I watched Backrooms. It’s very good.
I’m an official member of the Morris Theater Co-Op board. I’m going to be running the projector at the theater about once a week. Pro: I get to see a free movie, in addition to my $1 discount. Con: Our scheduled projectionist couldn’t make it tonight, so I’ve volunteered to take it on at the last minute. This will be my first solo! I’m worried that I might forget to flip some essential switch and a horde of movie-goers will lynch me.
Upcoming film The Dog Stars is based on a very good book.
It’s been getting some good press. I have taken a break from horror reviews by Splattercast and Ghost Pirate Entertainment, so don’t know if it was reviewed on either channel. I don’t go to theaters (even if in Morris sorry), so will wait for streaming or disc.
The new Mandalorian bellyflopped at the box office. I’ll watch that when it streams. Maybe people are burnt out on Pascal or the Star Wars franchise. I liked him in Eddington though Phoenix was over the top as usual.
Wait you did a video review of Backrooms. I’ll give that a looksie. I don’t care if there are spoilers.
I AM AT THE THEATER! ALL SYSTEMS ARE GO! I AM IN CHAAARGE!
I’m glad you’re parlaying your projectionist gig into a reason to do movie reviews. Yeah the wallpaper on those walls in the movie is creepy in its aging. I like unreliable narrators and ambiguous endings, the latter a bane of many a book reader or movie goer.
As far as theaters go it’s cool you are so involved in keeping yours going. I’ve seen movie houses come and go in my lifetime. When I was really young my mom took me to see Flipper in a theater that would become one of several local drafthouses into my teens and adulthood where you could order sorta fast food and beer while watching movies that had been out a while. I saw Bambi and Chariots of the Gods at a drive-in in mosquito infested Florida. That would soon become an outdoor porno theater. Who knows what then went on there. Then it was demolished for a housing development.
In my teens the 12 theater complex became popular and replaced the twin theaters. Now we have stadium seating. Last movie I watched in a theater was Terminator: Dark Fate.
Most of the theaters around me are mega-plex chains who don’t require my business. My 55” 4K works just fine.
Enjoy, PZ.
—
Me, I can’t remember the last time I went to see a movie in a public place full of people.
Decades, for sure.
Anyway, nothing wrong with group experiences where one can’t pause or rewind or adjust the volume and must behave as if in public. And the coughing and the sniffing and the chomping and the giggling and chittering and whatnot from the audience sure adds atmosphere. The evocative scent of junk food float in the air… I remember. But I don’t miss it.
(Gotta love the internet just for that)
Suspending disbelief is one of the things I miss from childhood.
I could walk out of a theatre standing on clouds.
This theater also shows the old movies. It’s all old horror movies in October, we just did a matinee of Cry Baby. We actually make good money with the oldies—they’re cheap, and most of our revenue comes from concessions.
I was going to invite you to a showing gratis, John, but I guess you won’t show.
Wait a minute…outdoor porno theater? We used to climb the trees & hillsides to watch cowboy movies. How would you control the mobs peering over the fence?
fishy @ 6
I remember mostly stumbling out of the Fox Theater after 4 hours of watching promos, a double feature, and a couple cartoons in between, feeling bloated and a bit nauseous after eating a huge tub of salty popcorn saturated with real butter, several king size sodas, and 3 or 4 giant candy bars. Mom couldn’t figure out why my brother and I weren’t too talkative during the ride home.
You get me, PZ.
I might still see the movie. Just not in public.
Merits of a movie as a movie and as an outing experience are distinct for me.
Though you make it sound like a nice, smallish venue.
Also, I take it you are right now hard at work, even now movieficating.
(Hobbies: projectionist)
Oh no. I have to work concessions! I’ve never worked retail before!
I may have told this story before.
The first time I saw, “Blazing Saddles,” was outside a drive-in theater in South Dakota, on a family vacation, while staying at a KOA campground.
I was looking over the fence.
PZ has competition. At first I thought Damien Walter was shitting on the movie, but maybe instead “normies” watching the movie with no referent for “avant garde”?
One quote that focuses on the unsettling unease:
He kinda screws up the timeline of Max Weber who I guess had a lecture in 1970 which was around 50 years after he died (~14:17). That’s a howler.
