Let's Go to the Movies...

Yeah, not sure when that is going to happen again. To be honest, my husband, Andrew and I have become lazy about going to the pictures (using the old timey word for it). These days most films rate not much more than a ‘meh’ with me, and I am quite happy to just stream them at home. I remember berating a former coworker because she and her husband rarely went to the cinema and instead stayed home and watched pirated copies (I suspect) of the latest showings, and I couldn’t understand why someone wouldn’t want the experience of seeing everything on a big screen with surround sound while sitting in comfy seats.

Of course, I still think it’s necessary to see those big blockbusters with lots of action and adventure on a big screen (Star Wars, Avengers, Jurrasic Park, etc.). I did have a short list of movies I wanted to see before the world went on lockdown, but I refuse to pay $20 to stream these same movies on Amazon.com.

Anyway, the reason I am writing about movies is because my husband was eager enough, and kind enough to assemble the wooden movie projector I got for Christmas. Mind you, this kit was designed for children (teens I suspect), but I suspect they get a lot of help from their parents or other adults. My husband struggled with the instructions which were only pictures and diagrams with no text (I guess that saves on translating it for international shipping). Luckily we found a video on You Tube explaining the entire process step by step, so we did take a peek at that.

My husband got it done in about 5 days, with the majority being done on the weekend. On the sixth night we had a brief screening of the film and have now relegated the projector to a shelf in our living room where we can look at it and appreciate my husband’s engineering and assembly skills.

If you’re a film enthusiast, might I recommend the following:

Flicker by Theodore Roszak

I bought this novel back in 1994 at a bookstore in Britain as I needed something to read on my travels. I’m not sure why I didn’t bring something, or perhaps I saw it on the shelf and decided to set aside whatever I had brought. Either way, this made for some riveting reading while I was backpacking around the UK for the first time.

The plot evolves around a trio of movie enthusiasts (young people post grad age) discussing the history of motion pictures delving into the minutae like why do we see a moving image instead of a series of frames (the Maltese cross and flicker effect). There’s also a mystery involving the legendary director, Max Castle, Templars, and the Children of Light. Yes, it does read a little like The Da Vinci Code, but doesn’t have the same huge ending.

Wikipedia sums it up like this, “The novel covers approximately 15–20 years of the life of film scholar Jonathan Gates, whose academic investigations draw him into the shadowy world of esoteric conspiracy that underlies the work of fictional B-movie director Max Castle.”

“Cinema Paradiso”

I don’t quite remember when I first saw this movie, but I think it was in a theatre, probably during a film festival or a special showing or something. This film is about a young Italian boy who grows up while spending most of his life at a local cinema and is befriended by the projectionist who eventually teaches him how to run the projector showing him when to change reels (a little black dot will flash in the right hand corner as a warning) and how to wind on a new reel, etc. That lesson in itself is pretty much a history lesson, especially for Millenials and the following generations who have probably never seen a movie that wasn’t digital (or converted to digital). According to IMDB, “A filmmaker recalls his childhood when falling in love with the pictures at the cinema of his home village and forms a deep friendship with the cinema's projectionist.”

“Matinee”

Matinee is a perfect piece of nostalgia for all those baby boomers who remember the classic days of the cinema when the occasional special feature was brought into town and the theatre was rigged with special effects to enhance the movie going experience. Okay, so I don’t know if they really did that all around America, and if you want that experience, you might still be able to enjoy that at Disney/Epcot as I seem to recall seeing one of the “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” films and feeling the sensation of a mouse running across my feet and having something like a dragon breathe on me.

In this movie the thriller that was being shown was “Mant,” a creature that was part man, part ant. Horror movies like this were all the rage back in the 50s and rather tame by today’s standards. However, moviegoers then had never seen anything like it before, so they were pretty taken in by the whole experience. In “Matinee” I seem to recall the theatre was rigged with buzzers under the chairs which were pressed during crucial moments causing the audience to literally jump in their seats. According to IMDB, “A small-time film promoter releases a kitschy horror film during the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

In case you’re wondering what movies I am watching these days, I’ve seen a few during our lockdown, the best one being a sort of sci-fi thriller called, “In Time” where humans are given a finite life span and must literally buy time if they want to stay alive past that. Also, they are not permitted to travel outside their zone (like counties), so it’s a bit like the current situation. Of course one of the humans decides to rebel against this unfair system and kidnaps the daughter of the big Time mogul. I thought this movie had an interesting, if not extreme perspective on life where time rather than money was what fueled the economy.

My husband and I are also screening several of Bill Murray’s films that we’ve never seen before. We started with “Stripes” (meh) and last night watched “Rushmore” (liked that, but then I am also a big Wes Anderson fan). We’re saving “Meatballs” for later as that’s really more of a summer movie. Otherwise, not sure which one we’ll select next.