Theater Going Experience

            I re-watched "Django Unchained" last night at my college's movie theater, it was the last movie they would be showing for the semester, it is the last weekend before undergrad finals begin, the movie is a huge success, the showing is free to students, all of these factors contributed to the place being packed.  And I would like to say that I have a sort of complaint: people laugh at weird times.

            I read an article by a black movie critic about the "Django Moment" when a black audience member will hear a white audience member laugh at some point, and get mad about there being nothing funny on screen.  I have a similar complaint, but it isn't a black/white thing, it is a smart/dumb thing.  Stupid people laugh at things that they are made nervous by.  Stupid people laugh at things that make them uncomfortable.  Stupid people need to stop going to theaters cause this shit is annoying.

            At one point the protagonist shoots a man with what amounts to a 1850's sniper rifle.  The man getting shot is helping his son plow a field.  The kid watches his father fall to the ground and die.  It is a sad scene that is referenced later as an important moment in Django's growth as a gunfighter in a hard world.  People laughed.

            At one point three slave traders are transporting a cage filled with three men and have to move dynamite from a pack horse to the cage, they throw the dynamite in and the slaves are scared.  It is an illustration of cruelty.  People laughed.

            A character is about to be castrated.  It is a dreadfully scary scene.  People laughed.

            There are funny things in the movie.  It is hysterical at various points, there are little things that happen even in the most explosively violent parts that elicit a chuckle.  But none of these things are in that camp, these things are supposed to be watched and felt on a different wavelength.  If you are laughing at these parts, then you are watching the movie wrong.

            What is more this is the sort of crap that falls into the "theater experience" people claim is part of movie viewing.  Presumably the other parts are sticky floors, burnt popcorn  ambient body odor, people checking their cell phones (something will provoke me to murder one day) and the film reel randomly failing in the middle of a presentation.  Theaters are kind of shit when you get down to it and I am wondering more and more why we hold them up so much.  Why did I re-watch a movie specifically to take advantage of it still being in a theater?  Seriously, why?  I could have rented the thing for 50 cents and had a lot more control over my viewing.  Could have bought it and been able to see a lot more of the features.

Seriously, can't they just shut the fuck up?

            This will probably not answer the question but I keep thinking of it.  I recall a science fiction show called "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex".  "Ghost" primarily deals with cyber terrorism in the near future through the eyes of a group of talented counter terrorism and computer specialists.  In one episode a series of mysterious deaths prompts them to investigate, they discover that the deaths all had to do with people just plugging into a particular server, and then never leaving, eventually their bodies just starved.  So the lead investigator goes into the server to see what is the issue.  Turns out the server is the brain of a great movie director, the director was so sick of compromising his vision of his perfect film he decided to just turn his brain into a virtual reality theater to show the movie on a loop.  The people who died were so enraptured by the film they just watched it over and over until they died (kind of like those morons who killed themselves after watching "Avatar").  What is funny is that the inside of the server actually does take the form of a theater.  It's not that people are watching the movie in a private room, people are together in a massive room and can hear the murmur of each other's reactions, they can hear each other cry and laugh and experience art.

            So in a show entirely about the future  and technologies impact on the human experience, people still will get together to watch movies collectively in a dark room.  Not to discuss them afterward (because they never stop watching it) but because they feel that being a part of an audience is inherently part of watching a movie.

This show tends to be a good mix of the Cerebral and the Action.

30 Day Movie Challenge: Day 18

            I decided to do the 30 day movie challenge as a blog series as it ties into my blog activities rather easily and I am once again not blogging my usual series with regularity in spite of saying that I would.

            Today is "A Movie that I saw in the Theater".  Let's be honest here, I've seen a shit ton of movies in the theater, 2009 was an especially movie heavy time where I saw one every other week it seemed.  And while track record is hardly impressive when compared to actual professional film critics it is still a plethora to choose from.  So I went with the one that stood out to me the most as far as it being a sort of funny story.  What movie inspired me to laughter?  "The Patriot".

Notice that no where on the box does it read, "From the director of '2012'".

            Okay, the patriot stars a large cast of actors all of which good in the roles they occupy, it has a lot of dramatic moments in slow mo, a lot of cool action, and a big "Hell Yes AMERICA" toward the end which was really fun.  Watch it if you haven't seen it and enjoy a work of schlocky American Historical fiction.

It is occasionally cheesy, but that just makes the awesome parts nacho flavored.

            When I first saw this in theaters I was with my father and brother, it wasn't a theater over run with people and you could hear people if they chattered gasped or laughed, a good theater experience, for us.

            Thing was Seth and I were not prepared for some of the over the top moments of violence that happens in the movie and with us, sometimes things come full circle.  Gory violence in a shitty movie is just boring and stupid, like a child picking its nose for attention, it is gross and you can obviously tell it is shameful behavior.  Gory violence in a movie that has a tone of dread and is correctly executed can fill an audience with a sense of terror or suspense, they fear that more violence will be done on a horrific scale.  Then there is a movie like "The Patriot" which combines action with drama and a sort of comedy, and really when you throw a berserker rage into the mix at the wrong time, and Mel Gibson hacks a guy to death and howls like a loon, sometimes you get what happened.

He looks so even keel.

            Seth and I laughed our asses off.  It was hysterical how over the top the scene was and we couldn't help ourselves, everyone else in the theater was aghast at the violence, and looked at us like we were crazy idiots, and Dad like he was raising two crazy idiots, and considering the resemblance its not like he could deny us, there was his DNA laughing at a manbeing murdered in a shallow pool by Max Mad circa 1776.

Also, the Joker.

            Really it is an underwhelming story of children embarrassing a parent, but it made the movie stick with me for longer than it otherwise might have and I saw it a couple more times since then.  Sadly all I have seen of it in recent times is the edited version on TBS, where most of the blood is chromed brown so it looks like everyone either got into a mud pie war, or in the scene just mentioned, it look like the British soldiers are made of pudding.

And Voldemort's second banana.