24-Hour NoirAThon Fundraiser for Theater Marquee

The good folks at Film Geeks and Digital Gym Cinema in San Diego are having a 24-Hour NoirAThon fundraiser July 3 to get a real marquee for this small independent theater. It works sort of like one of those marathons you used to do in high school where you would run a certain number of miles to raise money for the cross-country team. Although technically the sponsorship levels are based on the names of the films being watched, and not how many they get through. Still, the idea is roughly the same. 

On-board as the main sponsor is and Turner Classic Movies (TCM). The Film Geeks contacted TCM in hopes of getting permission to stream TCM's July 3, Summer of Darkness Film Noir offerings. TCM graciously agreed to match dollar for dollar (up to $5000) all donations to the event (through indiegogo.com). They also granted permission to stream TCM at Digital Gym Cinema for the NoirAThon.

The funds will go toward a real theater marquee for the venue, including installation, permits, etc. The Digital Gym Cinema is a cool little theater but looking at it from the street, it is a bit of a mystery. It doesn't scream movie theater. In fact, it kind of screams, I wonder what's going on in there. This is what it currently looks like from the street:

But inside is a sweet little theater:

To sweeten the pot, they set a mini-goal of $1200 by the end of the day today (assuming that would be Midnight Pacific time, June 29). If they hit that goal, Miguel Rodriguez (@HIFFSD) has agreed to post a video of himself in drag in his best Noir Femme Fatalle style. Fortunately, he has the gams for it. I just threw a few coins in the kitty, and they are now less than $200 away from the minigoal

Beth Accomando (@cinebeth) and Miguel Rodriguez (@HIFFSD) will be live tweeting during the event using the hashtags #NoirSummer and #TCMParty. The cinema will be open for people who want to join them. I plan to join them for at least part of the time, and hopefully, my 15-year-old partner in crime, Jasmine (@CineBopper) will be joining us as well. I might even be tapped for a food run from one of the food and drink sponsors Bread and Cie, Trails Eatery, Pizzeria Luigi's, and Lightning Brewery, who are making sure Beth and Miguel won't starve during the 24-hour NoirAThon.

To donate, go to:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/24-hour-noirathon-film-geeks-investigate-darkness#/story

White People Need to Stop Being Such Dicks, No. 1

I've decided to start a new category of posts called:

Yes, white people need to stop being such dicks.

What inspired this is an image that showed up in my facebook feed today:

Of course, my first thought was what a freakin' idiot, but about the same time that thought got out, I noticed the first two or three comments were, it's photoshopped, followed by, Actual photo:

It's one thing to tell a racist joke. It's another thing to tell a bad racist joke. It's entirely another thing to take a bad racist joke and pass it off as the truth. Now, I was just going to end it right there, but when I went back just now to verify what comments were made. I saw one more comment. I hid the identity with a black box. I'm guessing that's the closest the commenter has ever been to any been to anything black. And I sincerely hope that the presence of something black on top of them offends them greatly:

That's your takeaway from this? Even though it's not true and has clearly been demonstrated to be not true, it really is true. Thank you. You couldn't have illustrated my point better:

White People Need to Stop Being Such Dicks

Postscript (updated Jun 24)

It has been a week since I posted this. The person I know who shared this never acknowledged that the image was faked, and it is still up on her wall. When it was first shared, I looked at the original post (which also had comments indicating it was a fake). At that time, it had been shared 2,800 and some odd number times. Now, a week later, it has been shared over 13,000 time, well over quadruple in one week. Great. 

Just One Week, People [Updated June 16]

I think we need to have a goal in this country. That goal should be that we should try to go one week without a new story surfacing about cops shooting, abusing, or harassing black people. I know that a week is not a very long time but I think you need to start small and build from there. Yes, I do appreciate that being a cop is a very difficult job, but if you can't do that job without shooting, abusing, or harassing black people, maybe you need to find a new line of work. And this bastard, clearly he has seen one too many Lethal Weapon movies, and you know what, clearly he wasn't even paying attention. Riggs and Murtaugh were going after bad guys, not black guys. I realize there's only four letters difference, but seriously they are not the same thing.

Updated June 16

Looking at the timestamp on this post, I posted this one week ago today. Since that time, I have seen no new stories about cops shooting, abusing, or harassing black people. Woohoo. However, a new story has surfaced about white woman Rachel Dolezal pretending to be black to get a job at the NAACP. I think I need to be more specific about my goals.

µBlog – Opening Fritz Lang's M

µBlog – Too long to tweet, too short to call a real post

I'm taking the TCM/Ball State University course, Into the Darkness: Investigating Film Noir. The first assignment other than reading the syllabus etc. was to look at the following video, of the opening four or so minutes of Fritz Lang's M. We were supposed to look at what contribution it makes to film noir style.


