The Cinema Thread

[Ulysses]

Whalewolfs are real.

What's the best way to prepare a whalewolf?

Raw, like sushi?

Stir-fried?

Baked with cornflour crust?

Deep fat fried like fish sticks?

[Ulysses]

Grand Lake Theater, Oakland, CA:

The Historic Grand Lake Theater

In 1926, the Reid Brothers’ design for the Grand Lake Theater was completed for West Coast Theaters, Inc.

March 6, 1926 marked the grand opening of this Vaudeville Show and Silent Movie House. In 1928, West Coast Theaters, Inc. became part of the Fox Theater Chain. Vaudeville Shows were discontinued after talking pictures (known as ‘talkies’) became popular. In 1980, Allen Michaan, owner of Renaissance Rialto, Inc. purchased the ground lease, opening the theater as a single screen Movie Palace and beginning a process of restoration and upgrades that continues to this day. While currently all digital in the projection of movies the Grand Lake retains the capability of exhibiting 35mm and 70mm films when needed.

http://www.renaissancerialto.com/about.php

[Ulysses]

Well at least the Grand Lake is still showing movies. The other venerable movie palace in the area where I've gone, the UC Theater in Berkeley, doesn't show movies any more. The movie theater business I guess didn't pay enough for the extensive seismic strengthening the 1917 structure needed to have to continue. It's since been revamped into a music venue. I'm more than a little embarrassed that I've been enough out of touch with Berkeley events that I didn't realize this process stared about 20 years ago (!), with the conversion to music hall about ten years ago. Not that it really matters, but a good friend of mine was a projectionist there. He has never mentioned the transition, but then we don't meet up much any more.

https://theuctheatre.org/history

The UC Theatre in 1917

The UC Theatre opened on June 30, 1917 as a first run movie theater, and is among the oldest and most historically significant theaters in Berkeley. The 1,466-seat theater was acquired in 1974 by theater owner Gary Meyer as one of the first theaters—along with the Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles—in his Landmark Theatres chain. The theater was named after, but had no relation to, the University of California, Berkeley. For more than 25 years, Berkeley and East Bay film lovers enjoyed domestic and foreign film classics on the UC screen, often as double or triple features. Of the movie theaters built in Berkeley at the dawn of the film age, only the Elmwood and the California theaters are still in operation, both having opened in 1914. The UC Theatre was designated as a City of Berkeley landmark in 2002.

The UC Theatre in 1930

The UC Theatre held the record for the longest-running sequence of midnight Rocky Horror Picture Show screenings, ending in January 1999 after 22 years. Werner Herzog ate his shoe there, on a dare from Errol Morris. (It was the premiere of Morris’ first film, Gates of Heaven, which Herzog believed would never be completed.) Orchestras frequently performed to accompany silent films. Linwood Dunn gave a talk about the special effects used in King Kong at that film’s screening. The lights flickered off in March 2001, when Landmark decided to close the UC Theatre rather than invest the hundreds of thousands needed for a required seismic upgrade.

And yes the one and only time I saw the Rocky Horror Picture Show was at the UC. And I saw a LOT of films there when I was a Cal student.



Here's a good history of it:

https://www.dailycal.org/2014/04/25/for ... c-theatre/

Also just PM'd my old buddy apologizing for not knowing of the UC Theater loss. What can I say? At the time it closed I had the commute from hell down to San Jose, and a lot of other employment related nonsense after that.

[Vrede too]

Was shown on BRAVO, probably will be again:

Long Shot (2019 film)

Long Shot is a 2019 American romantic comedy film directed by Jonathan Levine and written by Dan Sterling and Liz Hannah. The plot follows a journalist (Seth Rogen) who reunites with his former babysitter (Charlize Theron), now the United States Secretary of State. O'Shea Jackson Jr., Andy Serkis, June Diane Raphael, Bob Odenkirk and Alexander Skarsgård also star.

The film had its world premiere at South by Southwest on March 9, 2019, and was theatrically released in the United States on May 3, 2019 by Lionsgate. It received generally positive reviews and praise for the chemistry between Rogen and Theron, but underperformed at the box office.

Rom-coms aren't usually my thing and I often find implausibility irksome, but largely thanks to Rogen, Theron and snappy writing this flick is fun.

[Vrede too]

15 Once-Great Movies the Pandemic Completely Fucking Ruined
These movies have gotten a bit harder to watch lately.

Idk about "Ruined", but the connections are interesting. Examples:

Jurassic Park (1993)

I love dinosaurs, and I love the Jurassic Park movies. I’ve seen and enjoyed every single one, even as the concept has gotten increasingly strained over the course of four sequels (with another on the way), plus an animated series. If it were only that first movie, it might be a different story, and an enjoyable pandemic escape watch.

But with each new movie, the plot must find new excuses for staff and visitors to return to the park that is almost guaranteed to kill them. It seemed patently ridiculous… and then we spent a year or so watching bars, beaches, and rallies fill to capacity, followed by the almost inevitable reports of related mass infections. Now I absolutely believe people would keep going back to that island, and reader: I hate it.

The Shining (1980)

There’s no perfect quarantine cluster. Even those of us with the best family dynamics in the entire world have, occasionally, found ourselves getting on each other’s nerves. JUST A BIT. The Shining conjures that feeling in the extreme: this layered Stanley Kubrick-direct Stephen King adaptation might be about a haunted hotel, or it might be about alcoholism, or it might just as easily be about what happens when people get stuck together, alone, for endless months. In these times, we’re all Shelley Duvall.

