You know, Dear Listener, that The Film Talk is striving for something rare: to be a truly international cinema podcast. Your genial co-hosts Jett & Gareth are men of the world, widely travelled, for whom it would not be an overstatement to assert the core truth of country music: wherever they lay their hats, that’s their home.
While we both now make our caves in the land of Buster Keaton, William F Buckley, Andrew Dice Clay, and the late Bea Arthur, our first encounter with each other was in the hallowed space of Belfast’s only arthouse theatre (or, as the somewhat ridiculous government-endorsed lingo has it: ‘specialist cinema’), the Queen’s Film Theatre. QFT, more than any other venue, formed my cinematic consiousness over the past two decades – beginning rather inauspiciously with a late night screening of ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’, later becoming the place where I first saw Kieslowski films, bumped into Albert Maysles, discovered Hirokadu Koreeda’s ‘After Life’, listened to Howard Shore play the temp tracks he shows David Cronenberg when he’s scoring a movie for him, fell for Emmanuelle Beart in ‘Nelly et M Arnaud’, saw a triple bill of ‘Miller’s Crossing’, ‘Lost Highway’ and ‘The End of Violence’, (never saw a David Lynch film anywhere else) and even had a door held open for me by Mike Leigh. Couldn’t happen in too many other places.
QFT has been a magical place for me; operated as something close to a labour of love for many years, especially when it was one of the few entertainment venues that stayed open in the toughest days of the conflict in and about northern Ireland. It’s changed of course; updated furnishing, rebuilt screens, different seats; some of the romance of the old theatre that you could only get to by knowing where the almost-secret back alley was has gone, but it’s still the place where people in Belfast who want to be surprised by cinema end up every week. I saw ‘In the Loop’ – which could well turn out to be my favourite film this year – there just a few days ago.
And now, QFT has launched a new website – much easier to use than the previous one, which had some of the quaint characteristics associated with Web 1.0
The new www.queensfilmtheatre.com is gorgeous to look at, intuitive to use, and the only criticism I can offer is that no one has yet invented the Star Trek transporter machine, so I can’t get to see the films screening there unless I fly to Belfast. QFT is that rare thing – a cinema with heart, with a touch of the personal, a movie theatre where you can feel at home. We hope that The Film Talk offers something similar; for now, I’m happy to begin this week by paying tribute to one of the best places in the world to watch movies. And we’d love to hear from you, Dear Listener, about your own cinema shrines – please comment below.
posted in forum Miscellaneous by zad1138
posted in forum Miscellaneous by seanpdudley
posted in forum General Movie Stuff by seanpdudley
posted in forum General Movie Stuff by Jett Loe
posted in forum General Movie Stuff by prawnman
Looks like a great, intimate place to watch a movie.
Atlanta doesn't really have a place like this that I'm aware of. There are one or two theaters that were set up with a bar/restaurant where you could eat & drink while you watch a movie, but I've never been because it seems too distracting.
The Tara is probably the closest thing we have to a theater that has still maintained some of it's old school charm (still a product of the 70's, but compared to today's mega-plexes it's not bad).
Most of the old theaters that had any charm at all were either destroyed, or converted into a concert venue (aka “The Roxy”, now of course “The Coca-Cola Roxy Theater”).
The Fox Theater still shows movies during the summers, and it's a great old theater but it's really too big, and the sound of today's movies can't be appreciated here as a result (lots of “echo” and hard to appreciate today's quality).
Film Festivals are held at Georgia State and the Rialto Theater. It's a larger theater, too (not as big as the Fox), and isn't exclusively a movie house, but still very nice is that old, classic feel.
The U.C. Theatre in Berkeley was mine:
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=b…
[...] Cinematic Shrines: Queen’s Film Theatre [...]
I do have a unique, albeit trivial piece of equipment, and that is an old water pressure gauge (I think it's water pressure…maybe temperature?) from one of the huge boilers from the old Loew's Grand Theater after it burned down (where the Gone With the Wind premiere was held).
My grandfather was a plumber and I guess he somehow was involved with repair/clean up (?) and took it out — it sounds rather boring but it is a massive brass guage encased in some kind of gothic looking black iron design– kind of interesting on it's own. Just the size and ornate-ness of it gives you an idea of how architecturally interesting old theaters were back then, since that was just an old pressure guage.
I do have a unique, albeit trivial piece of equipment, and that is an old water pressure gauge (I think it's water pressure…maybe temperature?) from one of the huge boilers from the old Loew's Grand Theater after it burned down (where the Gone With the Wind premiere was held).
My grandfather was a plumber and I guess he somehow was involved with repair/clean up (?) and took it out — it sounds rather boring but it is a massive brass guage encased in some kind of gothic looking black iron design– kind of interesting on it's own. Just the size and ornate-ness of it gives you an idea of how architecturally interesting old theaters were back then, since that was just an old pressure guage.