Well, those craptastic television projectors have now mostly been installed, & what a frigging nightmare it has been.  We've had more technical glitches & problems with these terrible tinker-toys over the past three weeks than we've had with the 35mm equipment since I began working here many years ago.  What does that tell you?
     This swill was, as I'm sure most of you must know, forced upon us by the studios.  The amount of money they cost to buy & install!  And the image from these things looks like s h i t.  I mean, absolute S H I T.  (No, Tony, you cant edit that, or I'll leave again.)  I watched a show of Savages -- the latest waste of time from Oliver Stone -- and I couldnt believe how horrible the picture looked: these things are not ready for prime time, yet theyre being installed literally everywhere.

GODDAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!

     And, no sooner did these installation of these junkpiles begin when we received a frantic call from Warners -- those of the "just run it on DVD" crowd -- asking us if we could still run film because Christopher Nolan wants his Dark Knight trilogy shown on 35mm.  Ian & I looked at each other in wonder.
     Yes, we can still run 35mm, but only in three of our five houses now (thanks, in no small part, to my screaming my lungs out).  The installations are not yet complete, & there are still some adjustments & tweaks I have to learn how to make, but, as Ive told many people, I cant make a silk purse out of pig poo, & these things are so limited it makes me retch.
     Thanks to some technical shortcoming in its design, the bigass projector in house 1 still isnt operational (try to imagine how broken up I am about that).  We going to have to jump through several technical hoops to make it work, so film is still running there, as well as (currently) house 3: both Dark Knight houses are projecting film, thanks to Nolan's insistence on quality (the quality of the movie itself is another matter).  Unfortunately, the lab work now is so sub-par that the prints we've received dont look as good as the first two Batcrap movies I ran last night.
     Meanwhile, two small rays of sunshine:
     One.  Thanks to this, we've installed stereo & surrounds in houses 2 & 4 (not yet totally completed), and,
     Two.  It looks like the installation of the 70mm sound equipment is going to begin this month, at last, at last.
     Keep your fingers crossed.   

     His origin & purpose still a complete & total mystery.....

     I realize this is sort of a last minute announcement for you few people still on this almost deserted board, but the Somerville will be running DARKMAN today for Hallowe'en.
     As the connoisseurs of this board surely know, DARKMAN is one of the very best bad movies ever made: a real check-your-brains-at-the-door-and-enjoy-the-ride pile of fun.  And a lot of movie references winks as well.
     Hope some of you show up!

     For some reason, I couldnt get on the board for the last few days, so this comes, again, as a last minute thing:

     We've acquired (somehow) a show print of Jurassic Park, from 1993.  It's in excellent condition.  For those of you who like this movie, and even for those of you who dont, you will never see this movie better than this, ever.
     I worked for hours yesterday to get the DTS up & running (Jurassic was the first DTS film), and succeeded (!), but, unfortunately, something is wrong with the time code on the print, & the unit wont recognize any reel except reel one (though I'm going to go to the theatre in a few minutes & see if can solve that problem).  Chances are slim, but the fact that the DTS is functional means that the Somerville is probably the only theatre in all of New England that can run that virtually extinct format.
     Hope to see some of you there!   

     We'll be running our annual showing of Jaws on 1 & 2 August, and the print we've received is the best Ive ever seen or run or handled.   

     Attendance strongly recommended.