people who talk through movies

*repeated singing of "Wearing an Inside-Out Face" (from a BUCKETHEAD album) from my roommate, to no one in particular
*repeated shouts of "IT'S DANNY GLOVER!"
*a conversation from the sofa to the kitchen regarding whether or not they still had green sauce at Taco Bell
*a conversation from the girl in the recliner on my left to the girl sitting on the sofa to my right about court fines
*five occasions wherein the guy who had seen the movie before goes "oh yeah, this is a good part!"

FUCK OTHER PEOPLE.

http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/mol/inlines/v_men.jpg

hahaha that sounds like MY dad, but his is TANKS ("ooooh, what a PANZER")

I talk during TV shows sometimes, however whenever my mom and I watch some kind of drama, if it's just begun she'll be all "who's that? what's he want? ooh, where are they going?" as if I know the answers any better.

I had to shush somebody during "Reign of Fire," he was snickering inappropriately.

And, really, for folks that can't follow what's going on & feel the need to ask about salient plot points, how about PAYING ATTENTION?!?! (Hi Mom!) or doing what I do and just follow along vigilantly until stuff makes sense, or pop the WTF questions @ the end of the flick.

When I'm watching a DVD, & my roomy or friend starts talking as if I'm not watching a movie, I usually do a polite variation of Jordan's pause & glare move. If said friend doesn't take the hint, then the "AHEM" comes out.

To teenagers in luv paying $9 on a Friday night to bitch out their SOs in the comfort of carpeted reclining chairs - try going to Starbucks or Taco Bell, would ya?

[xpost]

Oh, wow - if I had a thing for every time my mom would be watching Law and Order or some other attention-intensive drama when I was a disgruntled teenager & she'd ask me questions that were meant to be resolved at the end of the show or before (cf. "who did it?", "where are they going?", "is she really a man?", "why is he not telling the truth?", "is he dead?") and I mouthed off like a smartass...

[xpost #2]

There is no HELL worse than watching a film w/ elderly folk that have no idea what the hell is going on and/or are so bored / upset by the movie that they start grousing & crabbing about it at normal speaking volume. Except maybe the mother / father bringing the young baby w/ them and, when said baby starts w/ the WAAAAH, decide to work the "shhhh" angle or (WORSE!) move near the entrance so they're out of sight but still audible. Gnnnnnnah.

There's a thread about this topic already, isn't there?

I saw BoogeyMan and Cursed recently in theaters crowed with city teeny-boppers, and they were cracking me up, giving lots of loud advice and warnings: "He's gonna kill you, man, he's gonna KILL YOU!!"

Of course, there were Skittles and empty nacho trays flying through the air as well, and that wasn't so cool...

- People who talk during movies.
- People who arrive LATE to movies (what? No clocks in your house?)
- People who BRING THEIR OWN FUCKING FOOD to the movies
- People who BRING LITTLE CHILDREN to inappropriate films
- People who don't turn off their cellphones at the movies.

And there is a special circle in hell for people who ANSWER their fuckin' cellphones at the movies.

I can understand the other ones, but what the shit does that have to do with YOUR movie experience?

she also does this with chinese films with no subtitles, when she speaks chinese and I don't.

My dad has a forced humongous laugh/running commentary that he used when he watched shit tv like COPS or America's Funniest Home Videos or Harry and the Hendersons. Because I would be reading or in another room and he wanted me to be so enticed by the hijinks that I was obviously missing, that I would come running and share in the splendor that is happening on my tv.

xpst

Sorry, am I crunching my 50¢ M&M's too loud for you? I know, those $2.00 M&M's are so much quieter. Sorry about that.

xpost

- People who arrive LATE to movies (what? No clocks in your house?)

this really bugs me too. if you can't make it to the movie on time, wait for the next one or go see something else. it's unfair to the people who paid to watch ALL of the movie in relative peace and quiet when you show up ten minutes after the opening credits, spend ten minutes walking up and down the aisles in the dark like a clueless idiot, and push through half a row of people before you decide you don't want to sit in that row. look, if you have to be late, just do us all a favor and SIT THE FUCK DOWN WHEREVER. it's only 90 minutes out of your life.

xpost

I can't find the one with the drippy sandwich. If I search for it though, I'll probably break the internet again.

