2nd Run Summer

I love film. Few things can compare to the feeling of sitting inside a darkened theatre while light bathes the screen before you, laying bare an artist's hidden dreams and desires. I hold it high on a pedestal, high above art, literature and music, for the simple reason that it is the only art form that, by design, contains all the others, malleable to the creative exigencies of the true auteur's idea all throughout its state of becoming unto illumination.

Integral to this paradigm is the act of creation itself, the process by which twenty-four frames require a second of time to pass before the aperture, a second that cannot be repeated, cannot be reread, and cannot be painted over. Thousands of these moments make up the experience of a feature film, and their cadence is reflected in the time an observer cannot account for, the moments that there is no conscious awareness of the sound of the sprockets clipping the sprocket holes, the refrigerated room-tone, or your very existence at all.

That's usually when a cell phone rings, an obnoxious philistine indulges a pressing matter with his companion, or a puddle of soft drink collects at your feet, having completed its ten row cascade, and the moment, your moment, is disrupted and gone...forever. The gravity of these trespasses continues to go vastly unappreciated, and as a result the experience is now akin to watching television at dinner time, while the lesser arts are free to exploit their dominance over the fundamentals of subjectivism. For a parallel, the next time you have diminished five of your senses in pursuit of Beethoven's symphony within a symphony, have a friend punch you in the face.

I have managed to compartmentalize these indiscretions in my plight, which mirrors the plight of any discerning individual forced to interact in a world that places, as if it were a privilige, the law of diminishing returns above even the laws of physics, until the proverbial bar has to be lifted off the ground before the status quo and infinite mediocrity can set it any lower, requiring a near annual subjugation to a newly established normalcy. But there is a greater threat out there that is no longer merely looming in the distance. It is a threat that has annealed my growing animosity towards the cinema into a veritible repudiation. It is a threat that can only be avoided by traveling over an hour away from my home, or suffering the primitive conditions of second run. The threat of digital cinema projection.

Yes, If I so choose not to subject myself to what amounts to little more than my living room with an exponent I have to drive to a completely different elevation. If I want to spare myself waxy pink flesh tones and bright red lips, and the preen that only something that actually doesn't exist in a tangible form can give you - if I actually care to view the color black - I have to go to a dollar show. Never one to complain about journeying to a movie theatre, having traveled over three hours once just to see a film, you can bet, however, that it wasn't to see Megatron and Optimus Prime in a fist fight. Doing that would negate film's occasional escapist appeal. And never one to complain about second run theatres -- if that were the only option it would still be better than Blu-Ray -- I nevertheless would prefer not to have my attendance forced. Reread the first paragraph above. Now close your eyes. Now imagine dialogue that sounds like its coming from a tin can, competing with a loose cotter pin grinding against projector sprockets. Imagine platter scratches dancing across the screen, perpendicular to the various roller scratches that help trace your way through the story from top to bottom. Imagine sitting on humid seats and having to manuever around a pair of shoes abandoned by a previous audience member who gave up trying to unglue them from the floor. It is unfortunate that hyperbole is the only way to deal with such scurrilousness.

And that is the prologue to my second run summer. That any enlightenment at all can be derived from such wretchedness will be a testament in and of itself. But we shall see, as week after week I step over the bar with decreasing effort, and try in vain to see if even a flicker of light can pass through the gummy-bear-stained projection room port glass.