If you love old movies, you will fall in love with Julia Marchese's film about The New Beverly revival cinema. Yes, a film about a movie theater, but this is like no other theater. Just think about this: Tarantino loved it so much that he saved it in 2007, and said "As long as I'm alive, and as long as I'm rich, the New Beverly will be there, showing double features in 35mm." Modern consumerism induces the feeling that the only good things are the newest ones. For too many people only premieres matter, and yesterday's movies are obsolete. This leads to a sort of "Fahrenheit 451" situation, where instead of forbidding and burning books, we exile old movies from our lives. The time consuming life leaves you little time to watch an old movie, and to watch it properly, in a cinema, on 35mm. Not digitized, not colored or remastered, not dubbed. When you watch classic movies in their natural habitat you are able to live it and see how creative they were in their means of expression. In many of today's movies these means are predigested and condensed into clichés, voided of any nutrients, like canned food. Shortcut handlers to your emotions, atmosphere based on special effects rather than inner journeys through the minds of the characters. It is true that one way to build new means of expressions is to turn the previous means into concentrated space food. Modern films that use this properly are able sometimes to make you live an entire life in 90 minutes. I am a huge fan of modern movies, but if you love somebody you want to understand their past, to meet their parents and even grandparents, to breathe the air of their childhood place.
I was fortunate that in Bucharest there are for many years three important cinematheques and revival houses, which run old movies since the time they used to be new :), and where I saw a huge quantity of old movies. These are places where you can travel in the past, where movies seem real, you can almost feel the smell and taste of celluloid, live the lives of people who saw the movies when they premiered, but with the eye of someone coming from the future. So my next trip to LA will definitely include the New Beverly. And if I am lucky enough, in addition to watching a couple of good movies, I may sit next to Joe Dante, John Landis, Kevin Smith, Rian Johnson, maybe David Lynch or Quentin Tarantino :)
I was fortunate that in Bucharest there are for many years three important cinematheques and revival houses, which run old movies since the time they used to be new :), and where I saw a huge quantity of old movies. These are places where you can travel in the past, where movies seem real, you can almost feel the smell and taste of celluloid, live the lives of people who saw the movies when they premiered, but with the eye of someone coming from the future. So my next trip to LA will definitely include the New Beverly. And if I am lucky enough, in addition to watching a couple of good movies, I may sit next to Joe Dante, John Landis, Kevin Smith, Rian Johnson, maybe David Lynch or Quentin Tarantino :)
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