Commenting on Jonathan Rosenbaum's article in Cineaste ("DVDs: A New Form of Collective Cinephilia," Michael Althen wrote that, for him, cinema is not what it used to be:
It only exists in festivals -- and on DVD. That's a long way from my/our former belief that cinema can only exist if it follows the well-known liturgy of an anonymous mass staring at a screen. On the other hand, this was a somehow romantic construct fueled by Truffaut's "Day by Night" and other cinephile movies. To be honest, that was not how I discovered the Movies. Born in [the] Sixties, growing up in a suburb, I saw most of the influential movies of my life on TV: "Le samourai", "The Party," "Jules et Jim", "Citizen Kane", "Le scandale"... Did these less-than-ideal-viewing-circumstances diminish in any way the experience? Maybe.... [Maybe] Cinema is not dead -- but it's different. Its future will be defined by those who grow up having the possibility to choose between Blu-ray at home and 35mm somewhere in the dark.
It seems that cinema, like criticism, is forever dying and never quite dead. (See my recent post, "It's the End of the Cinema as we know it (then and now).") Movie formats and formulas are always being tinkered with -- which is not to say you have to like the new recipes, any more than you were obliged to savor the flavor of New Coke back in the 1980s.
But there's no contesting the reality that, thanks to digital delivery systems (DVD, Blu-ray, downloads), more films, old and new are available in high quality prints than ever before. Thanks to improved technologies, more films are being seen under better circumstances (including high-definition home and computer screens) than at any time in history. To fully appreciate just how good most films now look on digital video, it really helps if you grew up watching movies not only in first-run downtown movie palaces but in neighborhood second-run and bargain theaters, on cathode-ray televisions (first bluish-black-and-white, then garish color), or in classrooms with 16mm Bell & Howell projectors and beat-up nontheatrical prints (often double dupes), or even the well-worn, splicey 35 mm prints that endlessly travelled the repertory-house circuit.
Rosenbaum himself argues that the debate over the optimal way to experience movies (both aesthetically and socially) has been greatly oversimplified:
For far too long, an absolutist either/or mentality has been ruling the debate about changes in global film culture brought about by DVDs (and much the same mentality has needlessly assumed that we have to "choose" between reading about film on paper or on the Internet). Presumably, one is forced to either go along with the doubts and demurrals of some of my favorite programmers and archivists... who stand up for original formats, or to embrace the more optimistic projections of bloggers such as myself and Girish Shambu, who tend to emphasize how many films can be seen nowadays on DVD over the diminished properties and quality of image and sound found in nontheatrical venues.
Last week when I went to see "Splice" at an AMC multiplex in North Seattle, I couldn't help but think how much better the movie would have played at home on my five-year-old 55-inch Sony Bravia and makeshift 5.1 surround system than it did on the big screen in the nearly unoccupied auditorium. It wasn't dark enough in the room, the print was soft (as was the projection), there wasn't enough light on the screen -- even the sound was less than vivid, perhaps due in part to the muddied acoustics of the empty hall. It's not that anything was particularly wrong with the presentation, it just wasn't very good.
(Ironically, the automated platter systems most multiplexes installed in the '70s and '80s -- so simple even a teenager could simply push a button, thus sparing the theater the expense of a union projectionist -- have improved to the point that the overall quality of projection has now risen to the mediocre. There seem to be fewer breakages, equipment failures, egregious focusing and framing problems... but most movies look pretty blah in these characterless boxes anyway. At least they look better than the unavoidable ads and the trailers, many of which are projected in murky video with the houselights half up.)
Most of the complaints about "the theatrical experience" -- justified or not -- haven't changed for decades: rude, noisy audiences; high ticket and concession prices; having to actually pay to sit, captive, while you are bombarded with advertising... And now, of course, there are tweets and texts flashing all over the place, too. No thanks -- I'd rather watch a movie in a dark, quiet room on a sharp screen, enveloped in clear, sharp sound. Whether I'm watching "Splice" or a Lubitsch picture from the '30s, chances are it's going to be a better experience than I could get in almost any theater -- and I can arrange the time and place myself.
