AMC Boston Common 19

This is the definition below from wikipedia on Real D. I notice the screens are newer and more reflective from an up close perspective.

“The Real D 3-D system was invented by Lenny Lipton, an American inventor. It is based on the push-pull electro-optical modulator called the ZScreen.

The technique that Real D uses is similar to the traditional method of 3-D imaging using polarized glasses. The traditional method works by projecting two differently polarized images onto the same screen, which are then filtered by polarized glasses worn by the audience. This type of 3-D imaging requires two projectors. Real-D however uses a single projector that alternately projects the left-eye frame and right-eye frame, and appropriately polarizes these frames using a liquid-crystal screen placed in front of the projector lens. The polarized glasses make sure each eye sees only “its own” picture. The very high framerate, which is 72fps per eye, makes sure the image looks continuous. In Real D Cinema, each frame is projected three times to reduce flicker, as the source video is usually 24fps. The result is a 3-D picture that seems to extend behind and in front of the screen itself."

I apologize. I will refrain from posting this in the future and will contribute without mentioning our business services.

Mr Newman,
I don’t think of it as spam. I go through each theater’s comments and see if I have anything to add, I wanted to let you know this theater cares about the condition of its viewing suface for its patrons.
If I can add any notes or photos about the theater I will in an entry. I am working on posting several new theaters not yet posted on this site in the US, Canada and South America and will try to add any information and photos that may be helpful to anyone on this forum, after all we visit hundreds of theaters during the year.
Please feel free to contact me at any time at mikeCapitol Theatrecinemaservices.com .
Michael

Will you please quit spamming every theatre page with this advertisement?

This seems to be the case with many AMC theaters in the Boston area.

I have not heard good things about their operations from many people, from either a customer standpoint or from former/current staff. AMC apparently has many customer service related policies that staff must memorize, etc., but what good is a silly across-the-board policy like that when you are not going to maintain the buildings or pay for a decent projectionist to ensure the picture quality is good?

If you are charging top dollar for movies downtown like AMC, the place should be clean and staffed, and the picture should be in focus, in frame, and not scratched. If theaters just focused on these basic functions, it would make a lot more patrons happy than rote memorization of customer service catchphrases.

Two weeks ago on a Saturday night, I went to see Letters from Iwo Jima @ The Boston Common Cinema @ 10:50 P.M. If you can belive this, there was no attempt to clean the cinema and there was no usher to be found in cinemas 3-9. I even made an attempt to write a letter to the cinema and to the Atlanta GA address on the web site, but no resonse from either party. I would have made an attempt to find a manager, but is was after one in the morning and all I could find for people working were cleaning crews they did not have AMC shirts on. Any one have any suggestions if I ever have this problem again? The old management would have this matter resolved quickly.

As seems to be the trend on this page, I too have managed the boston common theater. I am now, however the GM at Harvard Square. The facilities got better as the building settled (i.e. fewer and fewer alarms, until they eventually vanished altogether). The other operational issues of the building remain though. And in defense, the film festival problems are primarily due to lack of information sent to theatre management from the film festival organizers.

The Boston Film Festival will once again take place at Loews Boston Common, September 8-15.

But with just a week to go before the festival opens, the web site is frustratingly incomplete, with “Coming Soon” where the list of films should be, and “TBA” scheduled for the festival’s last day. Even the press-release page is empty.

When I walked by around 7:30 pm, they hadn’t taken down any of the Loews signage. I expect that process will take a few months.

I live in the Back Bay in Boston, very near the Boston Common theater. I was very happy when it opened. Before that all we had were the Copley Square cinemas and the Cheri, and both were terrible. I simply didn’t go to the movies back then. For a while the Boston Common was great, but it has seriously slipped lately.

It is tremendously understaffed, and the people who are working there are poorly trained. The movie-going experience there is not good. Several times I have sat in a theater with crying babies – literally screaming through the whole movie. I went out to get an usher but could find no one. Finally I got a manager, but he did nothing. I’ve gotten my money back twice from them for situations like that.

The last straw was this summer, when I went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the day it opened. Being opening night, the crowd started to gather about an hour before hand. There was no one to take tickets or organize the line. Everyone just stood in a crowd in the corridor. After a while a very clueless employee started to put up the post-and-strap dividers, with the apparent goal of making a zig-zag line for us all to stand in. He couldn’t figure it out and ended up making one dead-end line, and also fully enclosed another group of people. It took two other employees a half hour to figure out how to set up the posts and dividers. The whole time the crowd was laughing at their efforts. Needless to say the crowd ended up just being a mob, jockeying for position near the front.

With tickets for that place up to nearly $11 each, and food very expensive, I’m tired of paying $40 or $50 for a mediocre movie experience. I go to the movies very rarely now, which is a shame, because I love movies. There is just no good place to see them in Boston.

I predict that there will be no new theaters built in Boston, or anywhere. With home theater offering better and better experiences, and movie houses offering worse and worse experiences, people have no incentive to go out to the movies. With no customers, no one will want to run a labor-intensive business like a movie theater.

BTW: The Back Lot was completely cleared out the last time I was there. No furniture, and the overhead monitor screens were gone.

Agreed, Ian; the Independent Film Festival of Boston is a super film festival. I’ve managed to catch a few screenings when I’ve been back home and I’ve been very impressed – with the quality and diversity of the films which have been shown, the guests who’ve come to town with their films (Steve Buscemi and Bill Pullman, I know of, to name a couple), the panels, and the overall operation.

The Boston Film Festival could be a great compliment to the IFFB, catching the films ready to make the festival rounds in the fall; to think of the slate of films this year’s festival alone could have brought to town: ‘Shopgirl’, ‘A History of Violence’, ‘Elizabethtown’, ‘Brokeback Mountain’… the list goes on…

The ideal for the Boston Film Festival would be for it to be helmed by a committee consisting of Robin Dawson (who I understand is heading operations for this year’s festival) and the programming directors of the Brattle and Coolidge Corner Theatres and the film program at the MFA. The result would be a group of individuals who have contacts within the world of Hollywood (Dawson) and those who have the same within the art-house and independent film worlds. There’d obviously be a lot of work to do to achieve a modicum of its reputation, but at worst Boston could potentially have a film festival that could potentially at some point be mentioned in the same breath as the NY Film Festival.