Apart from all of the hate crimes listed above, my other favourite is when I'm trying to watch the closing credits and it's a complete waste of time because the screen is obscured by all the wankers running for the exit as soon as they begin, because otherwise they might have to spend another 2 minutes sitting quietly in a cinema which they obviously hate so why the fuck did they go in the first place.

Also, people who think you don't have to shut the fuck up until after the opening credits are over and maybe there's been a few lines of dialogue. Do these people start books on the 10th page or something?

this used to bother me, but now the imdb exists and i can read the credits whenever i want.

i realize i'm a young, relatively healthy person with a decent amount of control over my bodily functions, but if i know that if i'm going to be watching a movie in a theater for two hours, with other people watching a movie in the same theater for the same two hours, i plan ahead so i won't have to run to the bathroom during the film. if i absolutely HAVE to go (and you're right; some people do), i try to sit in an aisle seat to make my exit quicker, quieter, and less conspicuous.

Yeah, and sometimes the closing music is part of the emotional arc of the movie, or you're really desperate to know who played a particular song right now, or there's even an extra little bit of movie tucked away in there...walking out straight away's like jumping out of bed and getting dressed the instant you've shot your load.

Also, I remember going to see The Negotiator back in high school and thirty minutes in, two GIGANTIC fatass sat down right next to me (and I mean fat as in "spilled over into my seat EW EW EW EW EW"). And then proceeded to talk about every single aspect of the movie (which they'd clearly seen before) - INCLUDING THE ENDING. I have never in my life wished that cancer was caused by eating excessive amounts of ham before or since, but the shoe fit really well right then.

The moral of the story is that most people should be dropped from a great height.

haha this typo is beautiful

is anyone else thinking of that scene from 'slacker'?

in france most audiences stay until the end of the credits. that is, they stay seated and relatively quiet. this is starting to change, in the big american-style multiplexes. but go to a non-chain theater in paris, and unless there's some unusual circumstance, if you get up noisily just as the credits come on, you will be pretty much alone.

Holy crap, this is a GREAT idea!

also, did you know that mcdonald's made the baby jesus fat??

They're not forcing you to buy them and drink all 64 oz.!

i was thinking of annie hall.

there are some theaters that actually charge reasonable (!!!) prices for candies and sodas, in which cases i'm happy to buy them.

of course everyone knows that the economy of theatergoing is such that most theaters make a large amount of their profit based on concessions! right?!

xxpost

what scene in 'annie hall'? i haven't seen that movie for ages. in 'slacker' there's the scene where the couple show up late, and the girl doesn't want to miss the beginning, so they agree to meet up in a while before the next screening. that's when she ducks into the bookstore and meets the kennedy-assassination-conspiracy-theorist.

p.s. as an example of why to stay until the end of the credits: 'sonatine'!!!

argh xpost

yes tracer, the same theaters where people stay until the end of the credits typically do not sell concessions. but the big american-style multiplexes--the ones where people WILL leave during the credits--do sell concessions. and even the MK2 theaters--sort of multiplexes with an arthouse soul--have started to sell candies and stuff.

xpost

thx blount, i forgot about that and thought jbr was referncing the mcluhan thing. was that in 'annie hall' too?

You have to forgive people who must get up to refresh their gin and tonic.

TICKET CLERK
It started two minutes ago.

ALVY
(Hitting his hand on the counter)
That's it! Forget it! I-I can't go in.

ANNIE
Two minutes, Alvy.

ALVY
(Overlapping Annie)
No, I'm sorry, I can't do it. We-we've
blown it already. I-you know, uh, I-I
can't go in in the middle.

ANNIE
In the middle?
(Alvy nods his head yes and let's
out an exasperated sigh)
We'll only miss the titles. They're in
Swedish.

