Well, that was spontaneous
Jul. 27th, 2003 02:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
slycatMy brother and I have been discussing the idea of seeing the IMAX version of The Matrix Reloaded for a while now. The only problem being is that it is in London which isn't exactly easily accessible. Regardless of that, around half 6, my brother asks if I would like to go and see it. At first, I look for times on Sunday as I'm going to London anyway and it could be something to do before I go off to see ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
otana. However, they only had late showings for Sunday. For today, I see that the 9.45pm is available. I call up and see if we can get any seats better than the ones that the site offer us (which were right as the front and to the side of the screen) and they offered better seats that were further back but again on the side. I hung up as the seats on the sides would most likely be crap. Turns out the entire middle section had been fully booked already.
After my brother sat down and worked out the logistics of our night and did a bit of research on various IMAX sites, he decided that we might as well go for it. So I called up again, found that the tickets we had been offered previously were now taken but seats 1 and 2 on row H were available. After looking as the seating plan, it looked like these would be OK and placed the order. My brother wanted to have something to do in London before the film and all I had to offer was Namco Station as it's within walking distance of the station meaning he wouldn't need to get a tube ticket (and neither would I). That decided, I looked at train times and it looked like one left in 20 minutes time. A swift exit was required but for some reason, my bro faffed about for 5 minutes before we left.
After all my anxieties, we got to the train station with time to spare and then, inevitably, the train was delayed anyway... I always get myself worked up about train times. Incidentally, after booking the cinema tickets, I also looked at return times for the trains. There was a 23.55 which would have us arrive home at 01.18 or we could get the 01.05 from Waterloo and arrive home at approximately 4am. How a train could possibly take 3 hours to travel from London to Southampton I had no idea but I had no intention of finding out. Working out that the film was 2hrs 20mins, plus trailers and adverts, this meant that the film would actually be finishing after midnight anyway. We came to the tough decision that we would have to leave before the film was over as we really didnt want to get home at 4am.
The train got us into Waterloo with 1hr 15 to play with. I walked my brother through the rain to Namco and showed him the sights. After boggling at the large group of people playing impossibly difficult levels of DDR Extreme, I decided I wanted to play something. In the end, I decided to play Dancing Stage Euromix 1 as it was completely deserted and I knew I needed to get at least some exercise (found out this morning that I've actually put on a suprising amount of weight since the last time I checked :-/ ). After the game I started sweating like a pig so we went down to the bar for a drink before deciding to make our way to the IMAX.
Yes, I suppose this is the part of my LJ post you're actually interested in, you're thinking "Stop waffling and let us know what you thought already". OK, I've already given my verdict on the film as a story in a previous LJ post (this was in fact the third time I had seen this film in a cinema), so I suppose I should focus on how IMAX improves on the cinematic experience. Well...
The first and most obvious thing is that it's BIG. Rather overwelming at times. Due to the position we were in the cinema, we often had to switch our view from left to the right of the screen, tennis spectator style, during conversations and such. The action sequences suffered somewhat due to the 24fps frame rate meaning you could see the "jerkiness" of a film this large. That said, it wasn't all bad. In fact, I quite enjoyed it all. Would have preferred a better seat of course but I couldn't do bugger all about that. The picture quality was supurb! Absolutely crisp and high definition with absolutely no sign of grain that I could see. The sound quality was fantastic with the booming bass. The surround effect was lost somewhat by being where we were in the cinema but otherwise, it was very good.
Was a shame we had to leave so early. We left just after the car chase scene which gave us 15mins to get back to Waterloo. I would have lived to have at least heard the Archetect's speech one more time, even though I had got the full gist of it fromt he second time I saw the film. It took 5 mins to get to Waterloo but as I've said before, I get really anxious with trains and always prefer to be there earlier rather than later. I've missed too many trains from leaving it until the last minute. Train was ontime all the way home at least, which was a plesant suprise. Had a nice discussion with my brother about the future technology of cinematics moving onto a purely digital format and then beyond that, moving into something that would not even use a lense so everything you look at would be in focus. I decided that this would have to be absorbed more as a memory or experience, Total Recall style to be practical but then it becomes a game as the director isn't dictating what happens, it becomes too interactive. Then we went on to discuss existentialism to some degree which was all rather weird. I'm not used to having deep philisophical discussions with my brother, on the train home, in the small hours, without being drunk... :P
Now, I've got the prospect of getting to London again tomorrow. This means I will be visiting London every day for 13 days in a row, from last Monday to next Saturday for the LondonFur meet. Argh! At least I have a season ticket!
