As if theatre owners didn’t have enough to worry about with studios shrinking release windows at every opportunity, they may soon have to start worrying about moviegoers bypassing the real bread and butter of any exhibitor’s business, or more appropriately the popcorn and butter. A new study conducted by the non-profit Center for Science in the Public Interest and released earlier today reports that the food items found at most movie theatre concession stands are incredibly unhealthy. Lab tests revealed that eating a medium popcorn and soda combo from Regal Cinemas was the equivalent of eating three McDonald’s Quarter Pounders topped with 12 pats of butter. For those with a more of an interest in nutrition, that’s 1610 calories and 60 grams (three days’ worth) of saturated fat. 

The CSPI report also found that the candy sold by most exhibitors is no better. An extra large box of Junior Mints contains 570 calories and 8 grams of fat. Raisinets are 420 calories and 11 grams of fat. M&Ms may be tiny but they pack in 790 calories and more than a half a day’s supply of saturated fat (16 grams). Then there’s the calorie king of all movie theatre confections, Reese’s Pieces which are loaded with 1,160 calories and 35 grams of saturated fat. To hammer the point home the study compares the intake of such candy to eating a 16-once T-bone stake with a buttered baked potato as a side order. It’s a miracle that E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial’s heart was still able to glow after downing all those Reese’s Pieces in Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster back in the early 1980s. The alien rightfully should’ve keeled over from a heart attack according to CSPI.

Read the whole thing…he tastefully covers the whole of the articles and the report.

Of course, no one should connect the dots and try to tie the Army Times report from 2 weeks ago (4 November) that said:

U.S. military-age youth are increasingly unfit to serve — mostly because they’re in such lousy shape.

According to the latest Pentagon figures, a full 35 percent, or more than one-third, of the roughly 31.2 million Americans aged 17 to 24 are unqualified for military service because of physical and medical issues. And, said Curt Gilroy, the Pentagon’s director of accessions, “the major component of this is obesity. We have an obesity crisis in the country. There’s no question about it.”

The Pentagon draws its data from the Centers for Disease Control, which regularly tracks obesity. The steadily rising trend is not good news for military recruiters, despite their recent successes, nor for the overall health of the U.S. population.

Celluloid Junkie: Report: Movie Theatre Popcorn Makes You Fat (Surprise!)

European Cinema in the Digital Era Questionaire, EDCF response attached:

The US currently has the lead in digital cinema. A digital master is already available for 90% of all US new films whereas in France (the EU’s biggest film producer) less than half of new films are available on digital. In addition, the US developed the VPF (Virtual Print Fee) model where third parties collect part of the money saved by film distributors which can then be used to finance digital equipment. In Europe, only 2428 screens have been converted so far for digital projection. Worldwide, some 12.000 screens have been digitally equipped on a total of around 110.000 worldwide. By 2012, it is estimated that nearly 20% of cinemas worldwide will be converted.

Recently, the European Commission issued the document European Commission seeks views on the opportunities and challenges for digital cinema. The paragraph above comes from the text immediately following the invitation for “EU film exhibitors, distributors, national film agencies, and public and private film organisations to share their views.”

One reads a document like this, giving it an extra dose of substance due to the gravitas of the agency. Yet it proofs the rule which asserts that everything one reads, if not written by an expert in the field, and/or not given enough space for nuance, is subject to being very wrong while appearing very right…which is OK, as long as one knows that one has then entered into the propaganda world that some special interest has thrown into the author’s universe.

The US currently has the lead in digital cinema – as a statement is somewhat correct, as long as one qualifies the word ‘lead’ as a dubious honor (as will be shown below.) By quantity and percentage there are perhaps more digital screens  and more digital movies on US soil. The projector though is doubtlessly designed and manufactured in Canada/Japan (Christie) or Japan (Sony or NEC) or Belgium (Barco), since those are the only projectors compliant with the security-centric specifications of the major studios. The servers as well are probably not entirely of US origin; Doremi, with the largest installed base, is as much a French company as a California company. Except for Dolby, which also has a large presence in England, most successful server manufacturers are from outside the US.

The VPF model may have developed in the US, but the first implementation (though not immediately successful) was attempted in Ireland. And frankly, the VPF agreements are a large band-aid on an even larger problem. The companies who have used them thus far are shells of their former selves, with much more debt and diluted stock than dreams of excitement for being in the ‘lead’.