ALVY
You wanna get coffee for two hours or
something? We'll go next-

ANNIE
Two hours? No, u-uh, I'm going in.
I'm going in.

She moves past the ticket clerk.

ALVY
(Waving to Annie)
Go ahead. Good-bye.

Annie moves back to Alvy and takes his arm.

ANNIE
Look, while we're talking we could be
inside, you know that?

ALVY
(Watching people with tickets move
past them)
Hey, can we not stand here and argue in
front of everybody, 'cause I get embarrassed.

ANNIE
Alright. All right, all right, so whatta
you wanna do?

ALVY
I don't know now. You-you wanna go to
another movie?
(Annie nods her head and shrugs
her shoulders disgustedly as Alvy,
gesturing with his band, looks at
her)
So let's go see The Sorrow and the Pity.

ANNIE
Oh, come on, we've seen it. I'm not in
the mood to see a four-hour documentary
on Nazis.

ALVY
Well, I'm sorry, I-I can't ... I-I-I've
gotta see a picture exactly from the start
to the finish, 'cause-'cause I'm anal.

ANNIE
(Laughing now)
H'h, that's a polite word for what you are.

yes. my cousin manages a second-run theatre. i ask why, just every once in a while, they don't show something that isn't total crap. apparently, people who go to "arty" movies tend to not buy concessions.

oh and:

alcohol + film screenings = disaster

Oops, you've either never ever had someone walk into your line of sight, your peripheral vision is godawful, or your ability to immerse yourself in a flick is something we should all envy.

Also, I have been That Guy w/ the $15.00 soda (hi Leon!), but I usually don't do that during premieres & junk, if only because I just had dinner w/ friends & don't want to spend more $$$$ on that stuff. I DO buy goodies @ the miniplex-arthouse place, though, even if my teeth balk @ having to contend w/ Sour Patch Kid residue & gloriously disgusting Twizzler chewiness.

Anyway, a soda story - I went to see Minority Report as a matinee, got myself some Mountain Dew & Twizzlers, chugged down my goodies all quick & num num, enjoyed the first hour-plus, but then felt The Need. I was hoping to hold on until the end of the flick, but no dice. So I scoot off to the other end of the multiplex, do my #1, and scoot back, taking a empty seat closer to the screen as stuff happens. (Ah, bless you, matinees.) Of course, I went wee-wee right before Colin Farrel was shot & the big reveal was made, so when I got back, I was "huh?" for a good 15-20 minutes.

Baby Jesus should do at least 1 hour of exercise a day. So should I, but I'm not Baby Jesus.

Also also also - w/ all the damn commercials & trailers tacked onto the start of most multiplex showings, if you STILL show up late (and, by late, I mean 10 minutes in), you should be forced to clean out the hot butter dispensers.

the sorrow and the pity's a great flick

Well, that's funny, because I happen to have Mr. McLuhan right here!

so your view is obstructed for a few seconds. big whup.

Oh, and go fuck yourself, Jon Williams, you cock-jockey.

oh yeah the mk2 theaters have a woman come along with one of those strapped-on boxes of candies and stuff and walk through the aisles during the previews. i think i saw this at some other theaters, even some "artsy" ones (the st. germain possibly?). so yes, even old-fashioned movie theaters in france have *concessions*, just not a *concession stand.* and most patrons didn't seem to avail themselves of any of the candies the woman walking the aisles was hawking.

I sneak liquor into theaters - hip flask + crappy matinee = perfection

I don't actually have a problem with people buying this kind of stuff at the concessions, I just hate it for people using it as an excuse for having no control over their bladder.

You'd lose that bet.

Blount, doesn't your multiplex roll out the Magical Consessions Cart for big movie premieres? That's almost like having a vendor work the aisles (though it does involve moving) (and they don't throw stuff at you).

Alex, speaking of food stank, I take it you're not a fan of theatres selling nachos & pizza & hot dogs, then? TS: the smell of drying nacho cheese v. the smell of drying ketchup.

