As much as I hate the movie theater talkers, cell phone texters, loud popcorn-chewers, backseat-kickers, nervous leg-jigglers, smelly food-eaters, and armchair hogs who combine evil forces to make going to the movies these days a distracting, living hell, I stop myself short of physical violence when it comes to laying down the law of theater etiquette. Which is what one enraged theater patron in the Seattle area did not do when he caught a case of theater rage and slapped an offending movie talker in the face. Making matters worse: The talker was a ten-year-old kid.
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As foreseen, Chinese exhibitor The Wanda Group has acquired AMC Entertainment — the second-largest theater chain in the US, comprising some 5,000 screens and 18,000 employees — from a domestic investment partnership for $2.6 billion, nearly 80 percent of which will go toward AMC's staggering debt. Pending approval by the feds in both countries, the deal will result in the world's biggest theatrical empire, one headquartered in a nation previously known as the most prodigious owner of US government debt. Come on, you know you're excited.
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It has come to this for "unaccompanied" teenagers desperate to see the unrated Bully: "An AMC spokesman said it will indeed allow that, but only if the child presents a signed permission slip from a parent, either via a form letter made available by the theater or an improvised note on a standard piece of paper. The move is an apparent attempt to support the film -- AMC executive Gerry Lopez has two teenagers and has been vocal about its importance -- while still paying deference to the Motion Picture Assn. of America and its ratings system." Related: Is Harvey Weinstein just recycling tricks from his Kids playbook? [LAT]
Boston Globe film critic Ty Burr confirms what you may have already noticed at your local chain multiplex: picture quality sucks, and an unspoken company cost-cutting policy is to blame. Thanks to a perfect storm of practices uncovered at an AMC Loews in Boston, endemic to the company and other chains -- going cheap on projection, sweetheart deals with Sony, sheer laziness -- ticket buyers are getting shafted at 2-D screenings dimmed by 50 to 85 percent brightness.
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