And finally, to the 3rd sentence of the Commission’s paragraph, that 2428 screens have been converted is not a bad thing. The dirty little secret in the mix of the systems that are in the field is that none of them (with the likely exception of the Sony unit which has only been shipping relatively recently) will meet the standards that all equipment must meet after (somewhat nebulas) 2010 deadline. The deadline is a contractual obligation to run to the next level of security mandated by the ISO Standards (as described by the SMPTE standards and as initially described in the previously mentioned studio mandate, the DCI Specifications.) In practical terms, the Texas Instruments engine which powers almost all of the projectors in the field must be upgraded to a Series 2 level. It is unlikely that any Series 1 equipment will be able to be upgraded to those standards. It is not only a security issue as the Series 2 engines allow for other features that the modern facility needs, allowing a better level of subtitles, as well as open and closed captioning for the hearing and visually impaired.

And that is merely the quickly scribbled notes from one paragraph. Nothing earth shattering really. Nothing to say that the early adopters were wrong. Some of them can point to valid statistics that showed that digital screenings out-pulled film-based movies by 5:1. The current flurry of 3D movies were also only shown on digital equipment.

But it would be an easy premise to support that it would have been wrong for every facility to have converted by now, even if it were financially or technically possible. Certainly the science experiments that began appearing in the field in 2002 had all the excitement of a program that would lead one to believe that one was falling behind if they weren’t digital. But since the digital equipment is 2.5-3 times as expensive as the equipment it replaces, that is not necessarily the case. And given that few can point to a computer that works reliably 100% of the time for 100 stressful hours a day, and which is also 5 years old…well, there is a lot to be said for waiting.

So, following the grand question that insiders have asked for every year since George Lucas’ May 2002 digital Star Wars II release, “Is this the year?” and, “How do we get there?”

Respond to the EU Commission’s interest at the link: European Commission seeks views on the opportunities and challenges for digital cinema

Obviously, a couple billion bucks and 4 billion bucks is a little bit different.

That series has 4 or the top 20 positions in the Adjusted Gross, then you have to go to number 84 to get all 6 in. I choose the Tickets Sold chart. You might like the Inflation Adjusted Dollars version. Apologies to the Box Office Mojo site if I took too much to make a point.

Dolby Laboratories, Inc. (NYSE: DLB) today announced that the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas in San Francisco installed Dolby^® 3D Digital Cinema in its 160-seat auditorium four in time for Disney/Pixar’s Up opening on May 29.

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There is a downloadable pdf file of these slides at the HPA Site.

You can also see and hear Mark giving a very similar presentation to the Toronto SMPTE section in December: Arias and Acquisition – a two-part evening with Mark Schubin.

If you are an EDCF member, you can pull a copy of the Alternative Content Guide in pdf format from the members section. This is the link for the EDCF Site. 

As well as being a television engineer and historian, Mark has a number of well regarded writings available on the internet. The Schubin Chronicles were written observations from a perspective of a New Yorker after the towers fell in November of 2001. You can see his IMDB.com listing here. There is a 2005 HDTV Magazine Interview that holds up real well.

A number of decades ago your author was privileged to work in a studio with a trés drôle and class act recording producer named John Boylan. As people are wont to do, he had stolen the front receptionists desk to take a phone call, and there he doodled a ToDo List:

• Go to Studio
• Make Hit Record
• Go Home for Lunch
• Noodle the ol’ lady
• Go back to studio 
• Make another hit record
• Repeat and Fade

 Mark Schbin, equally clever, generous and a class act, shared his ToDo list from one of his weeks during an opera:

• 16 transponders on 13 satellites as well as three transoceanic fiber cables
• multiple motion-compensating HD frame-rate converters
• one-hour HD delays to compensate for the different starts of Summer Time in North America and Europe
• 14 HD cameras and 30 recorders
• five robotic mounts, including two extendable towers and a track, all of which had to be deployed in minutes
• a 600-foot live, backwards Steadicam move (ending at a live burro)
• shooting multicamera live in the control room itself (one intermission was shot live in five different venues)
• live subtitling in multiple languages
• stereo, 5.1, and LT/RT sound, discrete and encoded
• coordinating live commercial U.S. radio, non-commercial U.S. radio, global  radio, and the HD cinemacasts, all of which sometimes share and sometimes use different production elements
• coordinating the parking of production vehicles on three Manhattan blocks with the fire department, the police, and local security
• Wheeee!

And, as Mark always seems to close, TTFN

– UK exhibitor Vue has bold expansion plans for London, announced as part of the tie up with retail property group Westfield and build a total of eight sites by 2011, with two ‘crown jewel’ sites in London. From THR.com, “Vue Entertainment CEO Tim Richards said the site at London’s Westfield shopping center aims to […]

Read the full post at CelluloidJunkie.com

Celluloid Junkie has several more news items in this story – Read More here…

At ShoWest 2009, Dolby Laboratories, Inc. (NYSE: DLB), announced a limited-time “buy one get one free” Dolby^® 3D Glasses offer for exhibitors installing a new Dolby 3D Digital Cinema system. The special promotion will run from April 6 through May 22, 2009.

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