TurquoiseB wrote: > For your information, the following post is Restricted. No > admittance to persons who might be disturbed by graphic > images of sex, violence, or other aspects of real life. > > > Well, I finally saw "Grindhouse," and, although I enjoyed > it thoroughly, being a big fan of both Tarantino and Robert > Rodriguez, my first thought when it was all over was, "Man, > I really want to see the flick in the first fake trailer." > > <snip> > > And a few of the real grindhouse trailers for the 70s films > that inspired this one: > > http://youtube.com/watch?v=sNfNevVeebc > > And you wonder why I'm so weird. This is the sorta stuff > I grew up on. They'd be playing every weekend in a double > feature at the local grindhouse theaters. Oh, for the > good old days of cinema... :-) > I think the difference between those days and today is that we are overwhelmed with entertainment. We have tons of DVDs to watch and theater quality gear to watch them on. But that doesn't mean the quality is any better. Flat rate monthly subscriptions from Netflix, Blockbuster and Hollywood Video means that DVD distributors can put all kinds of junk out on DVD just to fill the shelves and if customers don't like the film they don't necessarily feel ripped off. Plus now I notice a trend of studios cutting films to PG-13 which should have been cut for R (and released often on DVD with unrated versions since they're not going to resubmit to have that R). This is apparently to fill up theaters more since the PG-13 rating often means the film is "softer" than it would have been and lacks the substance that adult viewers would expect.
Unlike you I grew up in a small town in the country and the nearest theaters were 20 miles away. Movies were a treat and not something to send the kids to do while shopping. Besides I got more hooked on the Friday night horror movies on TV most of which were old public domain films (so the station didn't have to pay much for the rental). The town where the theaters were had a liberal arts college where the rich sent a lot of their kids and so the theaters would often show some of the art films of the day. Those were my mainstay in high school and continued when I attended went to college in a large city that also had good supply of art house theaters. Like many here I don't particularly like to mingle with the hoards at a theater. In the US too many audiences are still rude, put their stinky tennies up the chair next to you, yap on their cell phone or to their girl friend which is enough to keep many of us away. The local theater is usually pretty good as far as audiences go but they've been on a "money film" run so I haven't seen anything there recently. I did go see "bug" at another local theater and there were initially only two other patrons at the matinée then 3 teenage miscreants came in after the film had stared (apparently having seen another film) and proceeded to chat, take cell calls and be generally obnoxious. I almost kicked the one kid in the head or was tempted to shout in his face "shut the fuck up!" After a while the kid got up (he was with two girls) and when he came back I glared at him and being Asian I think it freaked him and he told the two girls they'd better leave. I would go to evening showings at that theater since it is the only one in the area where the senior ticket is 60 and over. The others are 62 or 65 and probably 70 by the time us boomers reach that -- I remember when the "senior" age was 55. But that theater gets too many low lifes whose idea is to hang out there since they don't have dance halls to go to like when we were kids. BTW, the winner of the After Dark Horror Fest "The Abandoned" is being released in the US tomorrow. There were 8 winners in the fest and the 1st prize winner got a run in the theaters so is being released several months after the other 7 were released. I'm looking forward to seeing it.
