#I am going to go crazy in the very back of that imax theater

[threebyfours]

I have to stop at home first to drop my shit off and grab my loyalty cup and snacks. And bigger sketch book

[porg-damneron]

Over the last few days I’ve really been reflecting on my journey as a Star Wars fan. Honestly it’s been such a big part of my life for so long. Like yes I was a Potterhead before I became a Star Wars fan but as much as I loved those books, it’s nothing on how obsessed I was and am with Star Wars. I remember being in 7th grade when started paving through this LEGO Star Wars book that my aunt bought my brother because he liked LEGOs and for some reason I just started reading it and suddenly I was swept away by the story and I’d actually seen EP I before but had mostly brushed it off. But after that seemingly random encounter with that book I fell down the longest rabbit hole and dragged my entire family with me. Luke Skywalker was arguably my first fictional crush and I was OBSESSED. Like I had posters, print-outs, and hand drawn art all over one wall of my room and went on to buy the big clunky toy version of his lightsaber. Over that year I collected all the movies on DVD, read the novelizations of the films, read part of the screenplays for the original trilogy, bought the huge hardback visual dictionary and religiously lugged that thing to and from school. I swear I knew the most obscure niche things because of that book...

Then came the new trilogy. I can’t put into words how I felt sitting in a movie theater on Christmas Day in 2015, four years since my journey had started, about to see the 9th film I never would have dreamed would be made. Seeing all of that on a huge screen, the theme music, the familiar opening, but this time brand new, not a rerun. Say what you want about the movie itself but I remember walking out of the theater feeling like I was walking on clouds.

In my senior year of high school, I remember going to Rogue One with my dad, brother, and one of his friends. This time we went to an IMAX theater with the perfect seats in the center of the back row. Again, I was blown away and couldn’t believe how well done it was, even if everyone had to die.

Then The Last Jedi, my freshman year of college. This time with my mom and brother. Same theater, similar seats, and I walked out of that movie on a high. In my opinion then, and still to this day, it was the best Star Wars film since Return of the Jedi. It still sits snuggly at #4 on my ranking of the films beneath the original trilogy.

Solo... oh Solo... admittedly my hopes weren’t TOO high but hey, Donald Glover as a young Lando? Sign my the HELL UP. Admittedly most of my beef with Solo is because I read 1.2 books of A.C. Crispin’s Han Solo trilogy and therefore had a very clear vision of what I consider to be the Han Solo origin story. (Honestly, check them out, they’re GOOD). Therefore I kind of try to pretend that movie didn’t exist for anything except for some sweet Han Solo merch and again Donald Glover as Lando.

Then I’d kind of let my love for the films sleep for a while, admittedly until the Rise of Skywalker trailer dropped and now I’m hopelessly obsessed again... I rewatched The Last Jedi twice last week for the first time since I saw it in the theaters and god it really is just THAT GOOD. This all leads up to why I converted my mostly-dead main blog into a Star Wars blog, both to pay homage to my first and eternal love, but also to control my Star Wars crazy from overrunning my mostly-Marvel-but-technically-multifandom sideblog, @that-is-americas-ass-you-know-it

[weekendwarriorblog]

30 Minute Experiment: Movie Theaters #30ME

Okay, let’s do this. Very early on in doing this experiment, and even back when I started this blog, I wanted to use it to talk about something other than movies. I’ve written more than enough about movies for one lifetime, and that probably won’t stop anytime soon, but in the last 24 hours a few things happened that made me think that I probably should address the elephant in the room that no on can agree on: When to reopen movie theaters. After I already decided to share some of my ideas and queries about how to handle this, a few things happened. In fact, a lot of things happened, but we’ll get to those in due time.

So yeah, I’m definitely on the forefront of people who really want to be back in a theater or even a screening room seeing movies again. Unlike so many people out there, I don’t have a giant display screen or a home theater or anything that allows me to have any sort of satisfactory experience watching movies at home. I mean, I do it because sometimes the job entails it. When I wrote reviews for Film Journal, MOST of the movies I was reviewing were only available to review via screener link and many of them would barely get a theatrical release. In some cases, my review was and maybe still is the ONLY review of that movie on RottenTomatoes. That’s how small these movies are.

As the various politicians in Washington and our own state and local politicians try to figure out how to reopen the economy, there’s only one thing I want to know and that’s when theaters will be able to reopen, when all those hard-working and under-appreciated people like the projectionists and ticket takers will be able to get back to work. But more importantly, when can we all get back to seeing movies in theaters safely?

As many probably know, I’m not one of those guys who necessarily needs to go see a movie on a crowded Thursday or Friday night among the first audiences. I didn’t get to see Avengers: Endgame until the Tuesday after opening for some reason, maybe cause I wanted to see it in IMAX in the same theater I saw Avengers: Infinity War.

I’m used to going to movies and press screenings where there are just a handful of people there and there’s so much social distancing already that it shouldn’t be a concern. I’ve been perfectly fine going to the movies and not having anyone sitting around me for years now so it’s not like I need to cozy up to some stranger now anytime soon.