Ok. This take makes me want to see it more. The horror aficionados of Splattercast gave this an all hands on deck review. They give some of the pre-movie online history. They like the movie, but warn it might not be for everyone. These guys don’t play when it comes to their horror takes:
My apologies for dissing Damien Walter in my @13. I thought I heard 1970 but he probably said 1917 which definitely tracks Weber’s life arc:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_as_a_Vocation
Uggh! I was wrong.
Surely the Wikipedia entry is much better for plot details and so forth.
So, a verdict. Not a review.
Surely the Wikipedia entry is much better for plot details and so forth.
Kudos for calling it a verdict rather than a review, given that a ‘spoiler-free review’ is oxymoronic.
Obs, the only way to not ‘spoil’ a report to avoid the storyline and the casting and the outcomes and so forth, no?
Heh. This ‘spoiler’ thingy has forever bemused me.
Pointless way to determine whether to see something, when one can’t know how it goes.
(Do not people rewatch movies? Are they not thus ‘spoiled’? I really don’t get it)
Ummm in the Splattercast video I shared @14 what I heard and the transcript says is:
And yet here we are with someone trying to spin another BS web on me. Whatever.
Review. Why did you even post that? To make me look dishonest?
If you actually watched the video (I strongly doubt it John) or lazily even looked at the time stamps you’ll see START 0:00, INTRO 0:10, REVIEW 0:38, VERDICT 10:35, OUTRO 12:22
I think REVIEW being stamped from 0:38 through 10:35 means something unless you want to misrepresent the facts to shit on me for some bizarre reason I cannot even begin to fathom. That’s John Morales.
I literally wrote “So, a verdict. Not a review.” and “Kudos for calling it a verdict rather than a review”, so I can’t see where any dishonesty allegations occur.
You adduced a video the blurb of which stated what I quoted.
So. Why did I post that?
You posted how other people’s verdict affects your viewing, I posted the converse.
You gave much weight to their opinion, but I give much weight to “the SPOILER-FREE verdict”.
Balancing the scales.
We each weighed in.
—
Instant I saw it, BTW, I found it rather derivative.
For example, Pratchett (L-Space in Guards! Guards!) and Stross (the Hotelscape in Palimpsest).
There’s a comic or two I also remember, and a movie about a staircase. Similar.
Very SCP.
Weasel
Whyever would I thus waste my time?
Again, I quoted. I know I shan’t find out what I want to know.
is damn clear.
That’s what the blurb is for, you know.
Did they lie and then spoil it, or did they tell the truth and avoided ‘spoilers’?
Yup.
I literally quote from the video’s own blurb, and you disputed it.
That’s Hemidactylus. :)
Even Dr. Who did it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Complex
The Great Escape
was brilliant
So the person who had actually watched the Splattercast video and accurately called it a review based on words said is the liar here. The same person who had just apologized for mishearing what video essayist Damien Walter actually said about a Max Weber lecture date. Because honesty. No teachable moments to see in that I guess. Just John’s overinflated ego remaining intact.
You are getting excited.
Not being a psychologist, I shan’t trust my perception of evident paranoia.
I do not know who that essayist may be, but it’s irrelevant to the video’s blurb.
Again, for the third time: I literally quoted the video’s own blurb.
I believed it. Took it at its word.
I didn’t get any further, obs.
Mate! You are the one who took umbrage, who imagined I was somehow trying ‘To make me look dishonest?”. There’s a saying about the guilty fleeing where no-one pursues.
Anyway, our exchange is all there in black and white.
@16, I quoted the blurb and opined.
Nothing at all about you, other than that you yourself adduced that video as authoritative for you.
You always get personal.
I commented about what you adduced and my perception of it, you took it most personally, called me a weasel, imputed I am somehow persecuting you, and whatnot.
So. A teachable moment surely must be here, if one could only see the obvious.
[Ah! I am a bit dim. Sorry]
When I wrote “Kudos for calling it a verdict rather than a review, given that a ‘spoiler-free review’ is oxymoronic.” you thought I was addressing you, not the blurb I had just quoted to open the comment.
Just to make it clear, it never occurred to me until just now you would think that.
I thought the context was perfectly clear.
So. Apologies for being so slow.
Was never about you. De Gustibus etc is my motto.
Happened too many times to be accidental.
On the thread That went about as well as expected you asserted to me “I no longer consider you honest by this.” So…I’m not letting your crap against me slide…ever. If you make any reference adjacent to me, make double sure it can’t be taken the wrong way. My patience is done.
