It's the Strand Theatre in Marietta, GA, which underwent a multi-million dollar renovation several years ago. Actress Joanne Woodward spent much of her childhood watching movies inside the Strand.
All of those funds to restore the facility to a nice venue, yet the management chooses to offer their motion picture presentations from blown-up and blurry home-quality DVDs, according to several disgruntled customers. I refuse to go there. I won't tolerate or reward such a flagrant lack of professionalism. There are minimum movie industry standards and this place doesn't make the cut, nor, apparently, the effort.
The Strand has also developed a reputation for projecting widescreen shows with severely cropped pictures. Large pieces of the puzzles are missing! The full width is important.
My friend Randy attended "Jaws." He was sickened by the essentially straight-down-the-middle DVD he was tricked into viewing. In that particular situation, approximately 40% of the Panavision cinematography was deleted from the combined left and right sides of the image.
Randy knew it was bad when the shark jumped out of the ocean and Roy Scheider said, "We're gonna need a bigger screen."
Recently, we had dinner near the, ahem, showplace. As we headed to our cars, Randy and I looked over at the Strand marquee to see advertised, the expansive panoramic beauty, "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."
We knew what that meant. Randy turned and faced me.
In unison, we said, "The Bad!"
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