beamish14 wrote: ↑Thu Sep 30, 2021 5:12 pm
I do agree with you regarding Secret Movie Club's Craig Hammill. He really is a bit too much with his introductions, and he's not the greatest projectionist, but they've been pretty solid with getting nice prints. I similarly wonder about how they're not in the red-they recently showed a four film bill of Cronenberg movies for a single night. What kind of profit margin can they get from this? Still, he's using Janus prints for their ongoing Fassbinder and Kurosawa screenings, which are always great.
Does he project his films at their new venue? I know when he did screenings at the Vista, the Janus prints were important as they were one of the few places that apparently allowed him to run prints off their platter system. Back when I used to help organize screenings, the Los Angeles Theater and Palace Theater (the same owners) forced you to use their in-house projectionist who was sort of a character, but a terrible projectionist. He was already old back in 2015 and was severally over-weight so he had issues getting around, which is an issue when the projection booth for the Los Angeles Theater is four stories above ground level with no elevator. He also hated you telling him to do anything including small requests like "make it louder".
Have you been to the Secret Movie Club venue? It's in the Arts District, right? I work near there, but that area is such a blackhole for parking, I try to avoid it. My final straw with Secret Movie Club was when I got tickets to see
High and Low on 35mm at the Vista, he rambled on-and-on before this 10am screening and then as soon as the film began, discovered he was playing a Blu-ray of the film instead in the wrong aspect ratio. Instantly, it put me on my shit list and sort of vowed to never go back to my screening. His programming has never been excited enough for me to break this vow.
For the adventurous viewer, the New Beverly Cinema is playing their first adult film tomorrow night since Tarantino took over the venue,
Dracula Sucks, at midnight tomorrow. Adult films were sort of one of the mainstays of their grindhouse nights in the pre-Tarantino era when Brian Quinn and Eric Caidin used to program those nights, so I was surprised to see one on the calendar. I was shocked the pre-sale online allotment of tickets are already sold-out. Sort of excited this is happening again.