4.5
This time we was able to take our seat before the start of the commercials. The house was really hot and full of customers. The temperature rose during the following minutes and was comfortable.
I went to the toilet before entering the room. It smelt very bad.
The slide machine was showing up some slides on the screen, with a very low volume background music.
Then the music fade out and the 35mm projection started. The start of the projection was perfect; I mean no cut parts, no scratched at the beginning: very clean, good job.
My first surprise was that all commercials in UK have the PG logo at the left bottom of the frame. Nice. I was thinking about our 8 Censorship group (?) in Italy doing their hard job.
The movie is PG12, so there was one commercial showing the importance of using the condom
- I do not remember if it was U rated or PG12 rated.The trailers started. Before the beginning of them VUE shows an advice telling to the audience that the following trailers were suitable for the rating of the movie.
The trailers were clean, the volume was high, but not too high. I’m used to showing trailers at a lower volume. The sound was the same – same screen of Yes Man: no surrounds, no subwoofer or a very fainted one, not very “low”. But dialogues were very good.
Then the final two VUE commercials (one about VUE tickets and website, the last one with Dennis Hopper about the need to shut down the mobile phone by Orange – an UK company).
Then the movie started. Flat movie, with masking of course. The lamp did not show the small flickering I saw on Yes Man because Yes Man was a scope feature. Brightness was right.
From the MGM logo I could see that the framing was ok, perhaps just slightly too low, one foot.
The movie started. Unfortunately, we was able to ear just stage channels with no surrounds at all and just some “dry” low frequencies sometimes.
The volume was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too LOW. You know, US actors are used to whispering and really, was really hard to understand them in some very quite scene.
When the volume is too low you can hear everything foreign sound: the popcorn, the air coming through, and a very nice BUZZ coming from the right or the right surround channel. Very nice
During the initial sequence of war the sound was really sharp and cleat but… flat. No surrounds, no sub, no nothing. Just a very big TV in front of us.
I must admit that it was very hard to understand, both for the low volume but primarily for the actors: I was not able to understand Tom Cruise almost at all!! Other actors were much easier to understand.
The picture was just “good”, exactly like the other two movies I saw at the VUE. Unfortunately, some part of the movie was rock-steady, some other parts were really jumping in a very annoying way. I think that the more jumpy moments were at the beginning of few reels. And no, I did not see an ENTIRE reel jumping, just portion of them. No lab splices. Same jump at every reel change.
The lights were turn on too quickly. There are some explanation at the end of the movie. I remember 4 or 5 different screens of them. Unfortunately the lights were full-on during the first screen. The audience was forced to read all the notices with the lights on, that was REALLY annoying.
During the credits I went upstairs and looked at the CNR and projector. There was the green light on the DTS reader but the CP500 was playing a format on the bottom-left, I could not read it. That is the default position of SRD, but I cannot be sure.
The volume of the CP was set at an awful FOUR point FIVE. SHAME ON YOU VUE!!!!
Let’s say that the same 4.5 volume was kept for the entire projection, I’d say that the screens are equalized with the “standard” 85dB of some devices, that in my opinion should match 88dB on some others. So let’s say that their 4.5 is my 5.5.
Try to remember what Mr Burtt was asking for Wall-E…
Run it at SEVEN…. Not 5.5…
Bad Bad Bad. Next time I’ll come out asking to raise the volume.
The lights during the movie was more annoying than ever perhaps because of my seat directly under one of them.
Global presentation: 3 – Just stay home and watch the TV.
Projectionist job – besides the volume knob – 8
Sound: Front channels: 7.5 – Global: 4
Print: 5
Artistically speaking, the movie was good, but I really didn't like Tom Cruise, he has the same face all the time. The other actors were really much better IMHO.
Next: Slumdog Millionaire.