Posted on 09/29/2006 7:45:48 AM PDT by Mike Bates
HOOPESTON, Ill. -- The "closed" sign went up a few weeks ago on the flashy neon marquee outside the Lorraine Theatre, but the 84-year-old movie palace on Main Street hasn't played its last picture show. Business isn't bad. It's the movies that are wretched.
"Both theaters in Hoopeston are closed ... because of such poor film choices available," explains a recording on the Lorraine's customer hot line. "Go to Danville to see `Jackass 2.'"
Car dealers wouldn't tell buyers to take a hike until better models came out. No chef worth his ladle would shoo paying diners off to the competition because his kitchen is in a slump. Yet that's essentially what Lorraine owner Greg Boardman did this month.
He put his two screens here on hiatus rather than sell tickets to the gross-out and freak-out fare he said Hollywood distributors have made available in recent weeks. Boardman said he'd rather show nothing than such recent offerings as "Beerfest," "The Covenant" or the "Jackass" sequel, which topped the nation's box office last week despite getting savagely panned by critics. A Tribune review labeled it "an insult to sophomoric movies everywhere."
"There's just so much lousy material out there--people vomiting on the screen," explained Boardman, 52, a local boy who now lives in California and uses the Internet to run the Lorraine from there. "I have one of the finest sound systems in the world, and I don't want to waste it on such drivel."
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Well, it hasn't been 50 years. It just seems that way :-)
Seriously, in the 'olden days' Hollywood Studios had to follow the Hayes Code (Medved knows this). Some it the requirements were:
And..
There's much much more to it. Here's the full Code
It went bye-bye in the late 1960's and what followed was the stoo-pid rating system and garbage movies we now have.
I read the book "Flyboys" and it was a really good book. I hope the movie does it justice, because I really want to see it.
What a loss it would have been to all of us if Sheriff Brody, after he saw the shark in Jaws, just let loose with a bunch of profanities... Instead, the screen writer had the talent and patience to create a very funny and memorable line: "I think we are going to need a bigger boat." And that line has passed in our lexicon.
Lazy, lazy, lazy! Half the time, I want to see these writers a thesaurus and tell them to pick an adjective, any adjective. The English language has thousands of them.
Unless he's under contract about what films he can show. I don't know if every movie theater just has reels of moves lying about.
If he didn't sign the contract, he wouldn't get any movies. You sign them with the distributor.
I concur. My wife and I saw it. It was pretty good. I think flag of our fathers and the other new film about the indians in south america will be good also. Flyboys is the first movie my wife and I have saw in a theater since the last Star Wars movie. The last one before that was the last Star Wars movie. You can see we don't go to that crap either. We rent or buy older movies. We search the stores for the older movies on DVD.
And just how he is going to do that? Do you think he these movies just sitting around in their big reel cannisters? He can't run down to the local Blockbuster and pick up My Fair Lady...why he would be direct violation of that little FBI warning we all fast forward through (when you can). And if he is going to show the movie for free to get around that...then what? Lose money because he has to pay for electricity and wages?
Again...how?
Wait a minute--didn"t Karl Rove and his Band of Evil White Men release the snakes on unsuspecting women and poor chilluns?
LOL
Well, that will guarantee a lot of negative reviews in the MSM.
I do, too. But to make some money he could screen old films, classics like The Scarlet Pimpernel or the like. I used to like going to the movies, the big screen, the popcorn. I'd go see something like that, especially since a lot of the old flicks aren't available on DVD yet.
The movie Flyboys is about World War I aviators.
The guy is an idiot. If he doesn't want to show first run films, then he should figure out another way to make money from the theaters. Unless, of course, he can no longer make the first run features profitable, in which case he's also an idiot.
I wonder if these guys could run an old time film festival, showing nothing but films from the 40's and 50's?
You might enjoy this.
LOL, you mean the McCain fairy tale?
I go to a movie theater like that. It's a real treat that theaters like these have been saved.
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