David Lean Part II - Master of the film epic

[Johann]

If I can chime in, the "earbuds and cellphone crowd" are Legion.
I understand drowning out "the world" when you have earphones on, but keep your wits about you.
Don't isolate yourself to the point where talking directly to another human being in person is terrifying.
I noticed that since the personal computer arrived, people are more fractured and isolated from each other.
They date online, they shop online, they LIVE online.
Sad. There are legions out there that if you were to take away their internet or video games or whatever they would commit suicide.
That is something to be terrified of.
Those people I do not want to meet.

[Chris Knipp]

Yes, and likewise the film experience is becoming less and less collective and more private. No longer do people even go to a central gathering place to pick up rental movies to watch at home. Instead they download them or order them sent in the mail, via the Internet, without talking to anybody. And fewer go out to see movies in cinemas or cineplexes. They buy giant flat screens and elaborate devices for projecting and receiving movies, the big home video setups meant (incomprehensibly; but look at the prevalence of MP3 sound) to duplicate a big movie screen and professional projection.

Apropos of which I'd like to refer to Tarantino's regular point that it all comes down to the projectionist. In other words, you can have the fanciest new format you want, but the viewing experience in the cinema is only as good as the guy operating the machinery. And in general these are worse and worse. In the old days I didn't have to go to the lobby to get somebody to adjust the sound; or go to point out that the feature had not even started up at all. There was somebody up there watching and doing their best. Somebody who know their stuff.

[Johann]

Amen. Cinema will never die, but the standards have definitely slipped.
I've had to tell managers (who leave the projection booth after merely flipping a switch) that a film stopped running.
We sat in the dark for like, 6 or 7 minutes before I said to myself "nobody's doing jack".
The managers are usually the projectionists now (unless it's an IMAX theatre). They train them to flip a switch or spin a platter or whatever they do now instead of changing reels. Efficient? hardly.

Remember that lore about Stanley Kubrick famously making his projectionists turn away from the screen after they begin the film?
I love that.
Kubrick was a DIRECTOR.

[Chris Knipp]

There is a restored local movie theater near me now. It failed once, lay fallow for several years, then was renewed again, and is not a success, maybe due to excellent food and bear and wine delivered to your seat, hamburgers, chicken salads, and pizzas made on the premises. And today on Twitter I see this

Michael Moore ‏@MMFlint 6m
We open another newly-restored movie palace tonite in Manistee, MI. The Vogue Theatre, orig built in the 1930s, now a gift to the community.

If Moore is doing this as a general project it's admirable. Really nice local cinemas with strong local support can restore the art of moviegoing. Let's not forget that going to a cineplex is a lot like shopping at Walmart.

[cinemabon]

There was a time when the viewing process hit rock bottom. I don't know if they had any "bowling alley" cinemas near you (I called them that because they were long narrow corridors where the center seats were taken out and the screen at the end of the corridor was barely twenty feet across; plus, the lights were never turned off! An abysmal affair! The appearance made me think of a bowling lane by its configuration). There were a plethora of them built in the early 1970's when most one-screen movie palaces collapsed and urban decay - which had started in the mid-1960's - closed most of them. In the suburbs, these bowling alley cinemas sprang up with the worst possible viewing experience imaginable. The popcorn used to arrive in big long phallic-looking plastic bags - popped the day before! Until the early 1990's when "stadium theaters" brought back the semblance of a decent viewing experience, these theaters were responsible for the fall and decline of the film industry and nearly dealt cinema a death blow.

Thanks, Chris on the update that movies were still being shot on 65mm stock. I had no idea some directors were still using the format (either Vistavision cameras, which run sideways/horizontally or SuperPanavision 65 cameras, which run the film vertically but with huge magazines that usually held only seven minutes runs at best - about two or three takes of a normal shot). No fuck-up laughter on these takes, please, as one magazine alone costs hundreds of dollars just for the negative stock alone. I would literally kick an actor's ass who messed up a take with that much money on the line (not Bobby DeNiro of course as he could kick my ass easily, hands down).

[cinemabon]

Actor Peter O'toole just passed away today. He was 81. Nominated eight times, O'toole never took home anything except an honorary award given him in 2003 for his contribution to film. So long, Peter. Great career.

[Johann]

Yes. We've lost another one of the Titans of cinema.

Goodbye Peter O'Toole.