And back to the topic at hand, I binge rewatched Season 2 of Shrinking ahead of the start of Season 3, and man did I not remember a bit of it.
One of the first stadium shows I saw, at the Brendan Byrne Arena in NJ. Tina Turner opened and sang Honkey Tonk Woman with Mick Jagger. I was so young my dad had to drive me!
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Oh look, it’s Elizabeth Moss, playing the daughter of the president!
I remember those days (usually at the Cow Palace in SF). Tattoo You was one of the only shows at Candlestick Park, which was a slog on public transit for Giants games with the same non-driving family friend (a friend of his was along for the Stones); though post-Giants the final gasp there was Paul McCartney’s final tour. Ahem, unlike those many final tours of other certain other bands. All but one other was at the Oakland Coliseum, which along with an arena is home to a BART station, and that one was driving distance but when my friends and I were old enough to drive.
I wish I’d grown up in an area with better public transportation. Might explain where I live now!
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As this is a food/cooking site,
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Definitely something to be said for compact urban environments! The current Giants stadium, PacBell Park, is easily accessible by transit.
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It’s been a while.
Loved One Battle After the Other. Totally agree w/ Penn’s nomination for “Best Portrayal of a Throbbing Neck Vein”. I was more pleased than most, apparently, w/ Edgar Wright’s Running Man remake. Between the two of them, that’s not a bad sampling of anti-fascist filmmaking. Add in Sisu 2: Road to Revnge’s gleeful slaughter of Stalinist post war Russian baddies and there was some almost hopeful sentiment in the multiplex.
Primate is a straightforward monkey slasher, and that title is everything you need to know. Chimp at home. Rabies. Hilarity ensues. Of special note is that the ape is, largely, practical. A guy in a chimp suit. Incredibly effective. It is the equivalent of a plain ol’ grocery store steak that you cooked at home your usual way and it just came out chef kiss perfect.
28 Days Later: The Bone Temple is quite interesting. Flawed, certainly, but adding more complexity to what is an already belabored ‘zombie/infected’ metaphor. I will say this much: the scene of Ralph Fiennes fire staff spinning to Iron Maiden’s “Number of the Beast” is worth the price of admission alone. If that doesn’t make you want to see it, then it’s probably not for you.
Lady Snowblood, a Japanese 1973 sword-fighting revenge flick, famously one of Tarantino’s chief inspirations for Kill Bill, is just relentlessly cool, with all that 70’s style and a jazzy soundtrack to boot.
Time of Roses- a 1969 Finnish film that is the county’s first sci-fi film, filled with Edie Sedgwick-like models and transparent inflatable furniture. An interesting curio and very “of its time”, but with a lot of profound intellectual discussion that probably sounded better if you were a stoned Scandinavian.
Finally-
Dancer in the Dark (2000) - dir. Lars Von Trier
No one does ‘bleak’ like Von Trier. Icelandic singer Bjork is musical loving Czech immigrant Selma, who is going blind, and scraping together every cent she can earn at the metal stamping factory so her son Gene doesn’t also go blind. Bjork’s performance is absolutely heart-rending. This film sits along side such “feel bad” classics as Grave of the Fireflies or Threads or Where the Wind Blows. A number of the people in the theater were openly weeping when walking out.
This is a fantastic film. Bjork took home the Golden Lion award at Cannes for her performance. I’m glad I’ve seen it. I might never see it again.
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Are you lucky enough to have a good repertory theater? (RIP UC Theater in Berkeley, which went out of business — killed by video — after I moved away from and before I moved back to the area.)
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I am. Just after the pandemic, a micro cinema (26 seats!) opened here in Sacramento called The Dreamland Cinema, run by two women, one of whom was a programmer for various festivals and for Alamo Drafthouse (before Sony ate them).
Their curation is absolutely 
and I’m there at least once a week. Often more.
They have a membership program for the cost of two admissions per month. You get 2 tix plus a free member screening that’s voted on by the members, and a week’s advance notice for the monthly schedules, since shows usually sell out.
It is my 3rd place of choice. The regulars all know one another. It’s a fabulous community.
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Berkeley had one of those in the '80s, it was actually above a storefront. I went a couple of times in high school. Freshly popped popcorn with real butter in white bags.
The UC Theater was the opposite, one large screen with a large house. It had a mix of second run, vintage, and weeklong specials like animation festivals, always well-paired double features, or occasional triple features in the case of trilogies. They’d give you an old-fashioned ticket stub so you could exit and re-enter. Santa Cruz’s repertory house is long gone. At least Film Forum (in NYC) is going strong.
Before settling in Sacramento I was in SoCal and a member of the venerable Cinefamily repertory theater. It had maybe 100 seats and got all sorts of early access to new projects. For instance, we got The Babadook while it was still on the festival circuit, w/ Jennifer Kent on hand to do a Q&A. That was a wonderfully regular occurance. Other highlights included Nacho Vigalando getting roaring drunk during the Q&A for Open Windows, Patton Oswalt introducing Bad News Bears, and Kevin Pollack introducing The In-Laws. Alas, the organization itself was run like a frat house, with all the awful sexual politics that implies. It died not long after I left.
In Vancouver, B.C. there was the Rio Theater. They held their own film festival: The Rio Grind, featuring grindhouse, action, and general exploitive fun.
Here, Dreamland runs the Sacramento Midnight Film Festival at the end of April.
This Saturday is the Sacramento Horror Film Festival, a collection of new shorts and features that runs from noon 'til almost midnight, and for which I serve as a juror. 
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My most memorable Q&A was with Akira Kurosawa, held at the Palace of Fine Arts in SF. I don’t remember which film was shown (it was in the '80s, so before Ran and Kurosawa’s Dreams, but I don’t think it was a new film).
The UC had Rocky Horror Saturday nights, with audience participation and a cast acting out the scenes silently below the screen.
San Francisco still has the Roxy, and there’s BAMFA (the Berkeley Art Museum and Film Archive, associated with the university but independently curated. The Archive runs repertory, including lots of foreign films, some premieres (also including foreign films from places not often represented in US cinemas), and occasional festivals, like an annual Noir Festival. Less in the way of popular films than the UC had, so it fills a different niche.
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I used to drive past that place every day on my way to work! I really only remember it as being across the street from The Zebra Club, which at 6am, was sometimes letting in the first customers of the day.
I am seriously so heartbroken over this.
I added it to watch HiJack”, but I ‘m watching Slow Horses while I wait for the next episodes to drop.
@small_h , St. Dennis is the only network television show I’ve watched in years. Hubs laughs out loud, and he mostly watches HGTV.
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That’s got my name written all over it! I should check it out.
That and his appearance on the podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend show Harrison Ford’s humorous side. As small h suggests, its cast is really solid, and it is very bingeable.
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O’Hara was one of those people that instantly improves any scene she’s in. Like a slightly younger version of Madeline Kahn. And like Kahn, she could make a throwaway line into gold.
“This is my art, and it is dangerous!”
and my personal favorite: “I will go insane and I will take you with me!”
I have tried and failed to get into Schitt’s Creek a couple of times. I think it’s time to give it one last go.
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