Well, I am a movie buff. I love everything about going to the movies: big screen, opportunity to see the film in company of other people, even the popcorn.

Unfortunately, I’ve had it with cinemas in Doha, and I won’t be going to see the films ever again in this town.

First - it is the mobiles, of course. Attendants in cinemas are usually low-level employees, simply too frightened to ask young Qataris not to talk on the phone. Result is the constant buzz of SMSes and phone rings.

Even if you choose to ignore that problem, or if you go to see the film that will not be interesting for young boys population, there’s the issue of complete, total and absurd incompetence of all operators in all multiplexes in Qatar. And believe me, I’ve tried them all as I simply couldn’t believe this myself.

Cinemas themselves are nice: comfy sitting, new equipment, fine projectors. It is a shear inadequacy of the operators that is mind-boggling. 9 times out of 10, sound will be overcrancked to the point of painful distorsion, surround sound speakers obviously there but the sound still coming only from one (mono most likely) source. Picture quality varies, but is almost never without a problem, too.

Recently, I had a guest here from the US, spending 5 days with me and in this short period I tried to give him a full and accurate picture of what life in Qatar is all about, both good sides and bad. We’ve been invited to the Museum of Islamic Arts for some movie event that was broadcast simultaneously across the world. Couldn’t ask for the better example to give to my friend. Here it was, multi-gazzillion-dollar building, brand new auditorium, fancy visual film. Projection started, from the start it had horrible sound (to be expected), obvious HUGE smudge either on the projector or on the screen itself, blurry picture as if it was aired from VHS tape, to culminate in total blackout about 1 hour into the film. My friend and I had enough, and left before they could’ve restored the pictures, and we managed to get the glance of “operator”, a poor guy staring at the projector, obviously not trained or knowledgeable desperately trying to figure out what went wrong.

Then I realized: watching the movie at home, especially if you have a nice PLASMA / surround setup, is much better film experience than what you will ever get in any cinema in Qatar. I’ll simply wait for new movie Torrents to become available, or, in cases of great movies, get a BlueRay version. This is my advice to you, too, if you care about the movies.