I am not responsible for your paranoia.
And yes, I no longer consider you honest since then.
I maybe should review, could be another case of you perceiving personal shit where I am discussing stuff.
But with your attitude, it would be pointless.
Look: when I quote something, what I write is about that quotation, absent any other context.
I quoted the blurb, I talked about the blurb. Not its provenance.
You seem to be seeking attention, under that. To be feisty.
False positives, however, are not useful for progress.
I never ever claimed your apparent paranoia was accidental.
If I diss you, you will know. Trust me.
Pointless, really. Everyone can see.
Fuck off Morales, yr a disgrace to yrself and a blight on this community,
You think people like you are not disgraceful and a blight?
Look at yourself.
And the true Indy would spin in his grave at thinking you copied the nym.
I need no paranoia, do I? Your malevolent sniping is tedious and predictable.
(My best revenge is you must live with yourself)
When I was a kid the local movie theater, The Broadmoore, held Saturday morning matinees. Ticket was 24-cents because there was a penny tax on 25-cents. So, you paid your quarter and got a penny change that was enough to buy an Atomic Fireball or a licorice stick. Popcorn was a nickel.
You could spend all day there and watch the entire program twice: cartoons, news reel, upcoming trailers, the short and the main feature. Two of my best memories are The Day the Earth Stood Still and Dr. No.
It was win-win for everybody. Cheap and a way to get the kids out of the house for pretty much the whole day. I seem to recall the hours were 10AM to 4PM.
Good times.
Those were the days when admission meant you could stay all day and all night, if you could stand it. I remember going at 11am and I’d stay through the evening feature.
If you like to feel queasy, unsettled, horrified, with nasty and/or ambiguous endings, read the fucking news. I need at least a little light at the end of the tunnel for my horror entertainment.
That’s why I loved Alien. If it had been made recently, Ripley and the cat would have been (surprise ‘twist’* ending!) slaughtered at the end.
*Of course, ‘twist’ endings have become so commonplace they aren’t twists anymore.
The theory of the space reminded me of a certain Crichton story. Except set in a mystery house—those patchwork mansions full of screw ups, hyped as haunted products of unfathomable minds. And with fewer people turning on each other as the space indulged them.
Rob Grigjanis @ 33
.
Originally, there was supposed to be an unhappy ending. Fortunately, better / more talented people took over the project, and a generous budget was allocated, along with excellent background music.
.
I am told a notorious horror film schlockmeister tried to get the film project, but for once we live in the alternative universe where something good happened.
(And then Ronald Reagan became president in our timeline )
AAAAARRRGGH!
PZ et al. If you are interested in well-made horror films, there is an unusual one with Salma Hayek, Harvey Keitel and George Cloony, as well as Quentin Tarantino playing a psychopath.
The first half of the film is a crime film, the other half is a vampire film.
From Dusk Till Dawn.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=p0jYPvqQCTg
Try the over-the-top 2007 action movie “Shoot Em’ Up“, starring Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti & Monica Bellucci. Imagine Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd in a hyperviolent action film/comedy.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=z–6dDtDGX0
I remember that one, Birger.
I myself prefer The Cabin in the Woods.
Over-the top? Try Tucker & Dale vs. Evil.
Or He Never Died.
Movies are best if you can catch a matinee or see them later in the run so you get the big screen and big sound experience but without so many people. I’ve managed to do this where a few times I was the only one in the theater and it was fantastic. Some movies just really benefit from that full theater glory that can’t be matched on a home screen. I remember seeing Cloverfield after not having gone to the movies for a while and that was the best way to see it.
I’ve watched plenty of kaiju movies on television and they just don’t have the same impact. Not seeing Godzilla Minus One when it was out is a movie-going regret that will haunt me.
Tabby Lavalamp #40
Exactly.
My local multi-screen theatres used to play the new Friday releases starting at noonish.
That’s when I went to see them.
My cow orkers seemed to enjoy standing in line at 5PM to see the 9PM show.
I’ve been meaning to catch this one. None of the friends seem to interested unfortunately. I might have to watch it alone if I want to see it in the cinema.
The Russian film The Calculator (2014) seems interesting.
Prisoners dumped on a hostile world. A political exile is using game theory to survive.