{"id":331,"date":"2011-12-30T01:31:10","date_gmt":"2011-12-30T06:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.borg.org\/?p=331"},"modified":"2011-12-30T01:31:10","modified_gmt":"2011-12-30T06:31:10","slug":"i-felt-like-i-kicked-a-dog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/?p=331","title":{"rendered":"I Felt Like I Kicked a Dog"},"content":{"rendered":"

I went to see The Ides of March<\/em>.\u00a0 I am visiting Los Angeles, we went to the Laemmle Playhouse 7 in Pasadena.\u00a0 I listen to KCRW on the internet, I hear references to Laemmle theaters, they sound great. Or, maybe that is an unfortunate way to put it.\u00a0 The sound was a problem.<\/p>\n

There was a 60Hz hum throughout the entire film, and for about half the film there was a twittering, like a bad, theremin-inspired, jazz improvisation on a crappy electronic piccolo.<\/p>\n

My mother-in-law didn’t notice, but her hearing is not up-to-snuff. My wife, however, leaned over and whispered “What’s that noise?”, I muttered a short expletived-phrase.<\/p>\n

When it was over I exited through the lobby so I could complain.\u00a0 I looked for the most senior-looking\/manager-looking person available. I chose the salt-and-peppered guy at the ticket-taking podium.<\/p>\n

I told him the problem and he listened.\u00a0 And he took it.\u00a0 And he responded “Okay.” (I think it was) and there was a pause, and I said something like “That’s not right.”, for emphasis.\u00a0 And he took it. More silence.\u00a0 I stared sincerely for a moment, and I left.<\/p>\n

It was not surprise to him: the customer was complaining, and he didn’t talk back.\u00a0 He has heard it before.<\/p>\n

Then I figured it out: I am in LA, Movie Capital of the World.\u00a0 On a regular basis some jerk in The Business goes to a retail movie house and complains bitterly that it isn’t as good as the screening room back at the studio or posthouse or the jerk’s house.\u00a0 (Or so I figure.)<\/p>\n

And these jerks complain that their eight-dollar ticket doesn’t buy the same quality.\u00a0 And they complain righteously.\u00a0 (Or so I figure.)<\/p>\n

I’m not in The Business (I don’t even have a home theater back in Boston) but complain is what I did.<\/p>\n

And I felt like I had kicked a dog.\u00a0 And he took it.\u00a0 And that I kicked him again.\u00a0 For emphasis.\u00a0 And he took it.<\/p>\n

Postscript: Across the street and a couple blocks down, for roughly twice the price, is an Arclight theater: and they do sound right.\u00a0 A couple days earlier we saw the narrow-screen, black-and-white, foreign-made, Oscar-rumored, silent film The Artist<\/em>, and for a silent (that actually has plenty of sound, just very, very little dialog), Arclight did a better job.<\/p>\n

I suspect the jerks in the business, when they go slumming, go to the Arclight.<\/p>\n

Movie theaters are in a pickle, they need to compete with not just each other but with home.<\/p>\n

-kb, the Kent who, if he is going to be a jerk, feels a bit proud to momentarily feel like a Hollywood insider version of jerk.<\/p>\n

P.S.\u00a0 I complain in Boston-area theaters, too, when projectors are out of focus or flicker and go dark or the sound can’t be heard right.\u00a0 I have discovered that, for some reason, theaters in Montreal are much better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I went to see The Ides of March.\u00a0 I am visiting Los Angeles, we went to the Laemmle Playhouse 7 in Pasadena.\u00a0 I listen to KCRW on the internet, I hear references to Laemmle theaters, they sound great. Or, maybe that is an unfortunate way to put it.\u00a0 The sound was a problem. There was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[21,45,71,142,157,166,172,173,182,195,198,225,287,306],"class_list":["post-331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-arclight-theaters","tag-boston","tag-complaining","tag-ides-of-march","tag-jerk","tag-kcrw","tag-la","tag-laemmle-theaters","tag-los-angeles","tag-montreal","tag-movies","tag-pasadena","tag-sound","tag-theaters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borg.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}