Which brings me to the other key issue addressed in Rosenbaum's piece: the social element. The ways we communicate now, through phones and computers, through Facebook as well as face-to-face (thank you), have been extended to our involvement with, and discourse about, movies. Rosenbaum writes:
In the past, cinephilia as a collective experience and activity was almost entirely a matter of audiences experiencing films together, as part of the same crowd--or else, at the very least, comparing notes months later in paper publications. Today there's a new kind of networking that's based much less on people being in the same places at the same times and more on alerting other people to what's available and where and how, and then reflecting on what's seen and heard afterwards, with several others, via the Internet.
Weighing these two experiences against one another, the emphasis has mainly been on the material differences between viewing a film in 35mm on a large cinema screen and viewing a digital transfer on a home screen that is almost always smaller. But surely the social differences are no less pronounced and pertinent, and the changes in how films are now being experienced in social terms apart from their viewing also need to be explored. Those who insist that what was formerly a communal activity has now become a solitary one are often committing the error of limiting the social experience of cinema to a particular set of viewing conditions when it has always been more complicated than that, especially once one takes in such activities as film criticism, film education, and various kinds of discussion. So the extensions of these latter activities via blogging and chatgroups now have to be factored in, along with the relative reduction of people seeing the same films at the same time in the same viewing spaces.
Anybody who follows an ad hoc network of movie bloggers (paid or unpaid) knows that these loosely organized, often overlapping communities carry on discussions that aren't necessarily connected to films that are new in theatrical release. Just as there's been a wide-ranging consideration of "slow/contemplative cinema" in recent weeks in film sites, magazines and personal blogs(Nick James, Steven Shaviro, Harry Tuttle, Vadim Rizov, Glenn Kenny, et al. -- referring back to a 2008 article by Matthew Flanagan, "Towards an Aesthetic of Slow in Contemporary Cinema"), there's no rush to wrap it up. I'm just mentioning it now, though I've been following and thinking about it for, gosh, more than a month. Good grief! That's approximately six years in Internet Time, isn't it? (I'm with Girish on this: we need a Slow Internet Movement along the lines of Slow Food and Slow Cinema, if we're really going to take advantage of the archival nature of the web. It's not just about being first and fast and superficial; it's an opportunity to consider a spectrum of arguments and evidence.)
Anyway, my point -- and Rosenbaum's -- is that the Internet provides a valuable and enjoyable forum for movie-related social interactions (even if a troll should intrude upon occasion). As for the "audience experience," Rosenbaum simply points out that, in the case of many worthwhile films, theatrical screenings are not an option, much less the only option, available to those who want to see them.
He mentions Jacques Rivette' and Suzanne Schiffman's twelve-hour "Out 1" (1971) and Bela Tarr's seven-hour "Sátantángó" (1994) as "extreme examples" -- which got me to thinking once again about whether all films are really "meant to be seen" with an audience. (What if you show up at the theater and there's only a handful of people there? Should you leave and ask for your money back because you're not getting the "full theatrical experience" the filmmakers theoretically intended?)
This issue has long bugged me. When I was a daily newspaper film critic (especially in Los Angeles), studios would invariably insist on screening comedies and action movies in a large auditorium with an invited (usually radio-station giveaway) audience. The idea behind this strategy is that critics would think the movie was funnier or more rousing if they were surrounded by a lot of other people with an incentive to laugh and cheer (after all, they were getting to see a free movie before it opened!). I do not think this worked particularly well for me. I sometimes resented the knee-jerk audience responses (like having someone elbow you in the side to tell you when you're supposed to react). Other times, it was fine. I would recommend seeing Marx Brothers comedies with an audience the first time, if you can. The gags and performances were honed on the road in live tours so the timing for laughs would be just right; when you watch them at home for the 400th time they can appear to have a little too much air in them. As for Buster Keaton, the greatest filmmaker of all time, it doesn't really matter because you may spend so much time wide-eyed in awe that laughing becomes almost incidental. (Some things in Keaton are so funny I honestly do forget to laugh.)
Whether or not you think cinema is dead, or you have reached the end of your own particular road, cinephilia itself is not a thing of the past.
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Did you see on Saturday Rosenbaum re-posted a prescient article of his from 1990 about movies turning into feature-length trailers?
"If my paranoid suspicions are correct, Hollywood has embarked on a 12-year plan regarding the public consumption of trailers. The plan, which has become fully apparent to me over the past year, will come to fruition in the year 2000, and its basic goal, as I see it, is to turn movies themselves into full-fledged commercials that people will pay money to see."
