A room with a poor VUE.

 

By The Black Balaclava.

Having spent many hours in my youth in a darken room at the rear of the Empire Leicester Square as a cinema projectionist, going to the cinema for entertainment is not something that is top of my list. However with two major film releases last week, I decided I would go along to my local VUE cinema in Eastleigh, to have a look at what technological advances have been made in recent years in film entertainment.

A Cinema Projection Room. (Happy Days)

Now I have always known that cinema’s do not make money from showing films, most film distributors charge cinema chains around 96% of tickets sales for the film rental. The way they make money is by selling very expensive soft drinks and outrageous prices for boxes of popcorn. They are basically over priced sweet shops that happen to show films and to this end managers have very strict targets to meet with the sale of items in the foyer. This is referred to as the PPP or Pence Per Person, and each cinema chain, depending on its location, has a target PPP that managers must meet each month or they are taken to the bin store at the rear of the building and shot. So I never make the mistake of purchasing food there, instead I made a quick trip into Tesco's next door, saving myself a small fortune.

Armed with my plastic bag of goodies I climbed the steps linking the Swan Centre to the cinema, only to be stopped by a security guard who looked like the missing link in the human evolutionary chain, who told me I could not smoke my cigarette. I was somewhat confused. I am in a the open air and not in a place where people sit, e.g. a train Station, a bus station etc. so why not I asked. "Because the area is a no smoking area" he told me. Now being a proud smoker I have made it my business to understand the law when it comes to my human rights on the subject and pointed out that he could not stop me smoking in a public place, to do so would breach article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. “Put you fag out or fuck off” he replied. Faced with such a convincing argument on the topic I relented and extinguished my illegal habit.

I continued on my way and upon arriving at my destination, I walked into the purported 21^st century picture palace. It was at this point I ran into my first real problem. Where was the box office for me to purchase a ticket? I looked around and could not find it. Panic set in as my film was due to start soon and I had failed at the first hurdle to gain entry to see it. In desperation I joined a queue of people waiting to foolishly purchase their snacks and then it was my turn to be served. “Where is the box office” I enquired. “You buy your tickets here” said the young lady, who could barely see me from behind her counter stacked with sweets and sticky treats.

I handed over a £20 note and asked for one adult ticket for the film of my choice. She looked at my cash offering as if it was some sort of aptitude test before her supervisor showed her how to issue me a ticket and handed me back my change.  “I only want to pay for one seat in the auditorium, not a whole bloody row”, I informed the girl. “That’s all I have charged you for sir, it’s in screen six and starts in three minutes.” With the feeling that I had just been mugged, I walked away to lick my wounds and find screen six.

Thankfully I had recently purchased an Apple iPhone with built-in GPS mapping, so I was able to find my way down the maze of corridors and passages arriving at screen six in less time than the fire brigade would if this place went up in smoke, I thought to myself. Pushing open the door to screen six I had finally made it, or had I?

What I discovered was a room no bigger than my bedroom, with a screen at one end with no curtains (tabs) covering it. In my day as a projectionist, it was a massive taboo to ever show the screen without a moving picture on it and to add to the insult, there was no mood music playing to gently let me adjust to my new surroundings.  

For me the cinema should be a magic journey into a world of make-believe. This illusion is created by the timing of the house lights dimming just at the right moment as the mood music fades and the curtains open just as the film certificate illuminates the first glimpse of the huge silver screen.  Well this is not the case in this cinema. Whilst the price of a ticket has gone through the roof, the decor and furnishings has been cut back to a row of seats and a quilt sized screen no bigger than most HD televisions on display at my local Comet store.

A Real Cinema, The Empire Leicester Square.

Then the real shock came. As the lights dimmed an out of focus, scratched moving image was slapped onto the screen with the presentation and dignity of a butcher offering me a shoulder of beef. With a little fiddling of the focus knob by the operator in the projection booth, an image could be seen telling me that I was at the Vue Cinema, which apparently is the best place to see great movies.  The screen darken and all of a sudden my ears were assaulted by a Digital Film Logo that would make the sound of the space shuttle sound like a mouse fart. “What the f**k was that”, I heard one fellow patron excrete. I had to agree as I reached for my hanky to wipe the blood and remaining parts of my ear drums from the side of my head.

Sadly, things did not improve. The feature film was badly damaged with scratches and the projectionist continued to have the sound level at a volume that his deaf grandmother in Winchester could hear. It was all too much for me. I could stand it no more and decided it was time to leave the building before I suffered permanent hearing loss. So my trip to experience the delights of a 21^st century picture palace had come to an end, a trip that I will never make again.

So if you enjoy going to the cinema to escape the humdrum of daily life and want to have a great evenings experience with great value for money then avoid at all cost the Vue Cinema Eastleigh. Instead, can I suggest you head for the Broadway Bingo Hall in Portswood,  purchase a five quid bingo card and sit in that great old building and reminisce about how cinema used to be. It's far cheaper and much better for your long term hearing.

The Broadway. The Good Old Days of Cinema.