What I am most struck by here is not the way this relates to film noir, but just how well crafted the story-telling is. Basically the entire sequence is exposition, setting up the situation and elaborating on every aspect of it. From the innocence of the children, making a game out of the threat to them, to the adult's paranoia, the one woman appalled by the children making light of the situation, while the other woman is comforted by just knowing they are still there. The adults waiting outside the school, when normally they would probably let the children walk. By the time, you get to the poster at the end, you don't even need to know the details. You already know everything that counts. Yes, there is some film noir imagery, the ominous shadows of the cuckoo clock and the man at the end. What really stands out to me is just damn good story-telling. People aren't explaining the situation. They're reacting to it. Brilliant. I love this movie.

µBlog – Mother's Day Tribute to a Great Movie Mom

µBlog – Too long to tweet, too short to call a real post

With it being Mother's Day  and all, I thought I should do a post about moms in the movies. I think my favorite movie mom would have to be Claude Rains' mom in Notorious.  Played by Leopoldine Konstantin, this is a mom who really loves and supports her son. Any mother who is willing to secretly poison Ingrid Bergman is okay in my book. Happy Mother's day, everybody.

Wonder Con 2015, the Master of Suspense, and Other Stuff

The weekend after the TCM Classic Film Festival was Wonder Con. In the category of, You Never Know What You Are Going to Find at a Comic Convention, this year at Wonder Con, I found Hitchcock. It started when I was wandering a section of the Exhibit Hall that was mostly celebrities. Now, these tend to not be big names or even names you would recognize. They tend to be people who starred in low budget Sci-Fi and Horror movies in the 70s and 80s or played aliens on one of the Star Trek series. These are not going to be people you would stop on the street. Sure, if you are a fan of their stuff, you'd pay twenty bucks for a signed photo. Me, I tend to be fairly ambivalent to this sort of thing, but as I was walking along I saw a color representation of this:

A little background, the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho runs 3 minutes and has about 50 cuts. There is just one shot (above) where you see the knife against bare skin. I've known for quite a while that it was not Janet Leigh's stomach there. They used a body double. Walking around that section at Wonder Con roughly 55 years after the film's release, I was standing in front of the girl in Hitchcock's shower, Marli Renfro (Janet Leigh's body double from the shower scene). I don't normally buy autographs but the connection to Psycho was just too cool to pass up. Refro is a former Playboy model/Bunny and appeared in a number of other men's magazines. Of course, I had to buy the picture and have her autograph it to me:

The inscription reads, Hi Chris -- Be careful in taking a shower! Marli Renfro

I'm sure she came up with that just for me.

I also took a picture with her:

Marli and me

I tried to get her to get her to show me her stomach, but she kept saying that I didn't want to see it, and I kept saying that I did. And I really did. Doing the math, she's somewhere in her mid-70s. So sure, I might have regretted it afterwards, but I would have wanted to see it anyway. Yes, I'm a pig. I know that. I toyed with the idea of asking her again the last day of the show, but realized that pestering a senior citizen to show skin was kind of a dick move. I decided to just say goodbye and that it was nice meeting her. 

Oddly, there was also someone else at Wonder Con doing cosplay of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. I didn't see them, but I had multiple people tell me about it and did get a photo:

The Birds cosplay, thanks, Anastasia, for the photo

Beyond that, I also saw a guy cosplaying the man with no name.

Clint Eastwood, eat you heart out

That's three, count 'em, three people doing classic film cosplay. Not bad for a comic convention.

Now, you may have noticed the cowboy hat in the picture above. I got that done at Comic-Con last year. Details here. The reason I bring it up is that I decided to do another one, that is all classic film related. I got it started at Wonder Con and hope to finish it up at Comic-Con this year. I only got three pieces done, but it's a start.

First piece was the TCM logo by Scott Koblish

TCM logo, up close, blue tape is to indicate where the hatband will go

 Chuck Wojtkiewicz and King Kong (he also did the Comic-Con logo on the cowboy hat)

King Kong, up close

Alex Hoffman and North by Northwest

North by Northwest, up close

TCMFF 2015 – Post Partum

In theory, this should be a short post. In practice, I'm not sure I am capable of doing a short posts. This basically covers the Monday after the TCM Classic Film Festival (TCMFF), give or take. We got up fairly early, because I wanted to go to Amoeba Records before we headed back to San Diego by train. I had to be back at work the next day, so I didn't want to get back too late. We packed and went downstairs and then checked out and left our bags at the bell desk.

My daughter Jasmine wanted to go to Hot Topic in the Hollywood and Highland mall. I figured she's 15 and you can't take a 15-year-old passed a Hot Topic like a hundred times and not have her want to go in. While she browsed, I went to Starbucks for coffee and breakfast for the two of us. The timing worked out about perfect, because she was done right about the time I got out of Starbucks.

