Madstone Revisited

A follow-up to the Madstone series of articles from last summer.

I continue to go to Madstone Theaters for movies, but not as often as I might, because, frankly, Landmark continues to have a better selection of independent films here in San Diego. It's as if Landmark gets first dibs.

Some brief observations on how things are going at Madstone:

• Hangman and Trailers. One thing I learned early on going to movies at Madstone was that one should not be late: the movies tended to start immediately, as soon as the lights went down. Or, there might be one trailer now and then.

  Some filmgoers would see this as a plus, not a minus: compared to other movie chains with Coca-cola ads, smarmy Independent Film Channel ads, Join the Army ads, Join the Marines ads, Join the Air Force ads, Volvo ads, and five or six long trailers, all combined pushing the start time of the movie some 12-15 minutes out, Madstone's approach ain't bad.

  Most theaters that show slides before the lights go down use them to show advertisements, or remind theatergoers to go back out to the concession stand and buy popcorn, cokes, and candy (remember: there's a school of thought in the theatre industry that movie theaters are fast-food restaurants that only show movies as a way of getting people to come to their establishments). Madstone now shows slides in a truly inventive, but unfortunately inane, way: they present a hangman game on the screen, with eight fill-in-the-blank letter spaces and no suggestion as to what the word is. I took one look at it and immediately thought, M A D S T O N E. Sure enough, while the Talking Heads were playing in the speakers ("Take Me to the River"), the slides would very slowly change, with long black gaps in between, and then a D appeared: _ _ D _ _ _ _ _. Some letters appeared underneath, as if someone in the audience were guessing. Who came up with this idea? Sheesh. And then eventually, an N appeared: _ _ _ D _ _ _ N _. Well, duh. For the next five minutes, the audience got to watch as it eventually became M A D S T O N E. Wow. Brilliant branding there.

• Right Hand, Left Hand. There's a small newspaper called MADSTONE EXTRA available in the lobby. I picked up a copy. It describes the calendar of films coming for Jan, Feb, and Mar 2003. It mentions an interesting documentary series called Full Frame. Hmm, sounds interesting! The article says to go to http://www.madstonetheaters.com/fullframe for more information. At the time of this writing, there is no such URL at the Madstone site. Well, let me put it another way: the experience for me is that it dumps me in Cleveland -- that is, the Madstone home page for their Cleveland theater. These guys are just incredible.

• Discount Shows. It's not all bad. I'll end on a good note. One nice thing about Madstone Theaters is they have a lot of discount matinees, at a time when their competition seems to be reducing them. For budget-conscious filmgoers, this makes going to Madstone a better value. (As long as you steer clear of their ultra-high priced concessions.)

Update as of 13 January 2003:
Here it is the 13th of January and still, the /fullframe URL mentioned above does not work at the Madstone website. Guys, you have this printed prominently in your newsletter. There are customers out there, including me, who are interested in learning more about "Full Frame". You ought to fix this. Maybe more people will buy tickets as a result.

Posted by brian at January 4, 2003 05:29 PM