TO THE BREAK OF DAWN.
or, let’s watch a movie, shall we?
Saw Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. I thought with Herzog, Cage acting batshit, and good reviews I would enjoy it. I didn’t. It was kind of flat and felt cheap. The best parts were Nicholas Cage finally in a movie where the more insane he acts the more it works and the movie is actually (intentionally) funny in parts.
When going to see a movie, the decision of where to go see it plays a part for me as well. There are three movie theaters in Chicago that I like going to if I know I’m going to see a widely-released movie. One is walking distance from my place, it was recently renovated, not part of a chain, and locally owned. So, I make an effort to see movies there if they are showing what I want to see.
Since I live right on the border of the city limits, the other one is in a suburb that is easier to get to than the rest of the city. It’s nice, it’s big, and always clean and well-maintained. The only downside: it’s ALWAYS filled with senior citizens. Going to see a teen comedy about weed? Going to see a serious foreign language drama? It doesn’t matter. It’s filled with people 80 years old and probably older. You know who’s worse about talking through movie? Kids? Teenagers? Stoned college kids? No. It’s a man who can’t hear the movie (even wearing those headphones to amplify the sound) and yelling random things like “WHY CAN’T THAT MAN GET IN THE BOAT? WHY IS SHE SAD?”
Even worse is the bathroom afterwards. Imagine going to see a 2 hour movie, you had a drink while watching it, and so did all the people in the theater with you. The movie lets out and the auditorium filled with 90% blue hairs with their weak bladders and enlarged prostates making a bee line to the shitter. So, while I still have moderate bladder control, I patiently wait my turn. Ladies, you won’t understand this, but if you have the pleasure of standing at a urinal sandwiched between two old men, the chances of one of them talking to you while you urinate goes up exponentially. Now you’re finished and simply want to wash your hands. You can’t. Every old man has decided to use the rest room to truly rest and chit chat with everyone about the movie they just watched. So it’s me dodging men complaining about the movie being too loud, too quiet, too short, too long, too violent, with too much nudity, having more nudity then they’ve seen in years, and on and on. If you’re wondering, yes, I had to explain part of Bad Lieutenant to one of these men in the bathroom.
Lastly is a theater downtown. I like it for all the wrong reasons. It’s up multiple floors from the ground level, you have to take a long escalator ride up to it, and it reminds me of going to a long since closed theater in my hometown when I was kid.
Before there were crazy 90 screen megaplexes and stadium seating, there were four theaters in my home town, Cinema 3, Eastway, the Plaza, and Cinema World. I never went to Eastway since it was on the east side of town (read: too far away from where I lived and there was an inherent stigma about the “eastside.”) Cinema 3 was the most visited because it was the closest to our house. The Plaza was visited infrequently but had the appearance of a traditional “movie palace” theater so my parents liked going there. But my favorite was Cinema World. I loved Cinema World because it was always dimly lit, had this red carpeted interior that must of been hot stuff when it was built in the 70s, and these crazy, curving ramps to get in the theater. I saw movies like Ghostbusters and Back to the Future in that theater. When the bigger theaters started appearing, it was the death kneel for Cinema World. By then, the red carpet was stained and patched together with red duct tape, the theaters were literally leaking and missing seats, and the equipment was barely maintained. (The last movie I saw there, From Dusk to Dawn.) Now all four of those theaters are gone and have been replaced. But, there was always something fun about going to Cinema World and the one in downtown Chicago reminds me of that.
NIGHTNIGHT by DEDDY