And this, which sounds like nothing if a sage prediction of our current issue of "franchise"-itis in general and the Marvel/Avengers saga in particular:
"...all the movies we’ll see in theaters and on video will be separate feature-length trailers for a single blockbuster that’s perpetually in production — a blockbuster that will never be completed because the economic advisers will soon realize that after years of such hoopla, no movie could possibly live up to so much buildup and hype. By then, however, it won’t matter, because people will be perfectly happy with these enticing trailers. "
As for the viewing experience, due to dreadful distribution of some great movies (how many people had any opportunity to see, say, Chop Shop or A Serious Man in theaters?) and great advances in home viewing, this change is a wholly welcome one. Though there is something romantic to the notion of seeing a movie on the big screen, communally in the picture palaces of yore, one trip to the multiplex on a Friday night will disabuse you of it quickly.
"It wasn't dark enough in the room, the print was soft (as was the projection), there wasn't enough light on the screen -- even the sound was less than vivid, perhaps due in part to the muddied acoustics of the empty hall. It's not that anything was particularly wrong with the presentation, it just wasn't very good."
This is why I don't go to AMC theaters. They're all like that, and I don't really understand why. As you said, there doesn't appear to be anything particularly WRONG with the presentation, and yet the whole thing just seems wrong.
Actually, I don't like any of the big chains. I live in Orange County, CA, an area dominated by Edwards Cinemas, an absolutely horrific chain that cares nothing about the quality of their picture, sound, or screen cleanliness.
But fortunately, I live just a few miles from the only really good theater in the OC, which offers beautiful digital projection, great sound, and comfortable seats. I can't imagine any home theater system being better than that.
O, how I agree with you regarding Edwards Theaters - it is always horific! What good movie theater in OC you are refering I will definitely go there.
As
The Krikorian in Buena Park (although when I went to see Toy Story 3 there last week, there were huge splotches of dirt on the screen resulting from it being cleaned improperly, so I may have to rethink my opinion of it).
This past Saturday, I spent almost all day inside a movie theater. The AFI Theater in Silver Spring is having a retrospective of films by Akira Kurosawa (the greatest filmmaker of all time), and I went to see "Seven Samurai" and "Throne of Blood." It was about the 100th time I had seen "Seven Samurai," but the first time I had seen "Throne of Blood." I liked "Throne of Blood" a lot, but it suffered a little in comparison with "Seven Samurai," which is one of the three movies that alternate as my favorite movie of all time (the others are "A Hard Day's Night" and "The Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring").
The experience ("full theatrical experience" if you will) did not change my opinion of "Seven Samurai," but it was still a terrific experience. Even though I could have had essentially the same experience watching the movie on DVD, I still believe that movies deserve to be seen on the biggest screen possible. This was the same theater where I saw "Lawrence of Arabia" and "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" on the big screen. I had seen them before, but I loved seeing them in a movie theater. A few months ago, I saw Orson Welles' "Chimes at Midnight" at that theater. After seeing it, I had the incredible feeling that I knew a secret that no one else knew. The experience of seeing the film on a big screen enhanced this feeling, more than if I had watched it on Youtube.
I have not had these experiences seeing recent films in movie theaters. I had one of the worst movie-going experiences in my life seeing the "Clash of the Titans" remake. It wasn't that the movie was particularly bad (though it wasn't particularly good), but the experience of seeing it was very depressing. I saw it at the Uptown Theater, the biggest theater in Washington, D.C., but it was almost completely empty and run by employees who looked like they really want to be somewhere else. This was the theater where I saw rereleases of "Star Wars", "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark." This was the theater where I saw completely sold-out shows of all the "Harry Potter" and "Lord of the Rings" movies. This was the theater where I saw "Fellowship of the Ring" on its opening night when I was nine years old and had the greatest movie-going experience of my life. And in the same theater, I was watching a movie that would have been the same if I watched it on a computer (or not watched it at all). None of the new movies I have seen this year (not even a good movie like "The Ghost Writer") was much improved by seeing it in a movie theater.
Maybe we are heading to the point when all movies will be seen on TVs, computers, and IPods. It certainly will make it easier for people to see the movies they want to see. Maybe we will only be left with the memories of seeing movies on enormous screens. But I hope that there are still movie theaters. These should not be places where studios depend on ticket sales for revenue. It is possible that not many people will go to these theaters. But there should be a way for people to engage in one of the strangest and most wonderful of human activities: a group of complete strangers gathering in a dark room to watch shadows on a wall.
