Captain's blog: 2006/07

Superman, IMAX 3D

Posted Saturday, July 01, 2006 at 7/01/2006 12:35:00 AM

Today was a department team-builder day in which we went to see the Superman Returns IMAX 3D version at the Paramount. It was my turn to organize this, and my only regret was that two people couldn’t join us for the film due to the late afternoon start time conflicting with their long weekend plans. I liked the film, which was also a first IMAX 3D experience for me. Overall, it was a great activity day.

The itinerary, for future planning purposes:

Before 1210

Called for reservations. Emailed last minute details to the team, with a Photoshop’d Google map to drivers depicting the underground parking entrances, but this was probably overkill.

12:10

Intended to leave early at this time, to allow time for parking, before our 12:40 lunch reservation.

12:17

Approximate time that we actually left.

12:30

Entered Milestones restaurant after parking, lingered for a few minutes waiting for the other half of the group before getting seated. Enjoyed Kobe Beef Meatloaf, trading food, splitting appetizers, the gelato dessert with a mint sprig in it (mint was also in the virgin Mojito drinks some had) along with some odd horror storytelling.

14:15

Left restaurant. Group split again, some visiting street shops at random. We went to the Silver Snail for comic collectibles, followed by a brief stop at Active Surplus.

15:00

Regrouped and entered Paramount Festival Hall Theatre, picked up our advance-purchased tickets upstairs. One person went ahead to try and hold center seats while the rest of us were busy getting popcorn and other concession stand food. I just had a large yogurt or ice cream swirl.

15:15

Entered IMAX theatre. An attendant handed us the polarized IMAX 3D glasses we would need to wear during some parts of the film. We managed to get middle row seating, but on the side only, so probably if we had come even earlier we could have gotten center seating.

15:30

The IMAX 3D pre-experience starts in which they do the standard smoke-and-mirrors laser show, where you learn that IMAX is Canadian and the location of speakers. I wonder if IMAX theatres in the United States perform the same thing. Then the actual film began.

17:17

End of credits, and left the theatre, split for home and the long weekend.

Superman Returns, as a film, had interesting imagery and references. Someone pointed out the imagery of Atlas supporting a globe. I just kept seeing the standard JC poses. I liked the Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic quote, which is by Sci-Fi writer Arthur C. Clarke, although they didn’t mention his name in the movie. The shuttle launch method reflected recent developments. The 2004 Paul Allen-Burt Rutan winning of the Ansari X-prize comes to mind, with their SpaceShipOne/White Knight system, where a little space shuttle called SpaceShipOne is lifted for the bulk of the journey by a mother aircraft, White Knight, before launching itself into space. On a separate note, it was good that the EMP bursts were conveyed rather simply with mostly power-outages, and that was probably all that was needed anyway. No scenes of folks dropping dead from pacemaker failures or pigeons crashing in London’s Trafalgar square as seen in The CORE. Overall a fun film with repeat-viewing potential.