A few of the things that happened in the last couple days included a bit of a war of words between AMC (the biggest theater chain in the country and in the NYC area), NATO (the organization that runs the entire theater franchise) and Universal Pictures, who chose to skip a theatrical release for a few of their films including this month’s Trolls World Tour and June’s The King of Staten Island (which was supposed to premiere at SXSW and play Tribeca). As you probably know, a lot of the festivals have already been cancelled or going virtually in order to provide content, support the filmmakers and themselves while still allowing viewers to be safe. 

It just so happens that the day after this feud, John Fithian, the head of NATO spoke with Variety (no idea how long ago this was conducted) about the situation, which you can read here:

https://variety.com/2020/film/features/theaters-reopening-plan-coronavirus-john-fithian-1234592228/

(Also, a very angry friend of mine went off on social media about the very idea of movie theaters being up and running by July, but I’m not gonna call him or her out as I know where they’re coming from, and I consider him/her a dear friend.

So I’m gonna talk about some of the issues and how they can be handled even while hundreds of theaters owners and representatives from NATO and the movie studios are probably having these very discussions on how to reopen movie theaters safely.

First of all, if Christopher Nolan’s Tenet is the first big studio movie that will be released on July 17 (which is 12 weeks a way, give or take?) followed by Disney’s Mulan the following week, that gives those involved a LOT of time to make sure everything is safe and that numbers have come down appropriately before reopening. Remember that a lot of this is being determined by the governors of various states as well as local politicians and the CDC. Things are being rolled out in phases. 

Let’s just assume that movie theaters might be Phase 2 or 3 and in New York, I doubt we’ll see those phases before June. Still, that gives theaters a lot of time to figure things out.

The big concern is that a packed theater will mean no social distancing. Well, you know what? You don’t have to have packed theaters. Just sell 25-50% of the tickets depending on the size of the theater, and with reserved seats being the norm these days, it’s mostly easy enough to figure out how to make sure people are watching movies safely by alternating seats and spreading the audience out across the theater.

This might be a problem for places like my dear, beloved and much-missed Metrograph since their smaller theater only holds 54 people and when it’s full, it is PACKED. Then again, I’ve also seen press screenings when there’s only five or six of us in there and it’s comfortable and safe. It might be a bigger problem when they premiere movies in there with guest QnAs. That’s definitely going to be one of the first problems the owners of Metrograph will have to figure out, but they also have a restaurant upstairs and make a good amount of money from events that are equally packed. I mean, you can barely get around at some of those events when the 150-180 seat theater lets out.

But most of these theaters have reserved seating and the ones in New York that don’t like the Film Forum and Quad Cinema... they’ll just have to figure out a way to block off or remove seats  or make it a little more dummy proof for their patrons, who are often older folks who might be in the worst danger if infected by COVID.

Limiting seating also leads to other issues because it’s not just a matter of having one seat open, then block off every other seat. You have to remember that couples and groups of friends want to go to movies together, and listen, these groups are going to get together to do other things regardless of whether they’re expected to social distance or not. They’re young people and they want to hang out. There’s also the consideration of families. Are you gonna make some three-year-old sit six feet away from their parents, and then separate them as well? No, that’s just silly.  What can be done is that you can sell reserved seats in groups so if someone is buying just one ticket, they’ll have a selection of single seats. If there are two people going together, they can buy a block of two. Families? They can buy a block of four or six or whatever’s needed. This isn’t that hard and concessions can and will have to be made. 

I feel like theaters were already taking some precautions like wiping down seats and limiting seating even BEFORE things went completely crazy and so far, no one has come forward and said that it was specific movie theaters that caused CORONA to spread even more rampantly in NYC. The last movie I saw in theaters was The Invisible Man in a moderately full 200 seat theater on a Saturday afternoon, and the theater (which had those reclining seats) already had so much separation between patrons that it was relatively comfortable and didn’t feel packed or unsafe. I’m not really sure what places like the Alamo or Nitehawk will do since they also serve food and anyone who’s gone to either one knows that two people next to each other share a table. Sometimes, at more crowded screenings, you’re sharing a table with a strange and you’re sitting WAY TOO CLOSE. Again, just sell tickets in blocks. If you’re going solo, then you’ll have a number of choices, and if you’re going as a couple, you can share a table. 

This idea gets a little more complicated when you realize that most regular moviegoers like to sit in certain seats. Like I prefer an aisle seat and not too far back either but also not right at the screen. This adds another issue when people are as picky as I am and don’t want to be stuck in the middle of a row (or want to be in the middle) and don’t want to be too close or too far back. Again, these are all easy things to figure out and I’m sure it wouldn’t take much tinkering with the technology to make it work in the way it needs to work.

