Digital Holmes

Sherlock Holmes won out in the end on Saturday night, like I knew it would and Avatarwill now have to wait until later this week for another opportunity to arise. My early week priority is to get through the mountain of films I've missed this year but I have graciously been sent in an effort to make my Top Ten list of 2009 as accurate as possible. I saw An Education a few days ago and finally nailed that one down - incredible movie which has Carey Mulligan's name all over the Best Actress Oscar. Today I should be able to squeeze in the Charles Darwin movie Creation, a re-watching of The Taking of Pelham 123 as I give it's upcoming Blu-Ray a spin (just to see if that third act is as big a dropping of the ball as I remember it being theatrically) and I might - just might - be able to fit in Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control depending on where my day takes me. Back to Saturday night and I thoroughly enjoyed my first screening at the newly opened IMAX digital theatre at the Gateshead Metro Centre, a cineplex that replaces the old worn out theatre that was just about falling apart. A cinema in fact that took away my movie-going virginity back in 1993 with a screening of Jurassic Park but was in dire need of an upgrade. The new lush, bright, 12 screen digital IMAX Avatar-blue cinema, situated where Metro Land used to be, is a delight. The seats are high-rising like the newer counterparts in Sunderland and Newcastle, the chairs are extremely comfortable and have generous spacing from one another, the sound quality is immense and everything has that smell of being new and clean. I almost felt a little uncomfortable because it was too clean. It reminded me of a time when my grandfather once brought home a brand new carpet and encouraged me to spill on it straight away, so it was done and out of the way. Now that it was imperfect, we didn't need to worry about making it so anymore. The cinema almost needs someone to badly spill their popcorn and coke, or to take a bit of the seating padding out, just so we no longer need to worry about damaging it's imperfection. This is very likely to become my new cinema of choice and it's by far the most impressive we have in the North East. My only quarms was that the screen maybe felt a little too far away from where we were sitting (row L in Screen 1 for those keeping score) but the sheer epic size of the image makes up for it. A pre-movie Meatball Calzone dish from the stones throwaway Frankie & Benny's restaurant proved a tasty way to fill an empty stomach and to get away from the Christmas dinner left-overs from my kitchen. The Calzone is my favourite meal from the restaurant, the third time I've ordered it in three successive trips and I guess it not only says a lot about my eating habits but maybe also my relationship towards movies. I'm a "know what I like" guy amd maybe a little bit tame when it comes to trying out new things for fear of not liking them. Like Avatar. This just won't do, of course. I need to make this right.