Sunday
Dec252022
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
Sunday, December 25, 2022 at 12:21PM Merry merry to all who celebrate anything this time of year. Two questions for you today
- What's the movie gift you want most this season?
- What New Years resolution are you hoping someone in Hollywood makes?
The team is mostly at family or friend gatherings today --I myself am in California meeting the boyfriends family for the first time. Sacramento to be exact so I have been referencing Lady Bird nonstop and threatening to throw myself out of moving cars for dramatic effect. We'll be back shortly with more Oscar volleys, "split decisions" when we disagree on movies, and... drumroll plz... "Year in Review" list-mania. In the meantime check out the updated Oscar charts for Picture, Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, and Visuals.
Reader Comments (17)
Have fun in Sacramento and welcome to the Central Valley! Was there yesterday for Christmas Eve and now with my parents just 30 minutes south of the city. Merry Christmas and have fun experiencing all things Lady Bird! If you have time, catch a movie at the Tower Theater. It is such a lovely old theater in Sacramento.
My Christmas movie wish: that Oscar for Miss Yeoh
Movie Gift: For some movie or cluster of movies, and not just AVATAR, to get people going back to the theaters. I feel like they're hanging on by a thread as a venue for anything but huge spectacles--I went to THE FABLEMANS and THE WHALE, evening show/opening weekend in wide release, and was in nearly empty theaters for both. I have real cineaste friends who have given up on theaters, complaining about talking kids and sticky floors (and that's such a cliche from the 70s. Most theaters clean auditoriums, spilled drinks and all between every show. I haven't felt a "sticky floor" for years). I really can't imagine cinema without movie theaters.
Movie resolution: More maturely handled sex and nudity in movies. Really. I feel like Hollywood has gotten more puritanical than at any time since the early 1960s. Directors bend over backwards to avoid showing nudity in ways that almost compare to that old AUSTIN POWERS gag where vases and houseplants just always seem to be there when a naked character walks across a room. I'm not saying throw in a gratuitous sex scene, but if you're going to have one, have one. Stop panning to the window like it's 1947. If you're going to show the characters in bed right after sex, don't show them having already thrown their underwear on, as if that's the first thing a person does the moment they've climaxed. It's a really strange time. We seem to get frank nudity and sex on TV here and there but not much in theatrical films.
Dan H -- i also haven't felt a sticky floor in years and I go to the movies almost every week at several different theaters and have for years and years. It's been interesting hearing adult conversations about movies (while meeting the boyfriend's extended family). Several people (particulary the grandparent-aged) have said they are looking forward to seeing The Fabelmans (but didn't realize it was already in theaters) the middle aged people have mentioned Banshees of Inisherin and Glass Onion (but didn't seem to realize they were already on HBO and Netflix). The only movies everyone seems to have already seen is Top Gun Maverick (and there is some awareness and scattered familiarity with Elvis and Everything Everywhere All At Once) . Everyone also understands that Avatar is in theaters but they haven't decided if they're going yet.
I'm not the first to observe this but since the pandemic and with shrinking theatrical windows and all these "experimental" release strategies... I think adults have really tuned out. it's no longer a pattern that's predictable or something that's innately understood (theaters for awhile and then cable and/or streaming) so they tune out unless it's a giant event that spends gazillions on advertising. .
Or something.
Since I was an adolescent I went to the movies at least twice week. One of my favorite movie going memories was in a sold out house for the initial release of Rosemary’s Baby. Director Roman Polanski put the camera in the hall outside the bedroom where Minnie Castevet is huddled over the phone whispering. I was in the back. I laughed seeing the audience all lean to attempt look around the bedroom door and eavesdrop. Movies with audiences is a great experience, but you can’t go home again.
After a lifetime of faithful attendance, I stopped going a few years before the pandemic.
I assure you that in the standard multiplex they don’t clean floors regularly between shows. You only need to look at the show times. Staff has only a few minutes to grab trash and sweep up major popcorn spills.
I assure you they don’t clean the restrooms. The floors are swamps of urine. I have never seen an usher with a mop and a bucket.
I assure you every audience has folks who think that an auditorium is their living room. They answer their phones, discuss the film, or just chat when they’re bored. They slurp from their half gallon soda and smack their lips in pleasure.
I invested in a monitor the size of the screen in one of those 1980s mini multiplexes where the theater held 30 to 40 seats. I bought high definition sound equipment and didn’t look back. I don’t miss movie theaters. I celebrate the technological innovations that have lead to streaming and the death of video stores.
The movie that I want to see most is Everything Everyone All at Once as I no longer have Showtime due to the fact that my mother and I chose to get rid of cable though we're still not entirely out of it.
Whoa. My experiences are nothing like Finbar's in movie theatres, so I guess I'm thankful for that. I stream as much as most people, but given what we're seeing from streamers (what the fuck is HBO Max doing?)... it's depressing, to say the least.
So, the movie gift I want: theatres to survive and Hollywood to release films in them.
