Terminator 2:Judgement Day

What a shitty time of year for movies. Once you've seen all the December Blockbusters and caught up on all the Oscar nominated fare in January, February is just blah (Until Cop Out February 26th!). Dear John finally knocked Avatar from the top spot this weekend, but romantic shmaltz won't get me to the movies. Cineplex Odeon seems to have caught on and is running a "digital film festival" to put some asses back in seats and sell some popcorn. I think Cineplex is testing it's customers to see if they will pay to see older movies in digital projection.

Some people don't enjoy the theatrical experience, preferring to watch stuff at home. I love to see things up on the big screen, a TV just can't compare, probably because of my visual impairment.

The Bloor is a great place to see something you may have loved on VHS back in the day but may have never seen on the silver screen. Toronto has a few great repertory Cinemas, but Cineplex's foray into the Rep market should be seen as serious challenge. The rep cinemas are still using traditional film projectors, and how "good" the picture looks depends on the quality of the "print". Cineplex uses digital projectors and Terminator 2 looked better tonight than it would have 19 years ago (strange but true). Cineplex has the rep cinemas beat in terms of older special effects heavy movies. I saw Die Hard at the Bloor in December and I'm sure it will look better at the Cineplex presentation (But Die Hard is a Christmas movie so who wants to watch it in February?).

It was so fucking cool to see Terminator 2 with a crowd. Of course this movie still rocks. It looked so tight in digital. Edward Furlong delivers a classic performance and Linda Hamilton is fit like nobody's business. Best of all, the groundbreaking special effects still hold up almost 20 years later.

A word on Cameron's dialog, yeah, it's a little hammy, but so what? People love it. Also,
Will James Cameron even notice a residuals cheque for T2 under the pile of all that Avatar money?

The digital film fest concept is a good one. They have a few more movies I want to check out. I have wanted to see Speed again for a while now, and I was going to rent it, but now I can go see it on Tuesday night! Ghostbusters on Thursday should be cool as hell too, and of course no self respecting geek would miss Wrath of Kahn.