IMAX in Malaysia is dead, Long live GSC MAXX

Dear readers,

I guess it would be right to comment on my recent re-visit of the 'IMAX' theatre at Level 10, Berjaya Shopping Centre. Wow, so I haven't revisited it since my experience with Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen!

To be frank, my friend had already visited the newly refurbished "GSC MAXX" earlier, and he was pleasantly surprised, so I took the opportunity to give it a whirl too.

Yes the signage pointing you in the direction of GSC MAXX are now in trademark yellow GSC colours (sorry no photos). The counter and concession stand remain largely unchanged though. The staff was quite pleasant when I asked whether the movie I was going to catch was any good or not.

Amazingly, I chose the latest Narnia movie to 'test-out' GSC MAXX. Perhaps not the best movie in the world to choose, right? But it was supposedly in 3D, so there you go. The ticket price is RM20. There is only 1 hall, containing the BIG-used-to-be-IMAX screen. The 3D specs look something like this (kudos to another friend on Facebook who detected the similarity) which to me, looked pretty good!

The seats were pretty decent too. When I booked the movie, there weren't many seats taken but as I walked in to the theatre, there were quite a few people (children in tow no doubt) already. The leg room is pretty spacious, I would say. That's because when I had to walk in front of some seated people, they didn't have to curl up like a ball to allow me to pass! So that's a plus point right there.

So, let's get down to the movie.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

First off, let me just say that this is not the most objective review. Secondly, I liked the book (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) and when I watched the first movie in this Narnia series, I didn't have any expectations. Really. I just walked into the cinema and let the movie wash over me. Except it didn't feel like I had a great 'wash' at all. There's something missing about that movie, and skipping over Prince Caspian, I unfortunately found Dawn Treader much the same. It is strange and I can't quite put my finger on it, but there was just something that should have been in the movie, but it just wasn't there. I suppose you could say, it is missing 'the spark'.

Worse, the 3D was not well done. Take note (and if you don't believe me, try it out yourself) that certain portions of movie was not done in 3D. I don't know about other 3D movies out there (as studios just slap 3D on their originally very 2D movies), but if you just remove your 3D specs at some parts of the movie, thereby ruining your virtual reality experience (right..), specifically during the less action oriented scenes, you might find that the double-vision like characteristic of 3D images is not there! Maybe my eyes deceived me, so that is why I encourage you all to try it out yourselves.

Simply said, I didn't feel "wow-ed" at all. There are much better 3D movies out there. I surmised that perhaps the 3D was tacked on at the last minute. Or am I already a jaded 3D movie-goer? You decide. Basically, don't take a friend/family to this movie if you want them to experience 3D movies for the first time. Please.

Overall, GSC have done a great job in sprucing up the ol' IMAX. The movie certainly looked and sounded good as well as the overall ambience and experience of being there (right down to the Oakley-like 3D glasses) and I am thankful for that!

I look forward to watching TRON later this month and hopefully that title will be more deserving of 3D than Dawn Treader was.

Bottom line; YAY for GSC MAXX, nay.. for Dawn Treader.

Thanks for reading!

Transformers 2: Revenge of The Fallen @ Defunct IMAX Theatre, Berjaya Times Square

Hello readers!

I don't really blog a lot but here goes. Last night, 23rd June 2009, 2000hrs GMT+8 Malaysian time, I managed to watch Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen (ROTF) at the former IMAX Theatre in Berjaya Times Square. Yup, for those of you not in the know, Malaysians can no longer claim to have an IMAX theatre. So let me enlighten you about that first.

Around May, I started to feel the Transformers fever, so I decided, what better place to catch ROTF than in an IMAX theatre, rite? And our beloved Malaysia happens to have 1 such theatre in the heart of the Golden Triangle in Kuala Lumpur. As "gempaq" as the IMAX theatre is, it never did have an online booking system (despite it being owned by DiGi? hmm) so we had to call to book the tickets.

When I called them up, they told me that this is a "2D show sir, not 3D", to which I said "Fine, no problem". Definitely, there are no 3D versions of ROTF out there. But she also used the words, IMAX closed already, which got me thinking.."What? No IMAX?" Since my lovely wife and I had yet to confirm the number of people we wanted to watch the movie with, and with my having doubts about there still being an IMAX theatre to go to, we put off buying any tickets on that day.

The Friday that week, I did go to Berjaya Times Sq (BTS) and (wow, 10th floor really is far up if you walked all the way from KLCC to BTS!) as I was arriving at the cinema, the signs weren't good. I didn't see many people hanging around there, there wasn't a single IMAX written anywhere, be it on the walls or on the posters, and sure enough, right above the ticket counter, the words IMAX were also removed. There was a comparatively small "Pawagam" wording instead. What pawagam? I have no idea.

Upon chatting with the ticket-seller, I discovered that the IMAX contract had ended in Sept. 2008 and was not renewed (she didn't know why). Curiousity got the better of me, so I still went ahead and bought 8 tickets for ROTF on the 23rd of June. I realised, I may get disappointed come 23rd, but I just had to know whether the cinema is still worth going to, or whether we should just leave the old 'relic' alone. As a small bonus/compensation rather, depends on how you look at it, I got 8 vouchers for free Coca-Cola from the snack bar!

And came the 23rd did. There was a good crowd, but not as many as during the IMAX era. As we entered the cinema, it was still as awesomely huge as it was before, that has not changed. They started showing some trailers but the picture was somewhat squashed, and the audio quality was not great! It was like watching a very big video presentation but with tiny sound. The audio could be heard from the front and the rear but not necessarily from the sides. In short, no immersion. The bass was good though. I hoped that when the feature presentation was played back, it would be different. Unfortunately, only the video got bigger (so yes, I saw Optimus real huge like) but the audio quality was still the same lame thing. Having said that, though the video was huge, it was perhaps a bit blurry. Perhaps it is the result of projecting the video presentation onto a surface larger than intended? To understand what I mean, try playing back an average quality Youtube clip in full screen. Doesn't look so sharp now, does it? Then multiply that by a 5 storey sized screen and you can imagine what we experienced that night.

To summarize: It is simply NOT worth paying RM11 for an "overstretched" movie with muffled, non-immersive audio, especially when we have 1 GSC theatre just couple of floors downstairs in the same building!


Oops..have to blog about the movie later then... ;) thanks for reading!