Godzilla AKA Gojira returns!

Hi there,

I was fortunate enough to be able to catch Godzilla relatively early on in its Malaysian release. 

I chose to experience Godzilla at (GSC) Golden Screen Cinema's (and Malaysia's) one and only Dolby Atmos theatre which is actually Hall 3 in Golden Screen Cinema 1 Utama. 

I paid for the ticket online and simply printed out the selfprint ticket which would allow me through the turnstile. 

QR code at the ready

Below is how the turnstile scans the QR code and subsequently opens up the gates to your chosen (and paid for) cinema experience.

Make sure the QR code is within that scanning window (obscured by the paper) and you're good to go!

 My chosen seat this time around was seat H14. I was fortunate that I arrived just in time before any commercial/trailer had begun (how early is that?!) and there weren't many people. It being the first show on a Thursday probably had something to do with it. :P

I managed to take a photo of the viewpoint from my seat. Here it is:

Methinks this view is pretty decent. What do you think?

The minutes ticked by. It was only then that I realised that I hadn't been early, the show itself was delayed. Oh dear. A fellow audience member (seated a row above me) chatted with his friend. He said there were delays previously, up to half an hour, but I wasn't sure whether he meant this particular Atmos theatre (Hall 3) or just a delay in general in GSC's cinema services. Why wasn't I sure? Because he spoke in a language that I have yet to understand; Cantonese with some English thrown in. Seeing as the movie was not going to start soon, I took out my phone, and started to take some notes regarding my 2nd Atmos experience, just in case I forgot anything later. 

Moments after that, I heard our fellow from a row above change his topic to smartphones. He talked about phones with pretty good specs, like a 5" screen, 13MP camera, but don't expect the build quality of a smartphone that costs thousands of Ringgit. I assumed he was talking about some new, cheaper smartphone emerging in the Malaysian market; perhaps any one of these: 

• Xiaomi's Mi 3 which would be available for purchase from May 20th 2014 at RM889
• Oneplus' One of which I have no details on its Malaysian availability or pricing, sorry!

 It's nice to know that the phone in my hand could generate a conversation elsewhere! Anyway, their conversation, in turn, led me to try benchmarking the data connection in Hall 3 of GSC. Why not? I noticed that the data connection seemed speedy enough. So i ran a Speedtest and the result is below:

It's OK-ish..nothing to shout about I guess

It's decent..in terms of download performance. The ping and upload needs work though. I recall, at least, that a ping > 500ms is synonymous with an unplayable online gaming experience. Am I right? :D

Back to the movie experience! I timed 1208hrs as the time when the first trailer popped up on screen. So we were 8 minutes late already. Which trailer was it? Why, none other than ...

Yup, guess I've got to book my calendar for this too. After 20 minutes of advertisements and a "The Purge" trailer, the famous THX demonstration played. So, this is a THX cinema? Cool. It was followed by 2 (count 'em!) Dolby Atmos demos. I wondered why there were 2. Perhaps they came up with a new one. I liked the newer one better, that's for sure. It seemed to really leverage the 64 speakers in the Hall.

I remember the movie proper started to 'roll' (perhaps once upon a time it rolled, because movies were a series of pictures in a 'can' displayed at a certain speed) at 1228hrs. 

I liked the movie and its presentation. I would say 2D is definitely the way to watch this movie. I've no idea whether 3D has any momentum left in it nowadays. I want to ask GSC/TGV in Malaysia; how are 3D ticket sales going? Are they still selling well? If it's not selling well, what happens to the 3D theatres? Will they be selling off the 3D specs? Are people even buying 3D television sets?

You see, I watched Captain America: The Winter Soldier in 3D and throughout the movie, I wished I could just watch it in 2D, and that's never a nice feeling to have hang over you whilst watching a movie! As I said in a previous post, I praised Gravity for being an excellent 3D movie. A 3D showcase, if you will. Other than that, I've not been impressed with any 3D movie lately..

Let me share with you one highlight from watching Godzilla. As the character played by Ken Watanabe was introducing Godzilla to the audience, he said on-screen "We call him.." and someone from the audience sportingly and spontaneously cried out "Gojira!" That moment certainly made me laugh! Thanks for livening up the theatre man!

3D HFR Screening of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug! + Dolby Atmos!

