Champagne, XPlus and talking apes...

Our child-free weekend started very well on Friday night. 

We were lucky enough to be invited to the opening of the X Plus screen at the Showcase Cinema Delux in Derby.

Firstly, it was lovely to go somewhere new. Because we have a showcase in Nottingham we very rarely venture further afield for the cinema but it made for a great night out. 

The hubby is the last to associate the words 'shopping centre' and 'fun' but in the early evening the food court at intu derby had a lovely holiday like feel to it and so we enjoyed a bit of pre cinema grub.

The set up at the entrance to and the foyer of the cinema is very attractive and looks more like a swanky nightclub.

We were made to feel very welcome and enjoyed champagne and canapés in the lovely bar before finding our seats in the new X Plus screen.

Wow, the sheer size of the auditorium and screen has a great impact when you first walk in. It feels more like a theatre or concert hall. The screen runs floor to ceiling, wall to wall and has a significant curve in it which increases the impact of the picture.

For me, the most impressive factor of the new X Plus is the sound. A clearly very proud gentleman from Dolby explained before the film that they had doubled the number of speakers in the auditorium and installed over head speakers also. To test the impact of the sound system the lights were dimmed and we heard the sounds of a storm building to such a climax it was actually a bit scary.

The film we saw was The Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes. This is definitely a cinema film. When I say this I mean the greatness of this film lies in its awesome visual and sound effects. 

Who knew that Ape's could be so terrifying...Toby Kebell's Koba is the what nightmares are made of!

The story is a fairly simple moralistic tale- "Ape's do not kill Ape's" is a motto used amongst Ceasar's primate family. However Ceaser's fondness of the human race appears as weakness to a hate-filled  Koba who ignores the groups motto causing misunderstanding and ultimately war with the humans.

This film is for sci-fi and action film fans. The Clarity and realistic quality of the 3D images on the XPlus screen were better than any I have seen on cinema screens before. Hopefully the enhanced picture and sound quality is equal in 2D films also.