boon's log 0304.02
Free Screening
Yesterday was the Opening for the GSC Gurney Plaza in Penang. My mates and I were few of the MANY who turned up at 11AM in Gurney Plaza top floor. There must have been about 200 to 300 over people there on a Monday morning lining-up to get free tickets. There was even a TV Crew there capturing the Movie Madness at Penang's newest and latest mall. It kinda reminds me the London Film Festival when all the latest movies were just selling at £1 per movie for one day. We would line up at cinemas such as Empire (one of the best around town) in the cold to get the real-low-priced tickets.

Well, this is even better, it's FREE SCREENING! But the movies are not quite old ones, though. But, what the hey, right? It's Free!

With the opening of this new 12-screen cineplex, it will definitely pose a strong competition to the cinema group down the road, who once monopolized the movie market in Penang. This healthy competition is good in a sense that it will help to "motivate" the cinema groups to continuously improve on their audio visual systems - I mean, you need to see (or hear) it to believe it.

Two of my worst cinema experiences were when I watched LXG and Die Another Day in Penang. For LXG, the sound system was so terrible that I cannot make out what the actors/actresses were saying, and I had to resort to reading the Malay subtitles (and we know the level of accuracy or our local subtitles, don't we? Frodo from the Shire was translated to "Frodo dari Kampung"! - which literally means "Frodo from the village"). The guys in bow-ties said that they cannot fix it as it is the speaker issue.

As for Die Another Day, the picture was totally out of focus! Ironically, just before the movie, there was a notice that said that Pirated VCDs are bad for your eyes! I had to complain to our bow-tie buddies about the picture TWICE before the picture focus was rectified!

We'll see how things work out. From a customer's perspective... it is good to have competition. Say, when is TGV coming to Penang! :)

boon out...