Amoeba Records was probably about a 20 minute walk from Hollywood and Highland. I wanted to get there close to 11:00 when it opened. We missed that by about a 40 minutes. If you're not familiar with Amoeba Records, the building takes up a whole block and about 90% of the ground floor is CDs. There's also an upstairs with DVDs and to be honest, I'm afraid to even look. As it is, I end up spending way too much from just the short time we had there. Jasmine loves music, but for the most part grew up in a world without record stores. Now, that's not really true. There are a handful of record stores in San Diego, but they are small little hole-in-the-wall places, which despite their tiny size still manage to beat the pants off the other option, the ever-shrinking CD section in the big-box stores like Target and Best Buy. I told her that Amoeba Records was big, but I don't think she was at all prepared for what she saw:

Jasmine's reaction to Amoeba Records. That

would be the look of terror of joy

We only spent about an hour in Amoeba Records. My only regret is that I didn't bring a list with me. I know I bought at least one, but possibly as many as three CDs I already owned, but at least they were all things I knew I would never find in San Diego.

In the morning as we left, they had closed off part of Hollywood Blvd and put up fences to keep people off the street but we had no idea why. On our way back to the Roosevelt, we got our answer. Two guys passed us wearing what looked like backstage passes around their necks with the Van Halen logo. There you go. We got our bags from the bell desk and headed out to catch the L.A. Metro to Union Station for the train back to San Diego.

Coming up on The Roosevelt from Sunset Blvd.

I decided to get one last picture of Hollywood Blvd. In the lower right, you can see the fence for the Van Halen concert. 

Goodbye, Hollywood Blvd. We'll miss your

cheesy goodness, well, no, not really. 

What I hadn't intended was catching Freddy Krueger on his cell phone.

Freddy Krueger checking his phone, though

possibly he could be using some dream 

monitoring app, could happen

It turned out the L.A. Metro was closed. I'm not sure what happened. All I know is that there were a lot of cops in the station. We went down Highland to find a spot to call and wait for a cab out of the sun. The front of Hollywood High School was about a block and a half away, and that seemed to be as good a spot as any. Before we got there I managed to flag down a cab that was going passed. I wasn't sure how bad the cab ride would be, but at that point, we didn't have a lot of choice. Earlier I had tweeted that picture of Jasmine at Amoeba, and while we were in the cab, Kristen (@salesonfilm) responded using a #JasminesFanClub hastag. Jasmine was very happy to have been hashtagged, "Oooh, I feel famous." That cab was about $25. I expected worse, although with tip it came to about double what it would have cost on the Metro.

We got tickets for the first available train to San Diego which was leaving in about 50 minutes. The difference in cost between regular tickets and business class is fairly minor, so I sprung for the extra. It turns out they had a business class lounge, where we could wait. We grabbed some food. I looked at Twitter and saw something from Jeff (@jlundenberger) that he and his partner had taken the Metro to Olvera Street. Looking at the timestamp, they must have got on the Metro station right before they closed it down. Olvera Street is like spitting distance from Union Station, but I figured we didn't have time to didn't have time to meet up with them. Still, I felt obligated to give them crap:

In the Business Class lounge, the woman at the desk at asked us if we wanted a Red Cap to help us to the train. At first, I thought it wasn't worth the trouble, but then realized the connection to North by Northwest and figured that alone justified the cost of the tip. It turns out the Red Cap was a mid-forty-ish woman in a polo shirt and a red baseball cap, who bore virtually no resemblance to Cary Grant. Still, it was a way to maintain the connection to the old movies I was leaving behind, so it was a good call. 

The trip home on the train was fairly uneventful. Jasmine and I talked a little bit, but we were both too exhausted to say much of anything. We mostly just listened to music on our phones and enjoyed the scenery.
 

I know that at one point the guy sitting across from us got up and  came back with a bottle of Stone Ale. I remember thinking I could really go for a beer, but I didn't have the energy to get up and go to the bar. It was all the way downstairs in the same car I was sitting in. 

I texted my wife when we were about 5 minutes out from the Santa Fe depot in Downtown San Diego. We live really close to Downtown, so she would get down there about the same time we could get to the front of the station. She'd already left, and by the time we made it out, she'd found parking about a block away, a minor miracle in that part of town.

I got home and made my second to last tweet of TCMFF:

I little while later I made my last tweet of TCMFF 2015:

I do want to take this opportunity to thank TCM, and in particular Shannon and Noralil, for having Jasmine and me as Social Media Producers. We had a great time. We would have had a great time anyway, but that made it all the more special. Thank you. We had a blast.

####

Post script


I had to go to work the Tuesday after TCMFF ended, not a good idea, but I didn't have enough vacation time to take any more days off. I got out of work at about six o:clock and fortunately traffic was better than usual on the way home. I got home by about 6:30. This is what I found:

Jasmine, TCM's youngest Social Media Producer,

gone into hibernation mode.