After about one year of life here in Nice, and after visiting almost all "downtown" cinemas here is the opportunity to go out (about 15Km) to Langostière for "INCEPTION".
All downtown theatres look more or less the same, the best way to describe them is "Cinema Mignon, Milano". That is, little space, medium quality.
But here we have a real Multiplex, in fact one with the "VILLAGE" logo still very visible on each seat.
Was "Warner Village" present in France, as in Italy, with its "Moby-Ferry" Style ?
Not at all: Last year Antonio told me that "Warner Village" did not mean "A village by Warner" but rather a JV....so here it was only "Village".
Pathe took it over sometime last year, so now it is called "Pathe Langostiere", and looks like this:
I shall say, usual "multiplex" look, but with very warm and pleasant lighting (reminds me of Arcadia Bellinzago).
I could not take a picture of the actual screen (nel senso americano di "sala"), but rather of the large screen (nel senso italiano di "schermo", voila:
As in the downtown Pathe cinemas, the trailers and the pub are shown in Digital 2K version...so, when the "Feature presentation" begins, one is confronted with the inferior, less defined, darker image of 35mm film.
I hope this is a temporary move, I cannot really understand why Pathe can edit and show all the trailers in perfect Digital Cinema format but is limited to show film in 35mm presentations.
One very strange problem: audio started about three minutes after each segment. It was not "out of sync", just starting late.
Which means, we've got 3 minutes of pub with music, and the first three minutes of the actual feature film with complete silence. Some error in programming, I think.
Audio quality was very good, image was stable (in this respect, a better print that italian copies we saw in 2008-2009), but the image was...was....flou.
Given the fact that this movie has been shot with a mixture of 35m anamorphic, 70mm Superpanavision, and Digital Cinema 4K (4K!), this gives me the impression that the copy was not so good after all....or that the projector lenses were not clean.
Admission fee is somewhat expensive at 10 Euros, but then one gets a 4.5 euro discount for the next movie at pathe.....all in all, a good cinema experience.
Oh, the movie itself: it was in VF (c'est a dire, French!), and the plot was VERY complex, so I understood about 20% of it.
But I knew we were assisting at something about to became as cult as the first Matrix, and worth seeing again in English first, and Italian next.