I really dread giving dumb movies a theatrical experience. Plus the theater always makes the dumb films seem better. The audience, the thundering music, the everything is all imposing enough that I'll fall for even crappy manipulation. So I usually watch the new releases on my computer, unless it's a director I trust. Where then I'd learn that a certain film was not crappy and deserved a theatrical viewing, but by then its screening time is over! Isn't it an awesome strategy?
Sin City(2005) I wish I hadn't wasted a theater outing on because of how unimaginative and boring it was. Yet, oddly, I Think I Love My Wife(2007) I found totally deserved the big screen. It's as if you're a companion in Chris Rock's head and the auditorium is his noggin. It's just an intimacy, that I'm glad I got to experience, that wouldn't have been as strong on a smaller screen.
That archival nature! I've always found it insurmountably annoying that some of the best film sites around don't bother putting their posts into nice categories.
In fact, come to think of it, there should be some sort of new site where every essay by the best writers in the blogosphere are categorised.
It ould be so awesome; at one click, I get to have access to all the criticism about a film by writers I admire, sort of like the IMDb external reviews section, but you know, filled with good writing.
Also, one funny thing: compared to cinephilia, bibliophila on the net is a much less social endeavour. All the best book blogs stick to reviews and talk about prizes, whereas most of the great film blogs thrive almost completely on general discussion.
Being a child of the '80's I remember growing up and hearing film critics, film-makers, and film historians talk about the joy of seeing a great film for the first time with an audience, in a theater. It seemed like such an experience compared to my story ("I heard it was good, so, you know, I rented it...").
But it's only recently that I realized that watching all of these films on home video really shaped the relationship my generation of film-lovers have with their favorite films. The film-watching experience is more personal because you (and you alone) connected with the film the first time you watched it. I believe it's why people my age felt so emotionally connected to John Hughes when he passed away last year- because they were able to connect with him films, one on one, at home, whenever they needed to, like a good friend.
Personally, most of my film education came through my 13" TV/VCR. In high school I watched the films on the Coen Brothers and Errol Morris, then in college I went through film history watching Bunuel, Godard, and Fassbiner in my dorm room. Admittedly, blurry, pan and scan VHS isn't an ideal way to watch the greatest films of all time, but it allowed me to connect with them one on one- the things I found funny were funny, the scenes I thought were tense and dramatic played that way without being spoiled by the giggling of another theater-goer. A lot of these art-house films are the same as a great "head-phone album"- it's not something you want to put on at a party, it's something you want to absorb and take-in and think about.
I am forever grateful that I grew up in the 70's and 80's, because I believe it has truly shaped how and why I enjoy "movies" versus "cinema" (or "going to the movies"). It is certainly far more easy to see a movie at home nowadays - and far more cheap. The money is the most major of factors for me, especially with the current economical factor; I've been laid off 3 times in 3 years, and just don't have the money to do the "cinema experience" now, which, at $11 a head, with drinks and eats, you end up spending $50 for 2 people. There are also major new annoyances, like having to sit through 10 minutes of advertisements - an insult to a person who's just paid $50 to bring themselves and a friend - then a preachy ad about pirating. Those 3 factors alone are usually enough to make me say 'NO' to going out.
But I still long for it. I long for the days when it was cheap enough that I went often - the sound of the projector running, the smell of the popcorn in the theater, the previews, the occasional bulb burn-out and collective "Awww!" from the audience. I grew up going to the movies, have fond memories of movies I saw when I was 5, 6, 7 years old, even. I miss that experience when I sit here at home and watch a movie on my computer. It's just nowhere near the same, and I dare say it has diminished my general 'awe' of movies in general.
If I'm ever traveling, especially down here in the South, I will actually STOP if I see a clunky old movie theater, and hope something good is showing. But that's just the thing - it has to be good. If it's not good, no amount of cinema experience is going to save the movie. It's an event - it always has been an event. In my life, I've never run out to the movies to see something I knew would be bad. And with modern conveniences at home, I still skip the bad ones - but only probably 80% of the time now. There's no 'event' involved, it's not an 'experience'... it's just usually to burn away an hour and a half until it's time to do something else.
