Aimee and I tallied up our Top 10/Bottom 5 movies of the year (released and seen in 2006) last night, though I think I’m going to have to get through those few I’m still waiting to see before making an accurate pronouncement (Babel, Half Nelson, The Queen, Children of Men, and others?). One that certainly won’t be on the list, though, and not based on its relative merit, is Stranger Than Fiction, which we attempted to watch at the Beverly Center 13 cinemas yesterday afternoon. I’m all for trying out new theater-going experiences, but even ignoring the fact that we have some amazing places to see movies, like The ArcLight, The Grove, The Dunn, and The Goldwyn, Theater 11 in the Beverly Center 13 may have been the worst place we could have picked to see a movie. First of all, it was tiny, smaller than many living rooms I’ve been in, and the screen can’t have been more than about 12 feet across. I can’t imagine there were more than 50 seats in there. Second, there was a big tear, right in the middle of the screen, which was not going to fade away, I had a feeling. Add to that the loud Bee Gees songs pumping through the speakers for ten minutes as we sat waiting for the film to start, and the nauseating, claustrophobic combination of too little leg room and too many hot dogs being eaten around us, and we had enough reasons to leave. As I was getting my refund, a patron came out of another theater to ask for a projectionist, so I don’t think I was the only one complaining that day.