Ok, I can’t believe it, but I’m actually following through. I’m here in Georgetown at AMC’s Oscar Screening event. I seriously doubt I’ll stay for the entire day, but I’m at least going to catch Milk and The Reader this morning. I’ve seen all the other Best Picture noms. I’ll post an update after Milk.
Update
I’m back from the AMC Event, I bailed after The Reader – which is one of the most boring and pretentious films I’ve seen in years. A lot of folks in the audience were saying they couldn’t believe that movie is up for Best Picture. Based on conversations I listened in on, no one liked it. I think this movie is proof that the award system is broken, if they felt the need to nominate their token Holocaust film, then they should have selected The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Milk on the other hand is a fantastic film, I actually cried at the end. I normally hate James Franco, but he’s really good here, should have gotten a supporting actor nomination, and Penn is great as always – even though I can never get past Spicole. This year’s Oscar race is just, awful. The only two films that deserve to be there are Slumdog and Milk. Frost/Nixon and The Reader are terrible, and Buttons is just too damn long, emotionless and pointless. But I did like Buttons well enough to put it on my top 10 list this year, I just don’t think it’s a film that has any rewatchable value to it. As for the event itself, it was surprisingly nice. Had a sold out audience, the free popcorn was a good little bonus – even though I’m not really a fan of Popcorn, so I bought the awesome chicken tenders. I took some photos and will post those in a few minutes. I think they made a programming mistake in, that Slumdog should have come after The Reader instead of Buttons, but then you’d have Buttons and Frost back to back which wouldn’t have been better.
But everything came crashing down leaving the theater. When you go into the parking garage, the sign clearly says $7.00 in big bold letters. But in the fine print, it says only up to 4 hrs with theater validation. Anything after that it’s $10 a FREAKING HOUR! So I had to pay $20 to park. Which is bad enough, but I have the feeling a lot of people in the theater are like me and think it’s $7 and are going to come out of there tonight and get hit with $80 and $90 parking fees. This really ruined an otherwise great event. As for me, I will NEVER attend another event at AMC Georgetown as long as this parking policy is in place. There used to be a lot across the street that was $5 all day and theater parking WAS $7 all day. Without competition they are price gouging people.
Photos
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Update #2
Just spoke with the AMC reps and they assured me that the maximum for the Garage is $20, so people won’t get stuck
paying $80 and $90 parking. That is good to know, because the guy I was talking with kept saying it was $10 an hour and didn’t mention a max rate. So I may give AMC Georgetown another try, because I do think it’s a great theater, they just need to do something about the parking situation. It’s weird being back in DC, when I was in LA, all screenings were totally free with parking covered, but let’s face it, all the press screening rooms in LA are like a hundred years old and not really pleasant environments. Here in DC everything is modern, nice stadium seating, great sound, good food…
It’ll be interesting to see if you think that James Franco deserved to be nominated for his role in “Milk” rather than some others in that category.
Thanks for the parking info. It is ridiculous that street parking costs continue through 10 pm.
One thing that I don’t like about the G’towm theaters is that there are no restrooms on the right-hand lane of theaters.
i agree that Buttons is toooooo long. as a matter of fact, most of the movies today are too long at 2 hrs. i didn’t see Reader and was thinking of going this week. even after your comments, i think i’ll still go and do a comparison. Slumdog was really good and deserving of all the nominations it’s gotten.