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Post by tory on Oct 23, 2021 10:30:34 GMT
1. what was your local cinema when growing up? What memories do you have of it?
Purley Cannon Cinema. Cried watching E.T but also watched a load of classic 80's films like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Lethal Weapon, Top Gun etc. Faded glamour personified, with the smell of popcorn, large cartons of watered down coke which produced the requisite slurping noises etc.
2.Where do you like to set?
Preferably Row J or K, in the middle of course.
3. Do you like to eat in the cinema?
Yes, but I have a rule that I try to finish any snack I have by the time the film starts. Usually a mix of sweet and salted popcorn. During "No time to die" the woman next to my wife got out a massive bag of crisps HALFWAY through the film and started eating them loudly at the quietest part of the fucking film. It was excruciating.
4.Most memorable experience?
Probably either taking some 2cB and watching Apocalypse Now at the Prince Charles a while back or getting a fantastic blowjob during "An American Paris" in the ICA.
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Post by bungo the mungo on Oct 23, 2021 10:35:47 GMT
getting a fantastic blowjob during "An American Paris" in the ICA. did he take his teeth out?
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Post by DarknessFish on Oct 23, 2021 11:27:34 GMT
My regular cinema was the Unit 4 in Pemberton, a small, shabby place with three screens and absolutely no hint of faded glamour, style, or any romantic/nostalgic sentiment. Did always smell of hotdogs though. I used to go twice a week for years, even when the films didn't change often enough, so I'd often see even quite poor films a couple of times. Strictly mainstream Hollywood all the way though, suburban, vaguely rough Wigan was not the place for forrin or art house fillums.
Sometimes we'd meet other mates and go to the big Ritz in town, opposite the site of the old Wigan Casino. That always felt a bit more like a posh evening out, with screens being actually large, and having more than one speaker. Imagine the thrill of stereo!
Can't think of any memorable moments, it's a cinema, not much ever happens there. But I do always eat pick n mix. Helps get rid of the taste of all those blowjobs.
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Post by cousinlou on Oct 23, 2021 12:26:24 GMT
1. what was your local cinema when growing up? What memories do you have of it? The Prinses theatre, a ten minute walk from where I lived. Wednesday afternoon was free on primary school and with 4 or 5 others we used to go every wednesday afternoon. I must have seen most Laurel and Hardy movies there but also things like Zorro, Batman etc. It was a riot with the place full of 9/10 year old boys (and a few girls). I don't fully recall but I think a ticket was about 25 cents. Usually a short film before the feature would start 2.Where do you like to set? Back then I didn't care much but these days a bit in the back, central to the screen 3. Do you like to eat in the cinema? Not at all. 4.Most memorable experience? Not from recent years other than some movies being exceptionnally good and some less so. But back in my youth, during the movies it was always a riot with loud comments and quasi fights braking out between different groups of boys.The real memorable experiences were after the movies. Around the corner from the street the thetre was on was a fairly big river, seperating the South area of Rotterdam from our part. We would walk along the river, jumping on commercial boats that happened to be there, or houseboats. Next to the actual quay there were still rocks, a meter wide or so, reminants from the war. Slippery as hell and the trick was not to fall while jumping from one to the other, meanwhile looking out if there weren't any fish caught by the tide inbetween the rocks. As far as the movies back then are concerned, I have vivid memories of a L&H movie called 'Diavolo' Diavolo was the leader of a gang in - I think- the 19th century, maybe earlier. They would rob people in the forrest and after the business was done Diavolo would sing a victory song. Nobody can tell what they look like so L&H develop the plan to rob people, pretending they are the Diavolo gang. One of their first robberies goes fine untill they come to the finale, singing the victory song. They had not thought that through but Ollie improvises but gets stuck halfway upon which the leader of the victims finalises it for him. It takes while before the coin drops but then, in typical L&H style, Ollie looks straight into the camera with a look that must have been the template for the universal look saying 'boy are we fucked' Just thinking back of that scene makes me laugh like a loon again.
