"The Soloist" Regal Gateway... Auditorium 3... Saturday May 2nd 2009

Since the last three movies I'd seen were projected digitally, it was interesting to see a movie projected on film again. The Soloist started up and the jitter and weaving were immediately noticeable, and the edges of the picture were incredibly soft, as if the gate was casting a shadow on the edges of the screen. None of these have been problems with the digital projections I've experienced recently. This movie does not really test the extremes of the sound system, even though it's a story based around musical performance. I would say that the auditorium showed itself to have a nice, low noise floor, evident during the many quieter scenes in the movie. The room isn't too reverberative, nor does it "kill" the sound in the way that the terminator-like Highland 10 seems to.

Is optical projection weave and jitter annoying? Well... Part of me recognizes it as the "legacy" of film projection. Part of me is getting used to rock-steady digital projection. If filmed content doesn't have jitter and weave built-in to it at the time of filming, then theoretically the digital projectors aren't adding anything to what has been created by the filmmakers, whereas optical projectors are jiggling the movie all over the place, so that's bad, right? Hard to make an objective call.

Oh yeah, one annoying thing.. when you wash your hands in the Gateway restroom, there is nowhere to dry them except these crazily low heat blowers. The air comes out 29" from the floor - you have to reach down to your crotch basically. (or worse if you're taller) They don't have them set up for children and adults... they're all 29" from the floor. Dumb.

Evening ticket cost = $9.00