Alamo Drafthouse and also politics of talking during the movies thread

good:
glance -> signal -> look -> change lanes
decent:
glance -> no spot available -> signal -> wait and merge
acceptable:
signal -> look -> change when you can
terrible:
anything else

if you're driving in wall-to-wall traffic all the time, signaling first makes sense because taking a peek first is futile because you're going to have to wait

but yeah, if there are two cars on the road and the guy directly to my side signals they're going to merge into my lane, why did they not just slow down/speed up first

c'mon

Which requires more mind reading, early signalling or no signalling?

that is one for the ages

it reminds me of being in a theater with assigned seats over the weekend

a guy and his son sat near me and were saying something about seat numbers, and I was thinking.. great, they're going to try to sit in the wrong seats and then confuse everyone when someone else shows up

but no, they were debating whether to sit in the *worse* seats instead of the ones they actually bought?

I love the ones who plop their food or purse on the seat next to theirs qnd act aggrieved when i show up and say "excuse me, this mah seat"

if you're driving in wall-to-wall traffic all the time, signaling first makes sense because taking a peek first is futile because you're going to have to wait

― mh, Wednesday, May 2, 2018 1:48 PM (nineteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah obv when traffic is heavy it's just pure madness out there and you gotta do what you gotta do

suspect traffic vs no traffic is the root of many ILX driving disputes

alright i'm done

LA movie nerd audiences fucking suck and laugh at everything in old movies

been going on in NYC for 30+ years

that happens here on occasion, but it really depends on the audience

the kids laughing at Blue Velvet sucked, though

there was a 70ish woman yukking at Dietrich's last lines in TOUCH OF EVIL last week in Brooklyn

i once watched keaton's the general sitting next to an old dude who kept loudly scoffing "oh PLEASE!" every time anything remotely funny happened.

so I've been to Alamo in SF three times and have noticed none of this behavior there to the degree I witness it at most other theaters. So I don't really get the premise of this thread. is the SF alamo an outlier or did I just get lucky?

i mean I saw Avengers last night at an AMC cineplex and the annoying things were beyond count; the 40 minutes of commercials before hand; everyone on their phones; phones lit up and texting in th emiddle of the movie; people in front of me talking; blah blah.

I think the premise is that Alamo is lot more strict about this stuff, to which a lot of posters wondered what about all the noisy chewers and people who spill their food all over themselves?

I wasn’t big on theatre food until my buddy introduced me to flavacol on popcorn - damn

i saw johnny guitar at momi and the crowd was full of teenaged (?) stoners who laughed at EVERYTHING that happened, it was infuriating

i mean, the movie’s quality overpowered it but

talking during the movie is evil except for when i saw blade runner 2049 right before it disappeared from theaters and at the end when ryan gosling sat on the snowy steps this woman said “HIS TUSH IS GONNA GET COLD”

(or not really evil, communal experiences as outlined upthread are great, actively disruptive shit is bad)

Movies from the black and white days are hilarious. Hey, guys, did you ever hear of a little thing called color? What a bunch of nerds.

tush in the rain

lol

hey haha that sf alamo is great right haha come check out your pal chaki host TERRORVISION there on 5/15 plug plug

The worst crowd I've ever seen in a theater was for A Life Aquatic on the night it released, people would just start losing their shit laughing at every shot whether it was a joke or not including the title coming up on screen.

I've never been able to give the movie a fair chance because of that crowd.

I felt bad for my friends at Blue Velvet because I will do a little awkward laugh sometimes if I feel uneasy and the people behind us laughing at genuinely unsettling bits made me feel uneasy so I let out a couple half-stifled "hah"s

the absolute worst, though, is when people are watching an actual good movie and they laugh at unfunny stuff AND completely fail to get stuff that's genuinely funny

Laughing is fine, imo, lotsa stuff is funny.

If your phone rings, you’re a monster you need to be taught how to silence your phone.

I can’t despise anyone for looking at their phone briefly during a movie but I think it’s regrettable.

I watched The Virgin Suicides at home with friends last night and I said “Jesus Christ” a lot

giggling at Isabella Rossellini incredibly traumatized and nude at a young man's doorstep is a little bit much

I haven't watched TVS for a very long time because I walked into my living room to witness a particularly half-assed suicide attempt going on, with my copy of that movie in the dvd player as a grand dramatic gesture, a lifetime ago

A date disapproved strongly when I cracked up at Hannibal removing the top of Ray Liotta’s head. The relationship did not go far.

that's a hard one because it's completely ridiculous and somehow over the top in staging even for that movie series

I can't rewatch that scene because it makes me incredibly nauseated, probably *because* it's so jarring and a departure. can completely understand laughing at it

on that Lynch tip, the first time I saw Fire Walk With Me was at a revival about 5 years ago. packed theater, part of a revival series that had no genre or tonal theme but always seemed to attract the worst MST3K style college crowd, and it was a disaster. laughing at Cooper running back and forth staring at himself in the security camera monitors is one thing, but cackling at the BOB/Leland scene? Oh my god. I wasn't familiar with Twin Peaks then, but my girlfriend was appalled by the crowd and we almost left. it was insane. luckily I got to see the movie in a theater again last summer as The Return was airing, and while it was a smaller crowd in a bigger theater, everyone was completely reverent, and only then did I understand how terrifying and dark it is.