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Post by sloopjohnc on Oct 24, 2021 16:40:18 GMT
1. what was your local cinema when growing up? What memories do you have of it?My local movie theater. In jr. high, every 7th and 8th grader in the city would converge on this place. My friends and I would eat at Taco Bell beforehand. It had a balcony and kids would throw stuff and lighted matches on the kids below. It was a free for all. In high school, it went down on its luck and I saw Jimi Plays Berkeley and Song Remains the Same there as midnight movies. In the '80s, it started showing soft porn. A group of my friends and I went one night and a friend of mine named Chris told me to not look back in line at the concessions stand at the intermission. Of course, I turned around and looked directly at the general manager of the YMCA where he and I worked. He was really nice to Chris and me on Monday. 4. where do you like to sit?On the side on the aisle about halfway back. 2nd choice, in the middle by the aisle. 6. do you like to eat in the cinema? if so, what?Sure. I like to get popcorn and a drink. Raisenets sometimes too. 7. what's your most memorable cinema experience?Gawd, tons of them. We had a drive-in in town and there was something memorable every weekend. I went with my dad and my brother to see 2001, A Space Odyssey with my dad at the local theater. I must have been 8 or 9 and I remember asking him throughout the whole movie, What's going on?" Saw Patton with him and my brother around the same time. That movie really had an influence on me. When I was much older, I went with my mom to see a double feature at the theater. Back to the Future and Rebel Without a Cause. We had a great time.
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rayge
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Post by rayge on Oct 24, 2021 17:53:30 GMT
1. what was your local cinema when growing up? What memories do you have of it? There weere loads. Seven or eight in tottenham alone, plenty more a short bus ride away in Edmonton, Stamford Hill, Hornsey, or Wood Green Before `i was born, my parents used to go to the pictures five or six times a week. The two main first run ones were the ABC Ritz at Turnpike Lane and the Palace in the High Road. Both were built in the 1930s, I think. The two that stand out most in my memory were both flea-pits, the Essoldo and The Corner, both on one level with no balcony. When I visited Tottenham with Clive on his 50th birthday in 1997, the Essoldo, which was in West Green Road, just around the corner from his childhood home had turned into a carpet warehouse: 15 years later it was a church. The Corner - at Wards Corner, where the Seven Sisters Road meets the High Road - later became the Noreik Club, which inspired Saturday Night Beneath the Plastic Palm TreesI think it has been demolished now.
4. where do you like to sit? In my late teens, when I started to take cinema-going seriously, it was with two mates from school, Clive and Keith. At 6 foot two, I was the shortest, and because there was no legroom at all in most cinemas, and we couldn't all three sit in aisle seats, so we took to sitting at the frontwhere we could slump down, stretch out and look up. Ever since I acquired a taste for front and centre, and being so close to the screen that I couldn't see all of it without turning my head. I still used to go for this in later life when I wa on my own, but as cinemas got more comfortable, and I started watching movies with reasonable people, I wouldn't insist if I were in company. Haven't been to a cinema in over a decade.
6. do you like to eat in the cinema? if so, what? No
7. what's your most memorable cinema experience? Had a habit in the 70s of dropping a tab of acid juat before going to the cinema. I saw loads of pics that way in Faversham, 1971-74. Vividly remember Soylent Green, Straw Dogs, The Wizard of Oz (my first time!), The Pit and the Pendulum, but the one that takes the cake as my most profound and memorable was Bergman's Cries and Whispers in a London art cinema near the Tate. It remains my all-time favourite film, even though I haven't seen it since. Visually stunning, and unremittingly austere and bleak in tone, apart from the odd intrusion of emotional violence - I've never heard the phrase, 'a tissue of lies' without being reminded of it since – it ends with a coup de cinema that can still take (some of) my breath away and let me experience an echo of the catharsis it brought, just writing about it half a century on.
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Post by Reactionary Rage on Oct 26, 2021 10:32:33 GMT
1. what was your local cinema when growing up? What memories do you have of it?It was the Moray playhouse in Elgin: Looking at that pic it looks TINY now. I can remember watching kids stuff in the 80s where you'd have a film and some cartoons. The films were always those cheap British made movies for kids from the 70s where some gang would go on an adventure or summat. I can remember the smell of bubblegum and stale fags and the riotous atmosphere. A bit like that scene in Gremlins when they all go to the cinema and are going crazy! I left Elgin when I was 18 so have nothing after that but certain movies I can recall watching....Edward Scissorhands...Batman Returns...The Exorcist (more of that below). 4. where do you like to sit?At the back in the middle. 6. do you like to eat in the cinema? if so, what?I will often have a chocolate bar before the movie starts but I don't eat during a movie as I'm not a cretin. I really hate people who munch away and anybody eating crisps should be publicly flogged. 7. what's your most memorable cinema experience?Watching the Exorcist when I was 17. It wasn't a movie it was easy to see back then so opportunities were limited but they showed it that Halloween and it blew me away. It was a battered old print - which added to the atmosphere - and behind me there were were three drunken lasses - older than me but not by much - who obviously knew of its reputation and were intent on laughing and taking the piss and enjoying it ironically. You know the type. It was grating but when the masturbation scene dropped there was a deathly, stunned silence in the cinema afterwards. I was gobsmacked. The lasses behind me, who up to that point had been as described previously were completely silent. They left immediately. No words, no laughing, no pisstaking, nothing. I'd like to think the reason they left was that the scene was too much; at least that's how I interpreted it at the time anyway. Suffice to say the movie had a profound impact on me and haunted me for days afterwards.