Hello all!

I managed to catch a screening of the 3D HFR ATMOS version of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug last night at GSC One Utama. GSC OU (specifically Hall #3) is the only cinema hall in Malaysia that currently offers the Dolby Atmos experience.

What is this Dolby Atmos anyway?  Feel free to click here to learn more about it. A probably easy to spot difference between the current conventional speaker system with this Atmos system is that there are now speakers located above the audience in the theatre! In a nutshell, Dolby Atmos endeavours to give the audience an ever more immersive movie-going experience.

Interested? So now you know what it is, and where you can catch a movie using this particular sound system, but what's the cost? I do not believe that GSC offers the Dolby Atmos experience at a premium over the conventional 2D experience, currently. I paid RM19 to watch the 3D HFR ATMOS version last night, and you would have to pay RM14 (which is essentially minus the RM5 cost of renting the 3D specs) for the 2D ATMOS version. These prices are only from GSC, mind you. If you want to compare prices between GSC and other cinemas, by all means, go ahead, but as I highlighted earlier, the HFR (feel free to read up on my experience of an HFR screening here) and ATMOS experience is currently only available at GSC. Kudos GSC :)

With the logistics out of the way, what was the Dolby Atmos experience like? It was an "ear opening" experience, by all means. Of course just before the feature presentation, Dolby had to show off its Dolby Atmos demo showcase so that the audience is made aware of the impending new experience. This demo will pan the sound not just around the audience (considered so 'yesterday' now) but above them and across them as well. The demo essentially thrusts the audience in the middle of a maple (?) tree in the autumn season, so as you are moving in the tree, you hear the rustling of the leaves as the fall off the tree. I thought it was a good showcase but I was left thinking perhaps they could have done better; what better super surround sound experience would you like to hear? Sound off in the comments, please. Personally, I thought maybe being in a water element might be more realistic. Perhaps standing in the rain in a city with the various cityscape sounds going off around you?

Anyway, on to the feature presentation; The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and its Dolby Atmos experience. I recall very clearly a scene where the camera was looking down on one of the movie's protagonists and this camera was actually offering a viewpoint of an assailant (think Orc). So in this scene, the protagonist (perhaps it was Legolas?) would we looking up ready to fight the Orc which was going to jump right onto him. Since we were the audience, and we were looking at the protagonist, the sound of the Orc's battle cry would rightfully, in conventional cinemas, come from behind the audience, but instead, the film makers are now able to project the sound from the speakers located above the audience, which more accurately places the sound versus a conventional sound system. It makes sense, right?

Other than the above standout scene, I had trouble pinning down any more benefits from the Dolby Atmos system. Could it be that the movie simply did not take full advantange of the hugely improved soundscape potential? Or perhaps I was too engrossed in the story of the movie to actually notice what was going on sound-wise?

Feel free to watch a Dolby Atmos screening of a movie; Hobbit or otherwise and leave your comments on how it sounded to you!

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: Revenge of The Fallen @ GSC Signature, The Gardens

Hello again readers!

Yea, the experience at Cosmo's World Theater (formerly known as the IMAX theatre) in BTS was a let down. I came in there not expecting much, so it was not too bad, but to know that all Malaysia has right now are the regular theatres is a bit of a let down, don't you think?

Anyways, caught my second viewing of ROTF at GSC Signature recently, and it was definitely a better experience, but was it just my imagination, or was the surround more discrete in BTS? Meaning if the sound was supposed to come from the rear left, it sounded like the rear left in my first viewing, but at GSC, it seemed to just blend in...

The audio, video were pretty good otherwise. Now if only we could get a digital screening of ROTF, (much like Monsters vs Aliens or..Angels and Demons) but I doubt it. I looked around for the nearest IMAX available to us deprieved Malaysians, and I came up with Bangkok at the Krungsri IMAX Theatre. Expect to pay ~RM25 for the cheapest ticket and maximum about RM40 though. Yeah, they have ticket classes..strange. Of course, you'd have to get to Bangkok first, so...Bangkok anyone? ;-)

In summary: I'd recommend heading to GSC Signature for your ROTF fix, but if anyone out there knows of a place better than that in sunny ol' Malaysia, please leave your comment. :-)

Thanks for reading!