I know my parents miss the event of going to the movies. I know my grandmother does. Sometimes I wish I could know through their eyes how tech has truly changed the game. My parents have not taken well to modern TV/DVD technology; they have the hardware they need, and mom has all her cooking channels, and dad has all his outdoors, sports, and gardening channels. But they're not really passionate about it. They don't go to the movies anymore, either. They zap in a movie off the pay-per-view, and usually it's some forgettable romantic comedy they don't even remember they saw a month later.
I have a lot more to say but I think I'll end it there. But suffice it to say, I know that my cinema days are mostly over. Going to the movies is a rare experience, because often I just don't see much that's good enough to make an experience of; and it's too expensive, sometimes, to even justify the adventure. The dollar theater used to be my regular haunt - even for the not-so-good movies, because it was more fun than seeing it on the couch at home - but that's a dying animal. I'm not convinced movie theaters aren't a dying animal.
By the way. Years ago I saw Marilyn Monroe in "The Seven Year Itch" in a theater in Dallas, after I'd seen it probably 3 times on cable TV. Guess which one remains more memorable, and special, to me.
I remember as a kid being shooed out the door with my movie money in hand, to sit with the rest of the kids at the Saturday matinee at the base theater in Japan. Sure, it wasn't an optimal experience- by the time the movies reached our little far-flung outpost, they were sliced, diced and spliced to within an inch of their lives.
We didn't care. It was the MOVIES- and when the lights went down and we stood for the National Anthem, we knew we were in for a treat.
Constrast that to my experience last summer at an "IMAX" theater (I call it fake-imax- the screen at the old US 150 was bigger!) where the brand-new print of Star Trek was projected through a dirty gate (dead bugs and hair kept creeping across the screen!), the sound was too loud, and Abrams' shaky cam made me dizzy. Ugh.
It was much better the next day in a 'normal' theater with a digital projector and proper sound levels.
I'm happy with my 'Hillbilly Home Theater'- a 26" CRT TV and DVD player plugged into an antique weapons-grade stereo (no surround sound). I might upgrade to a projector and bed-sheet someday.
Still, with the exception of the stale and overpriced popcorn, I do enjoy the theater experience. I hope it doesn't vanish entirely.
I have loved watching film - in all sorts of formats and at very different venues my entire life. I have worked at an art film house and an art center where we showed all sorts of things from narrative to experimental films. I am very grateful to have seen some classic films from the 30's, 40's, 50's and 60's on a large screen projected the way they were intended to be seen by their creators. I will never forget seeing Robin Hood (the Errol Flynn version) and the Wizard of Oz projected in technicolor on a large screen for the first time in the early '80's. That was a real eye-opener after having seen both these films on TV as a kid. I also got to see many classic films from the 60's and 70's on a theater screen on our college campus like Taxi Driver. So, I do miss seeing some films projected on a large screen with like-minded people in a darkened theater because that's where and how they were intended to be seen.
Having said this, I do not like the large chains for the many technical problems cited already. But the audience is now more of a distraction than I remember it to be growing up. Texting, cell phones, inappropriate chatter - all things new or seemingly more problematic. It also now bothers me to hear someone slurping on their fructose, corn-syrupped sodas or the loud chomping from barrels of styrofoam-like, orange popcorn.
I recently saw the Steve McQueen film, Hunger, in a chain movie theater. In the past, this film would have played in an art house in our city but they have all died. The story is about the hunger strike conducted by Bobby Sands and his fellow IRA members held prisoner in an Northern Belfast prison. Many, including Sands, died from this strike.
My husband and I went to the theater on a weekday afternoon when there were few people at the theater. We were alone in the theater until one person came in after us. For some reason, this guy sat down to eat a large barrel of orange, styrofoam popcorn while we sat and watched people starve themselves to death on screen. I guess he didn't get "the memo" about the story behind this film. At least, I hope not. But I find that this is a common thing to expect now.
So, I prefer to watch films at home on our own system because I feel that I have a much better experience with most theatrical releases. However, I still make the pilgrimage to the local theaters to see certain films that scream to be seen on a large screen.
For me, the accessibility to film via dvd and web are fantastically liberating because I can now see films that either didn't play for very long in theaters or didn't play at all. I can also read the many diverse opinions about film and television by those who I would not have known even existed if it were not for the web.
I think this is a really amazing time for experiencing a world of cinema in a way that I would never have dreamed of as a young student or professional. Though some means of screening films have disappeared, there are still many more choices that have become available.
