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| - My one and only experience at the uptown was the definition of bitter-sweet. While I'm a huge movie buff, and the idea of going to a real oldschool theater with the old fashioned overhead marquee and less than 8 screens that showed movies that really matter was intriguing as it gets to me, my one experience here left a lot to be desired.
First I should preface this by saying that while I pride myself on knowledge of the lesser known, independant movies, most of this came from renting or downloading. I had never been to one of these theaters before, and the staff here left me with a sort of "you're not hip enough" sort of feeling when I *mistakenly* thought they might have silly things like tickets. I walked in and paid while waiting for my date to arrive, then was going to step outside to watch for her, and asked (rather innocently) if we needed a ticket or something, and the guy actually kind of laughed at me. Apparently the fact that they draw low enough numbers every night to make it possible to remember each person's face makes them too cool for guys like me, who've grown accustom to a certain process, which I thought was kind of a downer.
The theater itself gave me the feeling it would be gorgeous, with a little upkeep... but on the time I was there, there were spots where bare plywood was serving as a makeshift ramp up to a slightly risen doorway, the majority of the lobby had next to no lighting (at first, it looked like they were closed) and everything just had an 'under renovations' sort of look to it.
To put it plainly, I'm glad places like The Uptown exist, in theory, as it's nice to see some of the less commercialized films have a place to show in Calgary, but a few little tweeks like a friendlier staff and a couple lightbulbs could really go a long way.
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