Miracles and machinery

Christiane and I decided to have a wonderful and relaxed evening. We hadn't been to the cinema for a while and so we decided to have our little fun there. No top-notch intellectual movie today, we just wanted something entertaining and so we decided to watch "The Golden Compass".

After a looooooong time of commercials and another short break, the film started and we enjoyed the first 90 minutes (until the point were Iorek Byrnison becomes king of the ice bears again and heads with Lyra towards freeing her friends), then the film went off. 10 minutes of darkness followed, whereafter a robust, elderly woman entered the room and told us that something was probably broken and they were trying to fix it. We could have our money back now or we could wait for the film to continue, but she could not tell whether and when this would be the case. Most of the people left the room and Christiane and I were just starting to think about relocating to one of the more comfortable seats when another cinema employee came in and told us that the projection machine was completely broken and we would not see the movie's end today.

So far for the reliability of non-digital film projectors. Let's hope we soon see all the movies using digital projection (with a highly available backup store and at least one primary backup for the projector hardware...). I wonder whether this hope will influence the next raise in cinema ticket prices. ;)