You wrote:
"...the Internet provides a valuable and enjoyable forum for movie-related social interactions (even if a troll should intrude upon occasion)"
That's nice. Would anybody like to guess what I stuck up my butt today?
That was very well put, sir.
Like @Ellen Ryan, I enjoy (and have enjoyed) watching movies in all sorts of different formats and settings over the past 50 years.
My parents & my grandmother used to take me downtown in Detroit to the classic movie theaters of the 20's-60's (the Fox, Grand Circus, Madison...) where anywhere from 700-1100 people would sit down to watch whatever Hollywood provided. In those magnificent edifices I saw "Ship of Fools", "The Sound of Music", "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?", and a few classics brought back to life - such as "Gone With the Wind" and "The Wizard of Oz".
Thirty years later my youngest brother and I purchased weekly passes for the Harvard Exit theater (on Capital Hill in Seattle) -- a converted mansion turned theater with a baby grand piano in the foyer -- where we could see two triple features (one each, MON-TUE, the other WED-THU) and a double feature (the "big titles", which ran FRI-SUN) chosen by an eclectic group that might pair Hitchcock films (Frenzy + Family Plot), foreign films, or just a couple of flicks that struck someone's fancy.
That is where I saw most of the Marx Brother's films on the big screen for the 1st time. It's where I discovered Ridley Scott as a director, when I saw his debut film "The Duellist" -- which I still consider highly underrated, with excellent performances by a young Harvey Keitel & a VERY young Keith Carradine.
This is where I saw as many as 6, 7, even 8 movies a week for months on end. It was heaven.
But I have also seen 1,000's of movies in other places, in other ways. Not just TV, but drive-ins (an entirely different experience than any theater), home theaters & (over the past decade) on my computers.
I will be the 1st to admit that watching movies on a computer is a completely different experience, with levels of concentration and intensity that seldom mimic the experience of watching from a crowd in a theater.
That doesn't mean it is a lesser experience that should be giggled at or laughed at by cinephiles. On the contrary, my computers are not typical... nor is my viewing experience. My main production system has three 28" monitors, with a 5.1 surround sound system, and when I watch movies in my office I am sitting only a couple of feet from a 1080p HD "screen", listening to HQ audio that suits MY hearing threshold (unlike most theaters, where they seem to feel that if they don't damage the patron's hearing they have somehow failed in their duty to provide "an immersive experience").
And on my "home theaters", I am guaranteed a bright and full-color 2D experience!
Basically, I will watch a movie almost anywhere. You have the latest blockbuster showing on your 65" monster TV? I'll be there. You have an old film projector and a sheet? Count me in! You have (overpriced) tickets to the multiplex? I'll see what my schedule allows.
I'd much rather watch the Blu-Ray (now available!) of Humphrey Bogart & Katherine Hepburn in "The African Queen" on my 28" computer screen than squeeze into the multiplex to see the latest 3D extravaganza.
So I'm weird. That ain't gonna change. I'll watch good movies anywhere, anytime. I'll do my best to avoid exploitative trash, no matter how lush the surroundings.
The one thing I miss most about the theater is the audience -- but not just any audience, an attentive, smart, polite one. Now that I think about it, such an audience might well be the extreme exception, not the rule. I suspect I have heightened my recollections of audiences like the ones I saw "Ran" or "Requiem for a Dream" with, at the expense of the audiences who watched "Cliffhanger" (the guy behind me was talking to his date about nothing related to the movie the entire time we were there).
There's a good art cinema a block from my house, and I go when I can. Working from home has made me busier than ever, sadly. But being in the company of a good audience even just once every now and then is a reminder of how good it can be, and why.
I like watching movies with Bill Ryan, Marilyn Ferdinand, Arbogast on Film, you and many other cinephiles I never would have met without the internet. Because of it, I can see movies "with them" in a manner of speaking.
So we're still seeing movies in big groups, together, we're just separated by a few hundred (thousand) miles, that's all.
All hail New Coke! Classic Coke be damned!
I first saw a lot of the great classics of cinema in 1979-80 when I was attending the University of Hawaii. It seemed like just about every night there was a film to attend, usually a 16 mm print shown in some classroom for a dollar. So the viewing conditions were not ideal, but there always was an appreciative student crowd and I usually had a great time. Not at all the experience you get at home these days.
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