Category: Movies

Laguna South Coast Cinema 1923-2015

The only movie theater in town closed for good on Sunday. The OC Register has the details but you can fill all that in with the usual reasons: business decline, digital projection conversion costs, demographic changes, gentrification, etc.

I’m not a big nostalgia person, but this hits hard. I’ve seen at least 100 movies there. No exaggeration. The math just works out that way when you’re a restless kid without transportation and are tall enough to avoid getting hassled for anything that wasn’t rated G. Our oddball next-door neighbor was the projectionist. Local speculation was that he was the way he was because of seeing the same movies over and over again.

Everything played there: Oscar nominees, foreign, indie, Cheech & Chong, animation festivals, Schick Sunn Classics, if a movie had some sort of distribution it inevitably played there. My dad and I saw Airplane! there on opening night and I’ve never since seen an audience lose their minds so complete like that.

The last showing was Guy Ritchie’s remake of The Man From UNCLE. It’s nice to see anything that’s on film and not digital.

Laguna South Coast Cinema

Laguna South Coast Cinema

Laguna South Coast Cinema

Laguna South Coast Cinema

Laguna South Coast Cinema

Cinema Treasures has the full history.

Running The Numbers: 2011 in Movies

What I watched in 2011. Only counting things I saw for the first time.

  1. Apollo 18 (2011)
  2. Attack The Block (2011)
  3. BASEketball (1998)
  4. Beginners (2010)
  5. Black Swan (2010)
  6. Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
  7. Cave Of Forgotten Dreams (2010)
  8. Contagion (2011)
  9. Die sieben Männer der Sumuru (1969)
  10. Drag Me To Hell (2009)
  11. Exit Through The Gift Shop (2010)
  12. Fair Game (2010)
  13. Gasland (2010)
  14. Hesher (2010)
  15. Into The Abyss (2011)
  16. Les aventures extraordinaires d’Adèle Blanc-Sec (2010)
  17. Marwencol (2010)
  18. Melancholia (2011)
  19. My Kid Could Paint That (2007)
  20. Niagara, Niagara (1997)
  21. Orgazmo (1997)
  22. Pandorum (2009)
  23. Rollover (1981)
  24. Salt (2010)
  25. Senna (2010)
  26. Source Code (2011)
  27. Super 8 (2011)
  28. Texas Killing Fields (2011)
  29. The Adjustment Bureau (2011)
  30. The American (2010)
  31. The Artist (2011)
  32. The Ballad Of Genesis And Lady Jaye (2011)
  33. The Beaver (2011)
  34. The Celebration (1998)
  35. The Green Hornet (2011)
  36. The Horse’s Mouth (1958)
  37. The Kids Are All Right (2010)
  38. The King’s Speech (2010)
  39. The Mechanic (2011)
  40. The Social Network (2010)
  41. The Town (2010)
  42. The Tree Of Life (2011)
  43. TRON: Legacy (2010)
  44. True Grit (2010)
  45. Woman’s Picture (2011)

Ten Years Gone

Sidnancy wtc

That compilation of World Trade Center movie clips is missing my favorite one: the ending scene of Sid & Nancy where a possibly already-dead Sid dances with the disco kids.

(World Trade Center in Movies has a lot more)

Twelve years after I got kicked out of Windows On The World for wearing jeans, one of my favorite bands played a show there:

and the full show:

Separated At Birth, Part XII

Collecting ponds of Something in the desert near the proto-suburban geoglyphs of California City.

california_city_ponds.jpg

Dave Bowman’s meal on board the Discovery in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

2001_davesmeal.jpg

And there’s no way I’m going to miss the Obscura Day 2010 event at California City. See you there on March 20 (and if not, check out the other events that day worldwide)