PS. My domain, www.fursuit.co.uk, has been down for 24hours now. Meaning any email sent to me or anyone else on fursuit.co.uk will have been lost or bounced. I really have no idea when it will be back, I can't imagine why it has taken this long already. I've requested, likemakali to get my server switched to the cPanel 6 server as it would seem to be more reliable than the Ensim one I'm on at the moment.
otana. However, they only had late showings for Sunday. For today, I see that the 9.45pm is available. I call up and see if we can get any seats better than the ones that the site offer us (which were right as the front and to the side of the screen) and they offered better seats that were further back but again on the side. I hung up as the seats on the sides would most likely be crap. Turns out the entire middle section had been fully booked already.After my brother sat down and worked out the logistics of our night and did a bit of research on various IMAX sites, he decided that we might as well go for it. So I called up again, found that the tickets we had been offered previously were now taken but seats 1 and 2 on row H were available. After looking as the seating plan, it looked like these would be OK and placed the order. My brother wanted to have something to do in London before the film and all I had to offer was Namco Station as it's within walking distance of the station meaning he wouldn't need to get a tube ticket (and neither would I). That decided, I looked at train times and it looked like one left in 20 minutes time. A swift exit was required but for some reason, my bro faffed about for 5 minutes before we left.
After all my anxieties, we got to the train station with time to spare and then, inevitably, the train was delayed anyway... I always get myself worked up about train times. Incidentally, after booking the cinema tickets, I also looked at return times for the trains. There was a 23.55 which would have us arrive home at 01.18 or we could get the 01.05 from Waterloo and arrive home at approximately 4am. How a train could possibly take 3 hours to travel from London to Southampton I had no idea but I had no intention of finding out. Working out that the film was 2hrs 20mins, plus trailers and adverts, this meant that the film would actually be finishing after midnight anyway. We came to the tough decision that we would have to leave before the film was over as we really didnt want to get home at 4am.
The train got us into Waterloo with 1hr 15 to play with. I walked my brother through the rain to Namco and showed him the sights. After boggling at the large group of people playing impossibly difficult levels of DDR Extreme, I decided I wanted to play something. In the end, I decided to play Dancing Stage Euromix 1 as it was completely deserted and I knew I needed to get at least some exercise (found out this morning that I've actually put on a suprising amount of weight since the last time I checked :-/ ). After the game I started sweating like a pig so we went down to the bar for a drink before deciding to make our way to the IMAX.
Yes, I suppose this is the part of my LJ post you're actually interested in, you're thinking "Stop waffling and let us know what you thought already". OK, I've already given my verdict on the film as a story in a previous LJ post (this was in fact the third time I had seen this film in a cinema), so I suppose I should focus on how IMAX improves on the cinematic experience. Well...
The first and most obvious thing is that it's BIG. Rather overwelming at times. Due to the position we were in the cinema, we often had to switch our view from left to the right of the screen, tennis spectator style, during conversations and such. The action sequences suffered somewhat due to the 24fps frame rate meaning you could see the "jerkiness" of a film this large. That said, it wasn't all bad. In fact, I quite enjoyed it all. Would have preferred a better seat of course but I couldn't do bugger all about that. The picture quality was supurb! Absolutely crisp and high definition with absolutely no sign of grain that I could see. The sound quality was fantastic with the booming bass. The surround effect was lost somewhat by being where we were in the cinema but otherwise, it was very good.
Was a shame we had to leave so early. We left just after the car chase scene which gave us 15mins to get back to Waterloo. I would have lived to have at least heard the Archetect's speech one more time, even though I had got the full gist of it fromt he second time I saw the film. It took 5 mins to get to Waterloo but as I've said before, I get really anxious with trains and always prefer to be there earlier rather than later. I've missed too many trains from leaving it until the last minute. Train was ontime all the way home at least, which was a plesant suprise. Had a nice discussion with my brother about the future technology of cinematics moving onto a purely digital format and then beyond that, moving into something that would not even use a lense so everything you look at would be in focus. I decided that this would have to be absorbed more as a memory or experience, Total Recall style to be practical but then it becomes a game as the director isn't dictating what happens, it becomes too interactive. Then we went on to discuss existentialism to some degree which was all rather weird. I'm not used to having deep philisophical discussions with my brother, on the train home, in the small hours, without being drunk... :P
Now, I've got the prospect of getting to London again tomorrow. This means I will be visiting London every day for 13 days in a row, from last Monday to next Saturday for the LondonFur meet. Argh! At least I have a season ticket!
PS. My domain, www.fursuit.co.uk, has been down for 24hours now. Meaning any email sent to me or anyone else on fursuit.co.uk will have been lost or bounced. I really have no idea when it will be back, I can't imagine why it has taken this long already. I've requested, like
makali to get my server switched to the cPanel 6 server as it would seem to be more reliable than the Ensim one I'm on at the moment.
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Date: 2003-07-29 05:10 pm (UTC)As for sitedownness, it's mostly down to DNS now. I've been able to connect to my mailbox for over a day now, but only one or two messages have gotten through. Quite annoying.