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| Singapore’s Majestic Theatre
stands in all its faded glory to tell a familiar story: the
stand-alone cinema hall is dead. Or at least it belongs to another
time. |
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| Hyland Theatre, Tuen Mun,
Hong Kong. Old style two-screen cinema, which is easily distinguishable
from its surroundings. As business propositions, such cinemas
may not be sustainable any more. What kind of earnings per square
foot of real estate can a Hyland generate? |
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| Not very far from Hyland stands the Paris,
London, New York complex. Unlike the new cinema
complexes, often housed in shopping malls, the screens and names.
At one corner of a block of commercial establishments, one of
the entrances of this three-screen cinema open into a space
housing grocery and other stores. The afternoon visitors to
the complex are an indication of the customer base of the cinema
in many parts of the world: youth. |
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| Golden Harvest’s Grand Ocean, Hong
Kong. |
The present. Somewhere in the glittering shopping mall is
a multiplex. |
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| New cinema complexes, like older theatres, nevertheless
have to grapple with an audience that is none too enthusiastic
about following the laws, which are broken in spite of their
stringency. In addition there are the problems of managing the
crowd and ensuring its compliance to new patterns of consumption.
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A centrally located multiplex belonging to the
UA Cinemas chain in Hong Kong lays
down the rules and regulations governing admission. |
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