Foreign Cinema
Foreign Cinema
HollyG and I enjoyed a romantic date at Foreign Cinema this past Saturday. She's been before, but I had been wanting to go since I first heard about it, and see what it was all about. She broke out her cocktail dress and I put on my fancy shoes to impress her. The meal was great. We had some great mmm... Oysters and I had fancified fried chicken. We got sufficiently wasted on half bottles of wine and port for dessert.
Unfortunately, I didn't think they pulled off the movie part of the evening in any interesting way. Everything about the venue was classy and impressive except for the way they integrated the film into the experience. They threw a small, dim, digitally projected image onto the far wall. You could see the cheesy background of the digital projector where the letterbox didn't fill out, and all hues were all a little too blue. Also there was absolutely no way to enjoy the audio portion of the movie. Even though they had the cute idea of playing the sound through old drive-in movie speakerboxes, they didn't make any attempt to clean up the obvious shortcomings of an older technology.
The outdoor patio setting was particularly nice, though. It was cozy and enclosed (and warmed by heat lamps) while still feeling open and outdoors, which is a nice feeling to pull off. I think that was the part of it that I liked best (that and the swank). Maybe they could have done something like project the movie a little bigger and played just the soundtrack (no voices, just music and effects - like taking the center channel out of a dolby digital mix) in the background. Anything to work the film into it a little better.
Was it worth the price tag on the fancy meal? It's hard to say, since HollyG was there and I'm inclined to say that our dates are worth any price tag...
HollyG and I enjoyed a romantic date at Foreign Cinema this past Saturday. She's been before, but I had been wanting to go since I first heard about it, and see what it was all about. She broke out her cocktail dress and I put on my fancy shoes to impress her. The meal was great. We had some great mmm... Oysters and I had fancified fried chicken. We got sufficiently wasted on half bottles of wine and port for dessert.
Unfortunately, I didn't think they pulled off the movie part of the evening in any interesting way. Everything about the venue was classy and impressive except for the way they integrated the film into the experience. They threw a small, dim, digitally projected image onto the far wall. You could see the cheesy background of the digital projector where the letterbox didn't fill out, and all hues were all a little too blue. Also there was absolutely no way to enjoy the audio portion of the movie. Even though they had the cute idea of playing the sound through old drive-in movie speakerboxes, they didn't make any attempt to clean up the obvious shortcomings of an older technology.
The outdoor patio setting was particularly nice, though. It was cozy and enclosed (and warmed by heat lamps) while still feeling open and outdoors, which is a nice feeling to pull off. I think that was the part of it that I liked best (that and the swank). Maybe they could have done something like project the movie a little bigger and played just the soundtrack (no voices, just music and effects - like taking the center channel out of a dolby digital mix) in the background. Anything to work the film into it a little better.
Was it worth the price tag on the fancy meal? It's hard to say, since HollyG was there and I'm inclined to say that our dates are worth any price tag...
posted by Kobe at 4:06 PM
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