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Coming soon to the MetQuarter: a cinema
Company behind London's Screen on the Green sets sights on rebranded shopping centre
THE company behind London's popular Screen on the Green has revealed plans to transform part of Liverpool’s Metquarter into a luxury cinema complex.
Cinemagoers will be able to enjoy a glass of wine and quality food, sitting in plush armchairs with footrests to watch films.
Everyman (no relation to Liverpool’s Hope Street theatre) wants to create a three-screen cinema at the Victoria Street end of the MetQ.
As well as mainstream and art-house films, the proposed Everyman will also screen lives shows from the West End, Covent Garden and the New York Met, as well as major world events.
The Metquarter, built as a designer-shop emporium, suffered when Liverpool One opened its doors, creating tough competition.
Planners in Liverpool have been supportive of the scheme during pre-application discussions, said Rebecca Palmer, senior planner with planning consultancy Turley.
An application for planning permission for the cinema development has been lodged with the council by the owners of the Metquarter.
She said the Met is undergoing a revitalisation after being affected by the recession as well as the opening of Liverpool One.
The cinema development is described as the first phase of a package of proposed major enhancements to the Metquarter.
Liverpool Confidential understands a bowling alley at the MetQuarter has also been discussed, but this has yet to be confirmed.
Turley described the Everyman group as a high quality cinema operator.
Everyman cinemas usually have a licensed bar and enhanced food offer.
Everyman says its mission is to create “a truly unique and memorable cinema experience that exceeds expectations and reaches the highest standards possible in quality, comfort and entertainment … where you can you enjoy a cinematic experience, swap your soft drink for a nice glass of red wine and a slice of freshly made pizza and where the cinema feels almost like a home from home”.
The company adds: “A world apart from the multiplex experience consumers normally associate with cinema, we bring our modern, lifestyle brand to all of our sites.”
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The trouble is that Liverpool has never been too good about supporting (for want of a better term) arthouse films, and I'm talking half a century's worth of attempts to programme them locally. Then again, the present Everyman listings don't look too venturesome: www.everymancinema.com/…. Maybe that's because the schools are on holiday?
Put "The Magnet" back on!
Onibaba!
Bring back the Merseyside Film Institute Society with its little cinema in the Bluecoat Chambers! Two films a week and always sold out whether they were in black-and-white, had subtitles or not made by and for yanks.
Sadly the MFIS was killed off by some maniac in charge who decided it was only going to show boring old Jack Nicholson films every week for the whole season. The whole point of going there was the fantastic variety and eclectic choice of the films being shown. I never saw an empty seat in there in all the years I went.
The MFIS was very good
Best of all there were no noisy twats loudly eating buckets of popcorn and bags of sweets.
The problem with the so-called ‘Metquarter’ is that it is too up itself. I remember accompanying a lady who wanted to look around the shops one evening but people were being made to queue in the rain because a tuppence-ha’penny marketing Hitler in high heels was demanding people’s e-mail addresses before she’d let them through the door! Like most of those getting wet we turned away and have never been back. We didn’t swear a lot like many of the other people did though.
A “lifestyle cinema” where people will be eating pizza then no doubt wiping their greasy fingers on the upholstery customers are expected to sit on. The seats will be as stained as FACT’s in no time at all.
If people want to watch films while slumped in an armchair cramming pizza into their faces wouldn't they be better off in their vulgar living rooms at home? There they'd have the added comfort of sitting around in their underpants and being able to break wind freely without embarrassment.
Oh, you've done that one then...
Stained seats? Wasn't that the place that used to be on Clayton Square in the 70's?
Are you thinking of the Gilmore on Old Hay Market? Then there was the News Cinema on Lord Street.
And a bowling alley - this is all upmarket stuff...
No, it was the seedy place that did "art" films.....opposite Owen Owen, I think it ended up as a men's fashion place called Sexy Rexie.......like a poor man's Liverpool One
What Liverpool really needs is a proper, dignified, head post office worthy of the name, rather than that overheated broom cupboard hidden away upstairs over the tiny WH Smiths. The Metquarter would be the perfect location
The Jaycee, it became the Shrine of The Blessed Sacrament. And now this www.liverpoolconfidential.co.uk/…/Exclusive-Morrisons-supermarket-sweeps-into-Clayton-Square…
That's the one.....Cheers
'The Jacey' actually...
"The Metquarter, built as a designer-shop emporium" - it's a shopping centre - and one aimed at people who couldn't even say "emporium": footballers, gangsters, their WaGs etc.
"enhanced food offer." Oh dear...
That's the problem with modern cinema. They concentrate on overpriced drinks, overpriced snacks and don't think to show decent films for the price of your overpriced ticket, no matter how many screens they have. Just production-line Hollywood rubbish for misogynist adolescents of all ages.
The MFIS - well, I was a member from the very early sixties and appreciated much of what they did, but the problem was 16mm and in particular the sound quality. It was bearable for subtitled films but often awful for English-language. In too many of those the dialogue was incomprehensible.
That's normal in all American films made since about 1974. In the U.S. they have what they call "The Method", a form of alleged acting entirely comprising gurning, mumbling and looking constipated for no reason.
No, it was the 16mm rather than the films. By no means all American films use the Method (which in any case first came into movies in the early fifties). At the MFIS flms made earlier than that, and in Britain as well as the US, were often badly muffled - early Hitchcock, for instance.
Oh yes, 35mm would have required much larger and more expensive equipment (rather than the portable 16mm projectors as were also used in schools in those days) and I heard that the shrinking availability of 16mm films for hire was the main reason for the closure of the MFIS. However digital technology has surely made it possible for a small cinema club along the lines of the old MFIS - showing exclusively films for the cineaste - to be viable?
Could well be! Maybe using Blu-ray with a fully multi-regional (not just multi-regional for DVDs) player?
I doubt that many proper films are available on "Blu-Ray"; I should imagine that they are just the sort of rubbish you find on DVD going cheap in ASDA and in charity shops.
Not at all. Look at the catalogues of distributors such as Criterion, Eureka, Arrow (the foreign-language titles, such as a wonderful restoration of BICYCLE THIEVES), Studio Canal (who brought out a beautiful transfer of LA GRANDE ILLUSION) and quite a few others.
D'you reckon? Splendid!
I remember the first time I saw David Lynch’s ‘Eraserhead’; it was shown in a badly-blacked-out attic room with a skylight above in a former paint warehouse that is now The Pilgrim. Publicity was word-of-mouth, there were no tickets, the 16mm sound was distorted, the image faint because of the evening light getting in and there was a disruptive crowd of hammered punks (Robbo and co) at the back but it was an exciting experience and the room was full. I’ve seen the film several times since under far better viewing conditions but it was never as good as that first time.