Letters to the Editor
ELYDOG
Published Letters: 483 Editor's Choice: 43
-
Talking at movies, eating at movies
[Read the article: Beyond the Multiplex]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Folks, I talk at movies. I'll admit it. Actually I whisper to the person I am sitting with. As quietly as possible, but I talk. It is natural. Thinking and talking are somehow connected and this whispering is part of watching a film. We sometimes even stick our heads together. I have also been known to laugh out loud. Exclaim. Chortle. Insult the screen if appropriate. Sense of humour? Yes.
Cinema Paradiso? Yes.
You may think you want to sit in an enlarged version of your oh so private living room, but that is not a movie theatre. This is a 'social' experience. So all the perfectionists who want to pretend they are not sitting with dozens of other people, look around.
I think the bill of rights should include the right to whisper.
Now for food. Every halfwit out there sucking up cheap pop and munching on oily popcorn during quiet sequences, deaths, love scenes, etc. - figure it out. Finish the crumby food before the film starts. A movie theatre is not a restaurant, not even a drive in, not even your dining nook. Actually, I think food should NOT be allowed in theatres. Unlike whispering or thinking, it is not part of watching a film.
That would also be in my bill of rights.
-
Passivity
[Read the article: Beyond the Multiplex]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't think film viewing is a completly internal, passive experience. And only when everyone does something at one time is it allowed. (I.E. don't laugh at the parts that you find funny and others don't...how tacky.)
Film viewing is participatory. So whispering is part of thinking is part of watching. Yes, if people miss a part, you help them.
Now, we don't do this through a whole film. I've never been 'shushed'. Nearly every one of my friends and I do this. I think we are generally very quiet. But, it is definately a right. The 'complete silence' crowd is wrong.
-
Upscale Movie Theatres
[Read the article: Beyond the Multiplex]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Given these letters, my guess is we are going to see the proletarian movie theatre, and the upscale bourgeois movie theatre in the near future.
-
Deja Vu all over again
[Read the article: Bush's new friends: The Sunnis]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The U.S. used the 'bloodbath' and 'domino' theory to bolster their continuing imperialist presence in Vietnam. We see it again in these comments. Of course, in Vietnam we had already provided a bloodbath 'against' the unknown, supposed bloodbath.
The question is, which bloodbath is real now? Our presence in Iraq has created Al Quada in Iraq. It has didvided the country along sectoralist lines even more than it ever was. It has decimated and scattered the civilian population of the country. After 5 years, they still don't have power, running water and health facilities. The schools are shutting down. The economy is in shambles, as the American 'free' enterprise system benefited U.S. companies, replacing an actual Iraqi economy. Iraq at one time had the most education, most advanced working class in the region. No more. It is shattered.
The presence of American troops and arms (who's guns disappeared? Who's arming the Sunnis now?) created this situation, and their continued presence just accelerates the situation. The only hope to change this situation is not keeping it going for 20 years while troops and money are running out. It means leaving.
The British helped create the bloodbath in Lahore by the partition of India. This was a consequence of their occupation of India. There are some in the U.S. like Joe Biden that advocate the partition of Iraq. It is not up to us to do this. Like Vietnam, there is much evidence that a bloodbath would not occur. See Apocalypse Not by Robert Dreyfuss in the Washington Monthly.
The people that are crying bloodbath are the same people that supported initiating one in the first place. Remember that.
-
Early "adopters"
[Read the article: Please stop whining, iPhone early adopters]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't have a cell phone. So, I'm not an 'early adopter.'
In fact the infatuation that some people have with buying every piece of electronic shit that comes out immediately has got to result in drawers and closets full of out of date, partially usable junk. Environmentally sound? No. Financially wise? No.
You are capitalism's suckers. But of course you get to wear the title 'early adopter' like the marketing moniker it is. So I enjoy it when the pretentious folks at Apple do it again. Maybe you can buy another tinny MP3 player that fits in your ear to make up for it all.
-
I love the letters
[Read the article: Toronto Film Festival]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I love it when that the folks in these letters nail Ms. Zacharek so wittily. Salon always assigns her to review Moore films. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?
I was at one of these rallies, in Minneapolis, with my younger daughter and her friends. It was hilarious, blunt and totally packed. It worked. There are few other people in the U.S. that could get people to come out like this. These are truly public intellectuals... what I imagine Intersoll's tours in the Chataqua circuit promoting atheism to have been like. The calculating corporate liberals like Hillary or Obama, Ms. Zacharek's heroes, wouldn't be able to warm the coffee on this tour.
Even Al Gore's movie, 'An Inconvenient Truth' was more about Gore than the environment. Some film reviews somehow missed that - even, unsurprisingly, Zacharek. Here she is describing Al in that movie in Salon: "Viewers may be surprised by the man's soulfulness, sense of humor and professorial charisma." You see, it's all right if you 'promote yourself' and you're a liberal. A liberal who was vice president and didn't make a noise about global warming for 8 years.
Is "Captain Mike" worth watching? I don't know, but this review is not really a review, just more screed.