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Post by sloopjohnc on Oct 26, 2021 17:12:56 GMT
1. what was your local cinema when growing up? What memories do you have of it?It was the Moray playhouse in Elgin: Looking at that pic it looks TINY now. I can remember watching kids stuff in the 80s where you'd have a film and some cartoons. The films were always those cheap British made movies for kids from the 70s where some gang would go on an adventure or summat. I can remember the smell of bubblegum and stale fags and the riotous atmosphere. A bit like that scene in Gremlins when they all go to the cinema and are going crazy! I left Elgin when I was 18 so have nothing after that but certain movies I can recall watching....Edward Scissorhands...Batman Returns...The Exorcist (more of that below). 4. where do you like to sit?At the back in the middle. 6. do you like to eat in the cinema? if so, what?I will often have a chocolate bar before the movie starts but I don't eat during a movie as I'm not a cretin. I really hate people who munch away and anybody eating crisps should be publicly flogged. That gives me an idea for an invention, a sphincter spreader for uptight assholes. It will go in the men's room vs. the lobby.
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Post by DarknessFish on Oct 26, 2021 20:57:22 GMT
I love that everyone else has these grand old picture palaces they went to. This is the cinema I went to every week, I can't even find a picture of when it was a cinema:
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Sneelock
god
you're gonna break another heart
Posts: 8,546
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Post by Sneelock on Oct 26, 2021 22:18:03 GMT
that's why it's the best one yet!
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Post by sloopjohnc on Oct 26, 2021 22:32:24 GMT
I love that everyone else has these grand old picture palaces they went to. This is the cinema I went to every week, I can't even find a picture of when it was a cinema: We had little independent cinemas like this, albeit not as shabby, up and down the SF Peninsula. The Belmont, the Carlos, the Laurel, the Guild, the Park, the Aquarius, the Varsity. We'd see everything from Charles Bronson movies to indie movies like Withnail and I that woudn't play in the multiplexes that began to dominate in the late '70s and especially the early '80s. And of course, we had the drive-ins. We had one in town, the Redwood. Probably 10 years ago, we took our annual summer trip to San Luis Obispo. They still have a drive-in there and we took the kids. They loved it. It's right off of Hwy 101. My dad was an usher at The Fox theater in Burlingame, the town he grew up in. Here's a photo in its heyday. You could tell he loved having that job the way he talked about it. This was the Depression and he got to see movies for free and probably had a modicum of respect among other teens in town.
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Sneelock
god
you're gonna break another heart
Posts: 8,546
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Post by Sneelock on Oct 26, 2021 22:38:18 GMT
I'll bet a lot of people bought tickets to regular movies and then snuck into those nudie movies at the Redwood.
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Post by sloopjohnc on Oct 26, 2021 23:44:28 GMT
I'll bet a lot of people bought tickets to regular movies and then snuck into those nudie movies at the Redwood. My earlier story about seeing soft porn in our neighborhood theater was an Emmanuelle movie. I think it was Emmanuelle in Bangkok, but who knows?
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Post by oh oooh on Oct 26, 2021 23:50:30 GMT
'man who go through airport turnstile sideways is going to Bangkok'
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Post by Reactionary Rage on Oct 27, 2021 9:45:24 GMT
1. what was your local cinema when growing up? What memories do you have of it?It was the Moray playhouse in Elgin: Looking at that pic it looks TINY now. I can remember watching kids stuff in the 80s where you'd have a film and some cartoons. The films were always those cheap British made movies for kids from the 70s where some gang would go on an adventure or summat. I can remember the smell of bubblegum and stale fags and the riotous atmosphere. A bit like that scene in Gremlins when they all go to the cinema and are going crazy! I left Elgin when I was 18 so have nothing after that but certain movies I can recall watching....Edward Scissorhands...Batman Returns...The Exorcist (more of that below). 4. where do you like to sit?At the back in the middle. 6. do you like to eat in the cinema? if so, what?I will often have a chocolate bar before the movie starts but I don't eat during a movie as I'm not a cretin. I really hate people who munch away and anybody eating crisps should be publicly flogged. That gives me an idea for an invention, a sphincter spreader for uptight assholes. It will go in the men's room vs. the lobby. I bet you sit there chewing away for the whole movie dontcha? Greedily shovelling popcorn into your gob with your shovel hands. Munching loudly on crisps and infuriating everybody in close proximity. Sucking on sweets like a hungry piglet sucking on his mothers teats. Slurping your DIET COKE. ARSEHOLE
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