FWWM was probably the most amusing audience interruption for me because a little old lady came into the IFC theater in NY a couple minutes late, politely asked the person at the end of the aisle if it had just started (it had) and then accidentally tripped over something without injury but went "whoop!" before taking her seat and making no more fuss

and the kid behind me explaining to his friend the plot as he understood it (he was 100%) except for a couple bits, resulting in the question: "should I have watched the series?"

:D

once i got too drunk before a showing of Withnail and got loudly told to shut up by a lady cos i kept reciting all the funny lines :/ it’s Withnail it’s like Python everyone does it dammit

Lynch films might be the only thing I'd forgive an audience for laughing at inappropriately. He treads such a fine tonal line and practically challenges the viewer to not laugh when, say, something absurd yet horrifying is taking place onscreen.

TIL that Trayce is a monster :/

The biggest Rep cinema in London does a lot of quote-along / sing-along / some The Room thing that sounds like he’ll on earth.

lol i deserved that

I saw the Beastie Boys’ mid-00s concert movie and a woman snuck in partway through to ask me and everyone in the audience individually for money. There were only 5 of us though so it didn’t take long.

I don't mind ppl eating during movies, usually it's not much of a noise issue, but if we're gonna go True Cinephile they're also definitley cheating themselves out of a good experience because their attention's gonna be divided. As illustrated by that Michael Jackson gif - popcorn one of the few foods where you keep your attention on the screen and if it drops it's no biggie.

I watched Mulholland Drive in a big tent at a festival and the smell of marihuana was everywhere and the whole crowd was just majorly confused. Then during the sexscene, all of a sudden there was the blink of a camera flash, and everyone started laughing and taking pictures and got really into the second part of the film.

Another good one was going to Wim Wenders Kings of the Road at the Cinemateque, and there were these three old ladies behind me who had a really good talk going before the film, and then when the lights dimmed, and then while the credits rolled, and then one said 'oh, we better be quiet now', and then they were quiet for a beat, and then another went 'wait, I don't remember this being in black and white?' You probably have to have seen Kings of the Road to fully get how hilarious it was for me to sit in front of them and think that they were watching all three hours of this after going to the wrong film. But in the end they seemed pretty appreciative of the experience. Old ladies are by far the most underrated movie audience.

The biggest Rep cinema in London does a lot of quote-along / sing-along / some The Room thing that sounds like he’ll on earth.

― Andrew Farrell, 3. maj 2018 08:37 (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't know, I snuck into a Sound of Music sing-along for a bit, and it seemed pretty awesome.

The woman w/ aspergers who got thrown out of a BFI screening of "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly" for laughing too loudly at comedic moments was a real bummer tho, fuck the narcs in that case.

― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, May 2, 2018 5:32 AM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Just catching up so apols if this has already been said. I'll have a skim of this thread later.

At the BFI (and this goes right back to NFT days) there is a culture of silent respect given to a film - like this was the only way ever to engage with something coming out of the screen, which then goes into certain ways to act when you are at a cinema - and onto ways of policing behaviour and to exercise control over another person's actions. Certainly a lot of the older crowd come over aggressive if you are eating or using a mobile before a film. There is this weird cranky impatience that has never been challenged because its too low-level - but by not challenging it is enabled - and then it spills over. That's the background to that story. And what happens in a perhaps dying artform.

As someone who has gone to almost every damn cinema in this town I would say its specific to the BFI though.

Daniel otm it’s insane to me to be strict about distractions & pretend a film has your undivided attention when you’re eating a full meal with a knife & fork, using this checkpad system to order more stuff (how much food do these people need over the course of a film btw?) etc. Just seems like the worst of both worlds to me, as an experience. I’m happy to keep these two activities separate as god intended

i don't even like eating at home if i'm trying to watch a movie tbh

"it’s Withnail it’s like Python everyone does it dammit"

no, this is why watching Python with people is painful

The biggest problem with this tendency is that people think they're more entertaining than what's happening on the screen and they're almost always wrong.

https://m.imgur.com/nLSLnYf

i think you can strike the almost there OL