"Twilight: New Moon" Regal Gateway... Auditorium 13... November 21st, 2009

I inadvertently ended up in a "small" screen at the Gateway this time, as I wasn't the one who booked the tickets (the movie was on like 6 screens here). No matter, I want to review every auditorium in town, so here goes!

After a protracted session of stops & starts (I could see the projectionist was examining the projector quite a bit), the film material started on-time, more or less. Unfortunately Auditorium 13 at the Gateway is a mess, visually. There is a shadow on the left edge of the screen caused by an "EXIT" sign... the sidewall lights shine dimly onto the screen (tragically reducing contrast) and the EXIT sign is right by the screen, causing the shadow - that's my theory anyway. Movies with vampires have plenty of dark scenes, and the shadow is plainly visible and quite distracting. Next - the duvetine at the top of the screen looks like the headliner in a 15-year old Buick - hanging drearily in multiple places along the top of the screen. It's nowhere near a straight line. Until they fix these things I would avoid Auditorium 13 when possible.

Something I am not sure they will ever fix is the legroom - the seat rows are pretty close together. I don't normally think about this but my knees started to get kinda sore during this movie and there really wasn't much in the way of options for different leg positions -the legroom is so cramped.

The best thing about the presentation was the sound, it didn't seem to have any issues.

"2012" Regal Gateway 16 Auditorium 8 AND Alamo Drafthouse Village Auditorium 1... Saturday November 14th 2009

What's this... a review with TWO cinemas? Yes... the Gateway's presentation was SO bad I had to leave and find another exhibitor... in this case Austin's own Alamo Drafthouse, and they OWNED the Gateway in this event. Where do I begin...

My wife and I showed up at the Gateway 16 and took our seat about 2/3rds of the way from the front row. The auditorium was about a quarter-full so there was plenty of choice and we didn't want to sit too close to the front since it was a 2.35:1 movie with a lot of big shots in it. So we were closer to the back than usual.

The video clips were playing when we sat down. Everything seemed fine. This was auditorium 8, one of the Gateway's larger screens. The film materials started more or less on time, with a trailer for Avatar and I immediately sensed something was wrong - unlike the video materials, the sound coming from the film projector was oscillating, jittering, or some other artifact. Also, I couldn't put my finger on it but the picture quality looked terrible. I have watched the trailer for Avatar many times and knew it could look better than this. The CGI tunnel sequences of matter transfer and the Avatar floating in the tank looked like bad digital projection, almost as if they were projecting a WMV! There was colour banding and other visual blurriness. This was a terrible picture. I rolled my eyes and waited for the next trailer, which seemed fine (though it was because of the particular style of music). Any time music with constant notes or high tones was in the soundtrack, the artifact problem was evident. My wife was unable to notice it :(. Anyhow three or four trailers had gone by, without the problem rectifying itself, and it dawned on me that I might be sitting through two hours of a pretty bad movie, projected terribly. My time is worth more than that, not to mention the ticket money! As I feared, 2012 started and the sound was oscillating and jittering. Just 2 or 3 minutes into the movie, I told my wife I was not going to enjoy this... so she agreed very magnanimously that we should leave and find the movie somewhere else. I went back to the box office and got a refund, telling them that the sound was messed up in Auditorium 8. I got the feeling that they weren't surprised, or knew about it already. Please, Gateway, fix this problem! And thank you for refunding ticket money upon request - something not all cinemas do.

Outside, we checked the Chronicle's web site and saw that the Alamo Drafthouse Village was showing the movie shortly - so we headed over there. I was prepared to tolerate the Village's smaller screen and less proficient sound system, since they have those great digital projectors (and I was still hurt by the Gateway's projection quality and just wanted to see the movie anywhere).

I am ultimately so glad I had this experience, because it allowed me to A-B the two cinemas with the same film. The Alamo wins hands-down on both picture and sound quality. It was totally obvious how much better the Alamo's picture was - crisp, bright and more highly-resolved than the Gateway's. The sound was tight and bass extension was deep and firm... it was actually better than the Gateway's. I am going to have to hang up my hang-ups about the Alamo Village from now on. I know I've griped about a few things in the past, but they showed how things should be done, right when I needed it. Regal ought to pay them a visit.

For the record, the Alamo Village still has the little patch of illuminated screen at the bottom edge, same as when I noticed it during Star Trek months ago. However, I did not notice the problems with the top of the screen as I had seen before, nor the blotchy patch at center-left, so perhaps those have been fixed. The small illuminated patch at the bottom rim is a teeny-tiny-small price to pay for such otherwise great picture and sound, and I wholeheartedly recommend Auditorium 1. Add to that tons of legroom and a decent food menu, and what more could you ask for?

"The Damned United"... Regal Arbor At Great Hills Auditorium 4... Sunday November 8th 2009

The usual presentation standards from the Arbor at great Hills - nothing to write home about, and in fact pretty depressing. The movie is not the kind that tests a sound system like a summer blockbuster. The projection was sharp enough but didn't seem that bright, and had soft edges. The biggest mistake was that the picture was projected too high on the screen - starting with a 6-inch band of black (or naked white screen depending on your POV) across the bottom edge of the screen, and by the end of the film this band was about a foot high. Could this have been fixed by a simple turn of the FRAME knob on the projector? Come on Regal, take a look at the film every once in a while.