are quite comfortable, and set up in pairs -- that is an arm, two seats, another arm, two seats, etc. The soundproofing seemed good (I didn't notice anything leaking over from the other theatres), the screen was a decent size, and none of the viewing angles seemed bad.

The tickets are slightly more expensive than Reading -- $16 for adults, $13 for Film Society. (They didn't seem to have a Weta discount, so it's a good thing I renewed my Society membership.) I guess one way to look at it is -- it's only $2 more, and you won't be paying for parking.

I've been reading a lot recently about the falling ticket numbers, so I'm quite surprised by the number of new movie theaters that are either opening or are soon to open. However, given that a new-release DVD costs $8 to rent (and even buying it outright only costs a couple of movie tickets), it's no surprise that they're not making the money they used to. A friend of mine used to organize a group of people to give him five bucks each, in return for which he provided a venue and ordered movies on DVD from the States well before they came out at the movies here. (He got to keep the movie, so it was a fairly sweet deal for him. :)

Anyway, I wouldn't invest my own money in them, but I wish the Empire Cinema the best of luck.

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In other movie news, they're going to make an Ant-Man movie. That's... um... odd. I mean, maybe it'll be really cool, since people probably don't have many preconceptions about this superhero. But he certainly sounds like the one they threw in there to round out the numbers.

Posted by svend at September 8, 2005 5:39 PM