New Year's Resolution? Warner Bros to release proper Blu-rays of a lot of their great movies for their 100th anniversary. And studios in general to look at their catalogs and restore/release some of their films.
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I thought Lady Bird really got the Sacramento part right. It's always amazing to me that "Sacto" is only 90 minutes (without traffic from San Francisco), but is mostly a world apart.
I used to love going to the Crest Cinema on the K Street Mall when I was a teenager. And then some grand stand-alone cinema closer to South Sacramento, maybe near Tower? I remember seeing Dr. Zhivago there for 75 cents, on re-release in the 70s. I assume neither one of those are still there.
I really miss re-releases and discount movie theaters where you'd see something that came out three months earlier. Can part of my Christmas wish be the revival of revival cinema? The best (only?) thing about BYU was all the cinema they would show for very little money. I want to retire near some college that has intense amounts of cheap cinema that allow outsiders (or at least seniors!) to view movies that are important and interesting.
Reading Finbar's entry here, and thinking realistically about what I'd want in today's world, I really wish that someone in Hollywood, or all of Hollywood, would get around to putting their back catalogs on some streaming service. There has GOT to be a way to make it profitable, or at least "break even." You can often find the Top 20 old titles available on streaming, but where can you go if you suddenly decide you want to explore the films of, say, Ingrid Bergman or William Wyler? There's just no easy way to piece that together. Or not even easy, it's just impossible. So that's what I'd wish for, an easy way to view old movies whenever the mood strikes.
Oh, since watching at home is here to stay, I'd also like to see the rise of Movie Clubs the way you have Book Clubs. People who get together to watch a movie and then talk about it. You'd think it would be simple, no?
I don't know what crappy theaters Finbar McBride goes to, but I go to CineMark and Regal multiplexes in a city of 100,000 in central Texas. Clean theaters, more or less well behaved audiences. (Admittedly once in a while you get a jerk. I usually say "shut up" in a tough guy voice and they usually stop.) Yes, the restrooms can be iffy (meaning usually good, sometimes, shaky, rarely horrible), but they're iffy at the airport and national park visitors centers, too. Doesn't mean I refrain from travel. It's so odd. I know so many people painting this unrecognizable experience of going to the movies as an excuse not to. A friend I love dearly went on and on: loud chewing, babies crying, bad projection, etc. (things that admittedly have happened when I've gone once in a while) but then, "people's nasty body oder." Really? I have gone to at least one film a week in the theaters for, well, forever, sometimes as many as four. I have absolutely NO memory of smelling nasty B.O. sitting watching a movie in a theater.
Seeing films with other people is part of the cinematic experience. When I want a solitary experience, I read a book.
Fellow Sacramentan here! Welcome to our great town, get some Tres Hermanas Mexican while you’re here. And check out the Tower Theater for a movie (briefly featured in Lady Bird)
Count me in the camp that has never understood complaints about movie theaters, though maybe I'm just singularly lucky in that I live in a metropolitan area and go see movies in nice theaters where the audiences are generally well behaved...though I could've done without the peanut gallery commentary of the older gentleman sitting to my left at Banshees of Inisherin today. (Yes, sir, we know what just happened, we're all watching the same movie as you.)
...But yeah, the movie theaters I've been to, even for fairly high-profile Oscar bait movies, have been eerily empty or at best partially filled, which makes me sad. I think Nathaniel has it right - it's so hard to keep track of movies' release schedules, even for us true believers, it's no wonder the more casual viewers have basically tuned out.
@Lynne Lee and NATHANIEL R. I think the thing is, people used to habitually look in the newspaper or on-line every Thursday or Friday to see what was opening that weekend and then go see something if something was opening that they had an interest in. I think the problem now is people, maybe due to COVID, just got out of that habit. I hear people saying things like, "I want to see that [ARMAGEDDON TIME, SHE SAID, whatever]. When does it open?" only for me to have to say, it was here two weeks ago. It's gone now.
I don't think we'll get an all first timers Best Actor line up Cruise will probably get the 5th slot as a big thanks from Hollywood but am praying in my own way for Mescal to make the line up.
I wish that Ana de Armas can somehow leap over Williams and Davis and land a Best Actress nomination for Blonde.
In the movie theatres I mostly go to, you have to choose an assigned seat when you buy your ticket. After the show, the staff know which seats have been occupied, and they spray and wipe them down, along with the hand rails, doors, etc. The washrooms have forms on the wall, where the staff note who inspected the washroom, at what time (usually every hour). Some of the nicer theatres still require that viewers wear masks.
Pre-pandemic, yes, people acted like they were in their living room. Now those people seem to BE in their living room. The nearly empty and half filled theatres seem to have quiet audiences who have actually come to see the movie.
And yes, short release times are hell for group movie going. I used to drag 2 or 3 people with me to some semi-obscure movie. Now while they faff about and finally say, okay, I’m ready now, I have to say, too bad, it’s over.
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