AMC Entertainment Gets a New Look Online

Robert W. Butler - Kansas City Star

AMC Entertainment is debuting a new Web site that company bigwigs are describing as informative and user friendly.

At first glance www.amcentertainment.com looks more like a fan site than a corporate one.

"We think of it as Facebook for movie lovers," said Cezanne Wikoff, AMC's director of Internet strategy. "The emphasis is on the movies themselves."

The site is packed with features such as movie trailers, Hollywood headlines, even a blog called "Script to Screen" featuring movie news and opinion.

Popular Web-based movie writers John Campia, Kellvin Chavez and Christina Warren will provide daily commentary.

And visitors are invited to create their own social networking pages so they can interact with other movie fans.

The new site can be used to buy tickets to AMC theaters and, in the case of Town Center, Mainstreet and some auditoriums at Studio 30, will allow customers to pick their reserved seats.

In addition, AMC tickets can be purchased and seats reserved at other popular movie ticket sites such as www.movietickets.com, www.fandango.com and www.moviefone.com.

Movie classics from the pre-sound era will be featured again this year at the "Silents in the Cathedral" program at 7 p.m. Friday at Grace Cathedral in Topeka.

Sponsored by the Kansas Silent Film Festival, the event features comedy shorts with Harry Langdon and Laurel and Hardy, followed by the 1928 feature "The Man Who Laughs."

Based on a Victor Hugo tale, "Man" starred Conrad Veidt (later one of the Nazis in "Casablanca") as a nobleman's son who is kidnapped and mutilated so that his face perpetually holds a monstrous grin (this film reportedly was the inspiration for Batman nemesis the Joker). He joins a traveling freak show where he falls for a blind girl (Mary Philbin) who cannot be repelled by his grotesque features.

The event is free. For more info visit www.kssilentfilmfest.org/SilentsintheCathedral.

All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church has announced its November schedule of free documentaries, playing at 7 p.m. on Tuesdays:

--"Invisible Children" (Tuesday): Motivated by the toll civil war has taken on young people, three young American filmmakers (Jason Russell, Bobby Bailey and Laren Poole) expose the tragedy of life in northern Uganda, where children are often recruited as cannon fodder.

--Countering Hate Through Films (Nov. 10): This presentation by Dan Spigel employs clips from his film "House of the Generals," based on the lives of family members who lived through the Russian Revolution, Nazi invasion of the USSR and the Holocaust.

--"What Would Jesus Buy?" (Nov. 17): Think of it as the anti-Christmas-shopping film. Subversive performance artists Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir go on a cross-country mission to save Christmas from the Shopocalypse.

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