This Is Cinerama... or not.

Yesterday I went out to Bradford to watch This Is Cinerama as described in Bill Bryson's 'Notes From a Small Island'. I didn't really realise how far away it is from London until after I'd booked my train tickets, but I thought it would be a fun trip anyway. Which it was, but... I'm really going through a bad luck phase. I couldn't believe it, but after watching the first half of This Is Cinerama, one of the projectors broke down! I mean, I know it's an old film and old equipment, but one of the women who works with it said she's been there for 6 months and they've never had a problem. The day I spend 3 hours on a train to get there to watch this one movie, the equipment breaks down. Unbelievable!

The first half was pretty good, though - the rollercoaster in the beginning was absolutely awesome, and I'd really recommend that anyone in the area goes to watch it. But I have to agree with Bill Bryson about Bradford - it's incredibly confusing and easy to get lost. The roads themselves are bad enough, and the map from the NMPFT website isn't very useful. And the signs to the museum point to... I don't know, but not the way you need to go to get to the museum! And then of course you have the pedestrian subways - you really feel isolated down there, and of course you have no way to get your bearings and figure out where you're trying to go! I got there fairly easily, but got a bit coming lost since I came out of a different door that I went in.

The museum itself is small but really cool - they have the original sets from The Wrong Trousers (Wallace & Gromit), and the 1997 version of the Wombles, and, best of all, the original set from Morph! I remember watching that when I was a kid, and it was so cool to see the actual set. I was amazed by how small it is. They have a bunch of other stuff at the museum, and it's well worth going to see (it's even free to get in).

So after wandering around the museum for a while, I went to the Pictureville Cinema for This Is Cinerama, and enjoyed the little bit that we actually went to see. The curved screen is really effective, and it's a very nice theatre. There were only about 10 people there, and when the projector broke and they offered to show The Queen instead, everyone but me and one other person left! I only stayed because otherwise I'd have had to wander around for the three hours before my train, and I couldn't face that. It was okay, although not really my type of movie, and nowhere as good as the rest of This Is Cinerama would have been :-(