Obviously, the plot doesn't look great written down like that, but trust me, it was a great story.

i used to play a game w/friends where for every glass of whiskey chugged in a western, we'd take a slug from a bottle we'd brought into the theater. however we soon realized that people in westerns drink more whiskey than is humanly possible to drink....

david r: in france, they announce two 'start times' for each screening: when the screening nominally begins, and the time when the *feature* actually begins. in between they play some ads, several previews, and the lights go up again for a few minutes. the only advantage of coming at the earlier time is to see the previews and (if it's going to be crowded) to get a good seat.

Well, I don't condone that either, but in all my years, I've NEVER seen anyone actually order nachos, etc. at a movie theatre. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, just that I haven't experienced it.

But there's something specifically irritating about someone bringing their own smelly fuckin' food to movie theatres.

For what it's worth, I don't like people eating smelly food on subways either. Take care of that shit at home!

i guess it'd be a fun novelty to smoke at a movie occasionally, but ultimately not smoking in movies is a Very Good Thing. no casulaties from horrible theater fires, for one thing.

I used to sneak beer into the Music Palace in Chinatown (New York) You could smoke in there too, and just hang out all day with one ticket. In one day you'd usually see 1) a comedy, 2) an action movie, and 3) a romance. There were some totally disgusting people in there, guys who would just drink and sleep all day. I have an image permanently burned into my brain of this one filthy guy who sat in the third row or so, right on the aisle, with no shoes on his feet and two empty two-liter bottles of Pepsi on the floor, flattened out. Maybe he used them for shoes.

Just for the record, I like Alex in NYC!

xpost

Gremlins are magic!

Someone was eating nachos when I saw Huckabees the other month. I got all pissed off, but then realized I was at the dollar theaters and that my $1 wasnt worth getting uptight about.

People coming back from the bathroom already know where they're sitting.

ew, i know. especially when there's no air conditioning. smelly food + confined spaces + no ventilation = not pleasant.

not always, PP! i've seen people coming back from the latrine make more of a distraction precisely because they have to find *their* seat, rather than just any seat.

which is why i take a seat in the back when i return from the bathroom. fuck it; i've missed enough of the movie in the john. the sooner i sit down, the sooner i can get back into what's going on.

I miss having weekday afternoons off, so I could go see any movie just after lunch and be in the theater all by myself. Doing that for a year ruined moviegoing for me.

Crowds at the Dallas arthouse theaters suuuuuck. Standard assholism+yuppie privilege=constant chatter, fashionably late appearances, etc..

Crowds at the Dallas arthouse theaters suuuuuck. Standard assholism+yuppie privilege=constant chatter, fashionably late appearances, etc..

I miss having weekday afternoons off, so I could go see any movie just after lunch and be in the theater all by myself. Doing that for a year ruined moviegoing for me.

I went to the movies on Monday night and there were precisely 9 people in the whole cinema including myself. This asshat couple sat 2 rows behind me diagonally across the aisle and whispered and gigled throughout the entire movie. I wanted to smack them.

It's like when there is a whole empty beach to sit on and some tool puts their towel down 2 metres away from you.

it was a small beach and you picked a good spot, duh

also "yards"

also "yards"

no, meters.

btw, "walterkranz" needs to eat shit.

ie, If you really hate people so much that you cause rude interruptions in a movie theater you should really just stay home and watch overrated HBO series.

Sneaking food into movies is classic. Sneaking booze is even better.

Sounds good to me. In fact sneaking booze is classic full stop

I used to be all uncomfortable about telling people to shut up, but over the years I've been pushed too far. If I hear someone's voice more than once, I ask them to be quiet. If I hear it again after that, I tell 'em to shut up.

my kinda guy:
http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20081226_Phila__man_shot_because_family_talked_during_movie.html

Tough but fair.

go for the Diet Coke on the neck.

well it's not like he shot him dead.

depends on the type of movie - silly comedy or horror or whatever its totally acceptable - btw the audience reaction when everyone get shot in the head in the departed was one of the best moments at the movies ever

I'm glad you recognize that was a silly comedy.

still RONG and why I prefer to attend 11 a.m. shows where average patron age is 74.

morbs why are you still going to see scorsese movies when that guy ran outta gas before Clinton took office

I liked Kundun and the 2 film-history compilations.

