But I'm going to go with it anyway because I love this new term a friend introduced to me yesterday.
"LieMAX" of course refers to a screening auditorium that calls itself IMAX but isn't really.
I'm by no means an expert on what makes an IMAX screen an IMAX screen, though I do know that the aspect ratio is significantly taller than your normal theater. And I also know that the entire space is usually custom built with a much taller seating area and higher ceiling overall, to accommodate the massive size of the screen.
Which means you should not be able to just convert an auditorium that had previously not been an IMAX auditorium into an IMAX auditorium, even if you do change the dimensions of the screen.
At least I'm assuming the screen dimensions were changed for the new "IMAX" screen at Melbourne Central, which has just become the second option for IMAX movies in the Melbourne central business district. I don't know how recently it's happened, but since I've last been there, anyway. (That's not saying much. They don't take my critics card there so I don't usually go there.) Without changing the screen size well then you really aren't doing anything but changing the name.
The first and best option remains the Melbourne Museum, which houses what was once the third largest IMAX screen in the world. I was aware of this designation back when I saw Gravity in 2013, so I'm sure that at least three IMAX screens in Dubai alone have since surpassed it. But a different friend of mine told me yesterday that this is the only screen in the southern hemisphere -- could that really be? -- capable of showing the full height of what Christopher Nolan filmed with The Odyssey.
So why didn't I go to that one, if I wanted to see it yesterday in time to get up a review today?
Well I was naive enough to rock up to their website earlier this week and try to get tickets, only to see all the sessions reading SOLD OUT for Thursday. That's not entirely true. I could have gotten one at 12:01 a.m., but yeah, I'm not going to ruin my next four days with something like that. The movie is 172 minutes long, after all.
When I told the original other friend, an American (the second is Australian), that I was going to see The Odyssey in three hours, I said the good one was sold out so I was going to the one that was probably IMAX in name only.
"Ah ... the LieMAX!" he responded.
Well, it didn't make a goddamn bit of difference.
I was plenty floored by what I saw even on this smaller IMAX screen, and whatever they don't have in size of screen, the Hoyts at Melbourne Central is compensating for in size of sound. That theater shook, rattled and rolled for nearly three hours of the ominous rumbling and up-tempo chaos of Ludwig Goransson's score, and feeling it in my bones was combining with the sense of adrenaline that increases as this movie reaches its fever pitch. This movie builds from a very good film to a great film as it enters its final section, and I don't think I could have loved it any more, even if I'd been seeing it on the best screen for it in the southern hemisphere.
Which I may still do. When I texted my wife how much I loved it, she said she couldn't wait to see it as she had read the original poem more than once. I guess I never had that discussion with her to determine exactly how important it was to her. As usual, my film critic's schedule won out, as I even left work a little early to catch this showing, just so I could write the review last night before I went to bed. (I ended up writing the whole thing on the train ride home and only just tweaking it a bit this morning before posting it. Link here.)
So yeah, when I said I would see it again with her, she suggested bringing my older son as well. Heck I think it would be fine for the younger one too, especially since he loves Tom Holland.
You don't get a second chance to make a first impression, but my first impression was pretty damn great even on a less than ideal screen, so the second one can only be better.
And that's no Lie.
No comments:
Post a Comment