AMC Garden State 16

Speaking of Wanda, maybe they are messing up AMC. When the AMCs first went digital, basically every digital auditorium had bright, contrasty, rich projection of uniform quality. Now it’s really become so hit and mess, especially over the last couple years plus. They are really starting to cheap out on bulbs and projectors at times now. Like Rockaway, for instance, now has some great screens some pretty good and then a few stinkers, just totally dull, washed out, dark dismal image, awful quality, like gray blacks, dull whites, low color saturation, some of the worst looking projection I’ve seen like see screen #5 there now, bleh, and back when Blade Runner 2049 came out, #10 was so dark, although with deep blacks so not faded out, it was just ridiculous, OTOH some others have really bright, rich, contrasty projection with deep blacks and bright whites and rich colors, all depends upon the auditorium now days even at a single theater. Also, for whatever reason, for the last two years, other than for ET which looked great, every Fathom even they show on the #16 56' screen has the black levels all faded out and weak contrast, no clue why, the few times they show Fathom on other screens there it looks like normal projection with proper blacks and contrast and saturation.

And like Jersey Gardens AMC some screens look great but was in a small one last year and wow was the projection dark.

I don’t go out to this Garden State one too much but I haven’t seen a screen here use super dim projection yet at least. Although #4 when I peaked in, I did notice, at least like a year or two ago, had the projector mis-aimed and was projecting like a full 5' vertically offset from the screen! And speaking of that while Rockaway fixed the color fringing in #7 and it looks super sharp, bright, deep blacks, great colors, etc. somehow when they fixed it they made it project too large, it’s like masked off so it doesn’t show over the borders much but it’s like you see the movie slightly zoomed in and some stuff that has low subtitles can lose some of the bottom line of them and you can see stuff missing on the far left and right edge too that you’ll see on the other screens.

Until a few years ago, constantly seeing one weird issue or another seemed really rare at all these regional AMCs.)

They’d still do that during the movie. Imagine having to wait 90 minutes or more to check on your phone. :)

I wonder how many younger people (if any) attended one of the 2001 shows and if they knew what was going on when the intermission started?

An intermission makes a movie more of an event. It’s also good for bathroom breaks and concession sales.

I tried to find a way into the projection booth at intermission, but I only saw doors for storage closets. I could have thanked you personally! But I’ll thank you from here. That is so cool the way you’re carrying on your dad’s tradition. Where did he project 2001 50 years ago, and was it in Cinerama?

Bolorkay: bad guest experiences are getting to be par-for-the-course at the GS16, especially since the Wanda take over of AMC. It seems like all they want to do is take care of their “Stubs” members, the rest can go scratch. I’m not going to pay $12.00 a year to be first in line to buy a $10.00 bag of popcorn, so you wind up being made to feel like a peasant both at the boxoffice and the concession line. Usually most of the self-ticketing machines are unresponsive, so just getting into the theatre becomes a chore. I’m avoiding this place at present in favor of the Nat'l Amusements Edgewater.

I went to the 7 PM show on Tuesday night. About 30 people in the audience. Don’t know if Mark was running this show, but as far as projection and sound go, both shows at the AMC Garden State rank in the top tier of my 77 total theatrical viewings. Only way to improve it: a bigger, more enthusiastic audience (I missed the way the NYC audiences laughed at many of HAL’s lines), and curtains.

Mark, your colleague on Sunday did a fine job on the lights as well. Too bad there were no curtains, but I’m just happy the movie played here at all, with absolutely no advertising that I was aware of.

One slightly unfortunate thing is I’m not sure how many people, especially those for whom this is not their very most local theater, actually know this is being shown here this week. I only knew because I was actively looking since I first heard 2001 might get some releases this year and check various potential theaters/am subscribed to this thread.

screen is definitely not a 62' like the old Stanley Warner

I’d guess this one is more like 45'-48', my guess.

It’s smaller looking than the 56' at Rockaway. Larger looking than than the smallest at Rockaway and larger than the smallest and smaller at GS. It’s much smaller than the GS IMAX, noticeably smaller than the GS Dolby and seems smaller than #5 which is perhaps a 56' like the largest Rockaway ones. #15 here is not a mega screen, but not bad at all, and bigger than many of the 70s/80s mall cinemas had.

Bill Huelbig, we two projectionists were brought in to do it right. Everything automation is cut off for this show. We do it manually. moviebuff82 the deal with this round of showings is No trailers, No preshow. Just the entrance music, movie, intermission and exit music. I do lights at mid low and high levels just like it would have been done 50 years ago. All that’s missing is the curtain

One nice thing: the exit music played out to the very end. That’s about 5 or 6 minutes, but it wasn’t cut off. I will probably be going back before the engagement ends.

SW = Star Wars ESB = Empire Strikes Back