DEPARTED <3 4 EVA "BETTER THAN KING OF COMEDY"

my friend who is a film director was arrested and spent the night in the cells at sevenoaks police station for shushing two teenagers rather vehemently (no joke).

i just emailed him to find out what the film was

still RONG and why I prefer to attend 11 a.m. shows where average patron age is 74.

― Dr Morbius, Saturday, December 27, 2008 10:58 AM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is OTM

joke about peer group

i just emailed him to find out what the film was

― caek, Saturday, December 27, 2008 4:51 PM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

million dollar baby. hahahahaha.

a few times this past year, i just went and switched theaters because of the volume of the audience chatter.

honestly old folks are the worst offenders here. i try to avoid shows with lots of old folks. but i did see benjamin button with a bunch of old folks yesterday and they were very polite, so go figure.

it's the 25–59 sweet spot that actually knows how to shut up, on average.

still RONG and why I prefer to attend 11 a.m. shows where average patron age is 74.

Bah! If only. Man, 11 a.m. is when they take the kids to movies. In Idaho Falls, 'they' meant all the kiddie day cares. Why are a bunch of toddlers interested in seeing "Star Trek: First Contact"? Apparently they aren't, daycare people, leading to one loud-ass kiddie cacophony. Why were all the daycare kids at "A Mighty Wind"? I don't know. Oh man.

Old folks are bad, too. There's one independent theater in the area in the tourist part of town, among all the "Billy the Kid was here" kind of stuff and expensive knick-knack & gewgaw boutiques where all the old people go. Old people are at the theater. The one time I went to a movie there, they opened with a thing saying "please turn off all your cell phones" and the retiree audience APPLAUDED. Cool! They then proceeded, all of them, to talk extremely loudly over the entire film.

My husband will only go to 11am Sunday morning screenings, b/c he hates people. I hate mornings, so it's a rough compromise.

Worst in the entire history of the world is watching movies with my in-laws. "Who's that? He's the guy from what's that show called...BEN? [calling to husband in next room] WHAT'S THE NAME OF THAT GUY FROM THAT SHOW?"...Or choosing not to watch whatever movie we decide to watch but then joining us halfway through and demanding to know everything that's happened.

Best ever: Christmas day, watching 'West Side Story' with family. Father-in law WAY grumpy about the length of time we'd been watching the movie. Grumped down the stairs, 'you still watching this?'. So he sits on the couch, hoping we'll take pity and turn on PBS or something. My niece and I got up to get a glass of water, and my sister-inlaw had started playing with the new puppy on the living room floor...we come back and sit on the couch, and the TV screen is black. We look at my father in law: WTF? He's indignant, "Well no one was watching it." We had our BACKS TURNED FOR 1 minute!!! Then he pretended that he didn't know how to use the remote.

Old people really suck sometimes :) Especially when they're family.

so last night i went to a film screening where they were playing a bunch of mostly avant-garde animation-type stuff from the '60s and '70s. the first film shown was this abstract animation from 1963 called 'the critic', written and devised by mel brooks, who "narrates" the film in the voice of a cranky 71-year-old russian jewish filmgoer who keeps loudly kvetching about the film he's watching, while the rest of the audience shushes him and tells him to be quiet. it's a good, funny short, which is handily on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otPkk1sUFkI

