April 15th
13:50
13:50
"There’s no action. No dinosaurs. Just hold still, okay?…No 3D."
— Older guy to younger guy behind me in the cinema for Upstream Color.
Hiroshi Sugimoto - Theaters (1978-93)
Artist’s statement:
“I’m a habitual self-interlocutor. Around the time I started photographing at the Natural History Museum, one evening I had a near-hallucinatory vision. The question-and-answer session that led to this vision went something like this:
Suppose you shoot a whole movie in a single frame?
And the answer:
You get a shining screen.
Immediately I sprang to action, experimenting toward realizing this vision. Dressed up as a tourist, I walked into a cheap cinema in the East Village with a large-format camera. As soon as the movie started, I fixed the shutter at a wide-open aperture, and two hours later when the movie finished, I clicked the shutter closed.
That evening, I developed the film, and the vision exploded behind my eyes.”
December 5, 2012 screening of Life of Pi at the Piscine Pailleron in Paris, France
Well, now I just want to watch Jaws on a boat.
"We go to the movies to celebrate and escape, to share our ineffable love for something with hundreds of strangers in close quarters. We feel safe there and exhilarated at the same time. James Holmes can’t take that away from us, and neither can crass reporters or opportunistic politicians. This is what we do. We buy our tickets months in advance and we stand in line for hours without growing tired or cranky because we’re propelled by the shared elation of everyone standing in line with us. We have our preferred seats and our favorite snacks and we make sure we go to the bathroom early so we don’t miss the trailers. We stay until the end of the credits and then we stand in the lobby for half an hour and talk about what we just saw with our friends. And then we get on Facebook and Twitter and blogs and share our impressions with the world. We save our ticket stubs and we remember for the rest of our lives the first time we saw our favorite movies on the big screen. This is what we do, and it means something to us. So we should keep doing it."
—
Meredith Borders, Bad Ass Digest and The Alamo Drafthouse
Go See A Movie In A Theater This Weekend | Badass Digest
(via popculturebrain)
Carl Weese, America’s Forgotten Drive-In Theaters
April 10th
19:47
19:47
Crying for days. Jurassic Park AND Back to The Future in 35 mm!
Throughout the mid to late 1970s and upwards, Hiroshi Sugimoto packed up a folding 4x5 camera & tripod, surreptitiously entered matinees (and, one can only presume, evening film events) and documented the interior of movie theatres across the United States. He would open the shutter just before the ‘first light’ hit the screen and close it after the credits finished rolling and before the house lights came on. Using this method he was able to invert the subject/object relationship of the movie theatre and use the film itself to illuminate the proscenium and interior. This content, largely unaddressed critically, is what lends the images their incredible power — along wtih the natural fascination of being made privy to the photography’s divine birthright — allowing us to see the normally invisible, to experience a finite collapse of time.
Yesterday I went and saw The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It was great, I loved it, and I’ll see it again. The problem I had was with the three assholes behind me who added commentary the entire time. 3 film nerds who needed to dissect the work right then and there. Let us watch the movie first, take it all in, and then when it comes out on blu-ray, DVD, On-demand (I’m not playing favorites) you can gather round the television and probe it to no end.
I’ve seen at least one movie a week, every week, for the past year and folks talking during the movie is becoming common place. Just shut the fuck up for two hours. If you have questions about the film, save it for the end. Most likely the person sitting next to you doesn’t have the answers because they’re also seeing the movie for the first time. Take the film in, let it sit for awhile, its probably not that complicated. Most movies these days are popcorn fodder anyway.
If all else fails we hire new ushers, my vote is the creatures from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Episode “Hush”, and have them take your voice box until the movie is over. Don’t forget to pick it up on the way out.
