Dendy and Romulus

After promising myself that I would go to the Dendy cinema (replacing the iconic Electric Shadows), ever since it opened in December last year, I finally made it last Tuesday evening. The Dendy is part of the extensions that have been made to the Canberra Centre over the past 18 months. It is up stairs from Borders Bookstore, and a food court and so from my perspective is ideally situated - books, coffee, food and art house film - what more could you want.

In my quest to experience this cinema, I nearly went with the Library Technician's group, who were booking one of the rooms out at the beginning of this year for a get together. Unfortunately this was cancelled when Dendy had to close due to the storm damage Canberra suffered on New Year's eve. The water damage for the Dendy is now fixed, although they are still fixing other parts of the Canberra Centre, more about that later.

Dendy has 1100 seats, in two parts - the standard cinema setting with very comfy seats, and being new is a treat. The other part, Premium Class, has two cinema's, one with 30 seats and the other with around 100 seats. The premium class has its own exclusive lounge, full in-seat dining and bar service as well as opulent electric reclining seats, with drink holders, bottle coolers and lift up arms so that you can cuddle!!!

LR had free tickets to see an advanced screening of Romulus, my father an Australian movie, starring Eric Bana and Kodi Smit-McPhee, directed by Richard Roxburgh. Kodi is an amazing child actor and well worth watching.
So LR, SM and I headed for the 6.30pm session on Tuesday evening. We all stopped for a kebab in the food court and then went up the stairs to the cinema. It is an interesting movie and despite the seriousness of the issue that it explored, ended up being positive. Go see it. It opens on the 31st of May. After the movie finished, the three of us went and had a sticky beak at the premium class and we were very impressed. I suggested that LR might want to book out the smaller cinema to celebrate her 40th next year!!!!When you book out the whole cinema, you can screen your choice of film, which for LR would be science fiction or science fantasy.

At about 8.30 we went off in separate directions to our cars. Unfortunately for me the way back to my car was blocked off by workmen fixing the walkway, part of the ongoing development and storm damage work going on at the Canberra centre. I spent the next 40 minutes or so working out an alternative route back to the right car park (there are many car parks and they all look the same), I then paid an outrageous (for Canberra) $6 for parking and headed home again.