but i was sitting directly next to a fellow at this screening who insisted on leaning over and saying something to me in the darkness between each film (of which there were about a dozen). there was a film shot at coney island, after which he asked me if i'd ever read lawrence ferlinghetti and then told me about the go kart he bought that him and his friends would drive while they were getting drunk*. after a film shot at watts towers, he asked me if i'd ever been and then told me about this great restaurant in the vicinity of the towers that i should go to sometime. this was already getting on my nerves (i'm not wholesale opposed to between-film chatter but this guy was mostly just spouting inanities), but then: the final film of the night was this rarely-screened james whitney film, 'wu ming', which is about 17 minutes long and silent. it's a gorgeous film, full of these incredible swathes of color and this hypnotic sequence in the middle of a black dot shrinking down to nothing that might've tough to sit through otherwise but just seemed to work perfectly within the context of this film. anyway, the audience watching is pretty much rapt, until about halfway through it, in the total silence of the theater, when the guy blurts out "FOR THIS I PAID $2.50???" a la the kvetching mel brooks character from the first film. he then proceeded to turn on his digital camera (which made a nice WHOOOOSHing sound) and take a picture of the screen. my friend and some of the other audience members told the guy after the screening "hey, thanks for ruining that for us, some people here have waited more than ten years to see that film." to which he grinned and responded "well, hey, it's a public forum, it's for the people", and then bolted before the q&a (to my relief).

after the show i was standing outside with my friend and he approached me: "oh, this is the young man i was bothering throughout the night! tell me, did you think that joke was funny? or do you think i was being annoying?"

"you were REALLY annoying. you were bothering pretty much everybody in the theater, and nobody appreciated your joke."

"oh, well, okay then." (traipses off)

like, waht

*admittedly this story might have been entertaining to hear in some other context but wrong place, wrong time, pal

I would have slapped him.

"You ever go to an Eric Clapton concert with your own fucking guitar???"--Bill Hicks

I think the defense of "hey I paid for this too, I can talk if I want" is more infuriating than the actual crime itself.

For a second I thought he was standing outside with HIS friend, which didn't seem possible.

Also liked this the previous post from VegemiteGrrrl, especially

"Who's that? He's the guy from what's that show called...BEN? [calling to husband in next room] WHAT'S THE NAME OF THAT GUY FROM THAT SHOW?"

the theatre antics are bad enough to the point where I have to strategically choose theatres based on the movie I'm seeing and the typical demographic of the theatre to ensure I don't have a shitty experience.

ie, Paranormal Activity 3, opening night I knew to avoid the theatre near the college because of the way they ruin those types of movies...but if it's like Hot Tub Time Machine, it's ok. if it's an arty film, there's one theatre nearby that gets em, but I know a bunch of middle-aged doofuses are gonna talk through it (like they did at Animal Kingdom) and that I should just rent it on DVD.

this was actually a free screening. BUT STILL.

doesn't even matter!

what part of the "don't be a dick" rule do people not get? that and texting...there was a debate on that on the local art movie forum and some people were cautiously defending it by saying "well if there was an emergency who am I to say the text isn't important"...and it's like, I've gone to movies with cell phones for like, 10+ years and haven't had that happen once yet. Of course it's possible, but like, what would you have done before cell phones?

"I have this strange feeling that little Joey broke his leg, gotta go now, bye folks"

I just wish they'd hire ushers who gave a fuck about kicking people out for talking during movies. Obviously some high school kid getting paid minimum wage isn't going to bother confronting someone for the shitty wage they get paid, and I don't blame 'em in the least, but it'd be nice if there was some sort of example set of like YOU WILL GET KICKED OUT, SO DON'T DO THIS or something.

Good luck with that.

Well yeah, thats why I said "I wish" instead of "I can't wait for this to be implemented".

what would you have done before cell phones?

every fucker who can't bear to be parted from their phone for 2 hours shd have this tattooed on their face

I went to a midnight screening of the Warriors and every time a woman would appear on screen, this dude in the front row trying to be funny would say like, "Oh yeah, take my gravy. Hot gravy." He did it like 20 times.