Jaws (1975)

We’re going to close the beaches, right? We’ll just close the beaches, take care of the problem, and get back to it when it’s safe. Anything else would be absurd.

[Whack9]

The Amazing Bulk:

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1788453/

[Vrede too]

The Amazing Bulk:

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1788453/

That's what Barney evolved into.

IMDb RATING 1.7/10, maybe the lowest I've seen.

Wiki: Release and reception

... The film has received universally negative reviews, targeted at its acting, editing, continuity, visual effects, and settings. A staff writer for the website Horror Society found it to be absurd and incomprehensible, saying that "the way the film was shot makes it utterly impossible to follow it the way a film should be followed". Film critic Rob Rector criticized the apparent laziness of the filmmakers, stating that it seems they "stumbled across a bunch of free clipart on the internet and decided to weave it together as a backdrop for the film".

Felix Vasquez Jr. of Cinema Crazed berated the film's effects and designs, remarking that the filmmakers may well have "whipped together a movie out of Windows 95 clip art, Microsoft Paint, an old HD camera someone owned, and a lot of green screens in under a week at the director's loft somewhere in California". James DePaolo of the website WickedChannel called it "The Room of superhero movies" and wrote that it "is quite possibly one of the best worst films ever made". Andrea Beach of Common Sense Media gave the film one out of five stars, summarizing it thus: "Lowbrow, violent superhero spoof is just plain bad." ...

On the positive side no one panned the credits.

Good one, Whack9!

[GoCubsGo]

The Amazing Bulk:

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1788453/

That's what Barney evolved into.

IMDb RATING 1.7/10, maybe the lowest I've seen.

Wiki: Release and reception

... The film has received universally negative reviews, targeted at its acting, editing, continuity, visual effects, and settings. A staff writer for the website Horror Society found it to be absurd and incomprehensible, saying that "the way the film was shot makes it utterly impossible to follow it the way a film should be followed". Film critic Rob Rector criticized the apparent laziness of the filmmakers, stating that it seems they "stumbled across a bunch of free clipart on the internet and decided to weave it together as a backdrop for the film".

Felix Vasquez Jr. of Cinema Crazed berated the film's effects and designs, remarking that the filmmakers may well have "whipped together a movie out of Windows 95 clip art, Microsoft Paint, an old HD camera someone owned, and a lot of green screens in under a week at the director's loft somewhere in California". James DePaolo of the website WickedChannel called it "The Room of superhero movies" and wrote that it "is quite possibly one of the best worst films ever made". Andrea Beach of Common Sense Media gave the film one out of five stars, summarizing it thus: "Lowbrow, violent superhero spoof is just plain bad." ...

On the positive side no one panned the credits.

Good one, Whack9!

That wasn't satire? Amazing anyone sat through it.

My fave....

[Vrede too]

... My fave....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vQA0RvAz1s

[GoCubsGo]

... My fave....

[Ulysses]

"Who's running the red Corvette?"...

[Vrede too]

Hugo (film)

Hugo is a 2011 American adventure drama film directed and produced by Martin Scorsese, and adapted for the screen by John Logan. Based on Brian Selznick's 2007 book The Invention of Hugo Cabret, it tells the story of a boy who lives alone in the Gare Montparnasse railway station in Paris in the 1930s, only to become embroiled in a mystery surrounding his late father's automaton and the pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès....

Hugo received 11 Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture), more than any other film that year, winning five: Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, and Best Visual Effects. It was also nominated for eight BAFTAs, and won two, and was nominated for three Golden Globe awards, earning Scorsese his third Golden Globe Award for Best Director....

Asa Butterfield
Chloë Grace Moretz
Ben Kingsley
Sacha Baron Cohen
Ray Winstone
Emily Mortimer
Jude Law
...

[Vrede too]

Wigstock: The Movie



Wigstock: The Movie is a 1995 documentary film focusing on Wigstock, the annual drag music festival that had been held New York City's East Village through the 1980s and 1990s. The film presents a number of performances from the 1994 festival, including Crystal Waters, Deee-Lite, Jackie Beat, Debbie Harry, Leigh Bowery, Joey Arias and the Dueling Bankheads. The film also captures a performance by RuPaul at the height of his mainstream fame during the 1990s.

The film also goes behind the scenes, examining the rehearsal process of a number of the performers including Lypsinka and the "Wigstock Dancers." Members of the crew assembling the stage and attendees are interviewed about their experiences at the festival and some of the performers give interviews about the importance of drag and transgressive gender expression in their lives. One memorable moment features Wigstock MC Lady Bunny on the telephone with a city representative inquiring about the possibility of placing a wig on the Statue of Liberty.

:gayhappy: :gayhappy: :gayhappy:

[O Really]

"Wind River" on Netflix.

[GoCubsGo]

"Wind River" on Netflix.

Never heard of it, but great reviews.

On my list.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/wind_river_2017

[Vrede too]

Joker (2019 film)

... Joker was a box office success and set records for an October release. It grossed over $1 billion, the first R-rated film to do so, and became the sixth-highest-grossing film of 2019 during its theatrical run. The film also received numerous accolades. At the 92nd Academy Awards, it earned a leading 11 nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay, winning Best Actor for Phoenix and Best Original Score for Hildur Guðnadóttir.

Brilliantly acted and made . . . and one of the most disturbing and depressing films I've ever watched. This ain't your cartoonish 1960s Joker.

[Whack9]

The Matrix, Low Budget Version:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglev ... urce=share

[Whack9]

Low cost titanic:

[Vrede too]

[Vrede too]

Yoga Hosers

Lousy ratings so I won't bother watching, but great title. Namaste, eh?