Regal has a þhing where if you ask, you get 20 crown club bonus points and they give you this little handheld device with buttons that you press to alert people to devious behavior in the theatre (one of the buttons is bootlegging, lol)

My friend and I used to participate all the time but nobody ever acted out when we had it

When I go to Florida to visit my family, the cellphone thing is out of control compared to New York. Like just fat redneck one-tooths hunched in their seats with it blinking on their laps. I've found its def more effective to lean over and say, "Hey, that's really distracting could you put that away thanks" as opposed to screeching what I'm thinking which is "YOU ARE WORTHLESS, SUB-LITERATE FLORIDA SWAMPTRASH AND NO ONE IMPORTANT COULD POSSIBLY BE TEXTING YOU RIGHT NOW"

Anil Dash, asshole fuckface

http://dashes.com/anil/2013/08/shushers-wrong-about-movies-wrong-about-the-world.html

ugh, what an idiot

there's a huge difference between an audience expressing enthusiasm about a movie (which is fun to be part of) and a theater filled with assholes checking their phone every 10 minutes (which is not)

if only movie theaters would realize that it's only their own sense of privilege and entitlement that makes them flash those "turn off your phone" signs before the movie

That whole "Why should YOUR preferences decide how everyone ELSE behaves?" is such a non-fucking-started. Because MY preferences don't interrupt, distract and bother other paying customers, shithead. That's why.

Glenn Kenny with something of a response:

I am not a historian so I cannot even begin to pinpoint the time during which the notion of the movie theater as a consecrated space came into being. But given certain cultural signifiers—the movie line confrontation scene in Annie Hall, for instance, and that movie's lead character Alvie Singer's neurotic refusal to enter a theater once the opening credits of a picture have begun—I infer that the art film, the repertory cinema, and the counterculture all had something to do with it. As for the end of the idea of the movie theater as a consecrated space, I could guess that future historians will pinpoint Susan Sontag's 1996 New York Times Magazine piece "The Decay of Cinema" as the green flag in the race to the end of it all. What Sontag experienced as the death of cinephilia has become, for a generation more than once removed from her own, a miniaturization and privatization, as it were, of cinephilia, with the theatrical experience and all its multiform glories and discontents being just one aspect of it. I'm old enough to have experienced both kinds, and while in many respect I prefer the thing that Sontag lamented, I'm not entirely discontent with the other. What one misses, increasingly, is something that may have always been a kind of willed delusion anyway: that in giving over our rapt attention to a screen we were engaging in a form of actual cultural communion rather than merely consuming a product. It's pretty clear from my reading of Dash that in his world, what constitutes culture is ONLY product, and that really is the thing that gives him an airtight case. Ah, materialism.

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2013/08/the-myth-of-the-consecrated-movie-theater.html

Oh god, I hope that if I get distracted by someone talking during a movie and shush them they don't counter with some fucking longwinded philosophy...

Chapter XIV—The Orchestra, Conversation, and the Censorship. In this chapter, on page 189, I suggest suppressing the orchestra entirely and encouraging the audience to talk about the film. No photoplay people have risen to contradict this theory, but it is a chapter that once caused me great embarrassment. With Christopher Morley, the well-known author of Shandygaff and other temperance literature, I was trying to prove out this chapter. As soon as the orchestra stopped, while the show rolled on in glory, I talked about the main points in this book, illustrating it by the film before us. Almost everything that happened was a happy illustration of my ideas. But there were two shop girls in front of us awfully in love with a certain second-rate actor who insisted on kissing the heroine every so often, and with her apparent approval. Every time we talked about that those shop girls glared at us as though we were robbing them of their time and money. Finally one of them dragged the other out into the aisle, and dashed out of the house with her dear chum, saying, so all could hear: "Well, come on, Terasa, we might as well go, if these two talking pests are going to keep this up behind us." The poor girl's voice trembled. She was in tears. She was gone before we could apologize or offer flowers. So I say in applying this chapter, in our present stage of civilization, sit on the front seat, where no one can hear your whisperings but Mary Pickford on the screen. She is but a shadow there, and will not mind.

I really can't stand people who whine "what if someone shoots up the place" as a rebuttal for not allowing people to actively use phones during a movie.

is your first reaction when bullets start flying to send your boo a msg "hey baby they shootin" rather than, idk, RUNNING?! would the ushers see you on your phone and go "yo man I know we all scared and that we might die but I'ma need you to put that away"?

(prompted by a local who is loudly protesting Chris Rock's "no cell phones" policy at his upcoming show here)

I thought this thread would be about people who communicate entirely thru film quotes/refs

lol

*raises hand*