At this point, there really shouldn’t even be a need for ticket sellers unless someone can only pay in cash (which I’m sure is a thing) and I’m sure concessions can be made to sell tickets safely even if it’s a matter of there being plexiglass in front of the ticket seller who will have to wear gloves and mask while dealing with customers. Honestly, we should be at a point where everyone has a smart phone or a printer at home where they can just bring that to be scanned... and scanners can wear gloves and masks as well. You have to realized that 90% of the day, especially in hours where I go to see movies, there is so little business that the people who work at a theater can safely take off their masks... there’s also this thing called testing which is continuously being ramped up and I’m confident that some of the ideas being thrown out there (like having temperature scanners making sure no one might have a fever).

The way to deal with smaller theaters where you can’t really do much social distancing? Just play movies on more screens so that an audience that might fill five medium size theaters would be spread out over a bigger space... Oh, damn. My timer just went off which means I’ll have to continue this subject at another time.

The fact is that there are a lot of things to keep people safe when reopening theaters and no one involved with movies, whether it’s the studio or filmmakers or theater workers or moviegoers themselves wants anyone to get sick or worse die just because they want to go out and see movies in the way they were meant to be seen. Anyway... to be continued...

[jobsbyjoce-blog]

Best Places to See in Spain: Madrid, Barcelona, Ibiza, Valencia

It has been my dream to visit Spain since I was 19. This was my first time planning a trip of this length on my own, and I wanted to share some of the things I learned. 

Best Sights

Planning this trip to Spain definitely proved to be a challenge. My boyfriend had only been out of the country to Mexico, and once to Jamaica. So a Eurotrip was not something he was an expert at. I had always wanted to visit Spain, but never to see any particular sight. I just wanted to soak up the culture and see if it was a place I would ever want to live.

My personal favorite places were:

Santiago Bernabéu Stadium [Madrid] home to Real Madrid CF. We watched Real Madrid beat Juventus in the 90th minute and it was insane! The energy was crazy because they hadn’t scored all game. They just needed one goal to make it to the finals so that was such a moment.

City of Arts & Sciences [Valencia] a massive science center where you can go visit the

·      L'Hemisfèric a gorgeous building that houses an IMAX theater playing movies about the galaxy

·      The Science Museum, which I paid to visit, where you can see everything from a dinosaur exhibit to interactive science experiments about how mirrors work.

·      L'Oceanogràfic is an aquarium with a gorgeous entrance. I tried to go but I got there just as they closed.

·      The Palace of the Arts, which I mistakenly thought was an art museum, is really an opera house. I haven’t been in an opera house since I visited Sydney Australia in 2001!

La Barceloneta [Barcelona] is a neighborhood right on the coast of the Mediterrean. This is the home of the famous W hotel. On this man made beach there are vendors selling mojitos and margaritas, people tanning and riding bikes. It almost felt like California, except for the extreme blue water. The best part of this spot was visiting the W hotel. It would not be my top choice to swim at this beach, but we made our way to the W and ate at Salt restaurant. Despite being overprice, the service and view just couldn’t be beat.

Valencia Cathedral [Valencia] is known as home to the holy chalice, or holy grail. I was able to lay my eyes upon what is believed to be precious cup from which Jesus drank! This cathedral really made a lasting impression on me. I’ve been to a few cathedrals around Europe (France, England) but this was the first time I did a guided tour and really paid attention. I learned about neoclassical art and gothic style architecture. This place is a must see.

Ibiza in general is a must visit, but you have to do this in the summer during season. We went and the clubs were 99% closed, and it was cold. We had scheduled a paddle boarding session that got cancelled because of the wind. But on the day that I left the sun came out in full force, and I got a glimpse of how beautiful that island can be. I have to go back and experience the full Ibiza effect. We stayed at THB Molinos, which was perfectly located and had an indoor pool & sauna. Perfect for the unpredictable weather.  

Favorite Food

I am not going to lie to you – I think I lost weight on this trip. I was not feeling the food, and I fell into numerous tourist traps. From overpriced paella in Barcelona to stale chips in Valencia, I did not have much luck. Any foodies who can give me some tips for my next trip? I struggled because I do not like anchovies, olives, cheese, tomatoes, or anything I cannot immediately identify. But my much less picky boyfriend didn’t have the greatest experience in this department either. I will say that I visited Casa Mingo based on recommendation from my old roommate, and it was the best chicken I have every had. Juicy, seasoned perfectly and nice sized portions. They also served their signature cider, which was almost like a dry version of Angry Orchard. That was delicious. That was the meal I remember most in Spain.

 Culture Shock

I experience a few things that made it clear I was not home in California.

Staring. From the moment I got off the plane I felt like I was being stared at incessantly. It intensified in Madrid and I felt very uncomfortable at some points.

Butter. When I was at the delicious Casa Mingo and also a trendy chain called VIPS I asked for butter for my bread. This seemed like an odd request to the servers, and Casa Mingo actually would not bring me any butter. 

Tipping. I don’t think I have a good grasp on the world of tipping in Europe, but I generally believe that it is not expected. I really struggled with deciding when to tip and when to leave it be. I began to lean towards not tipping based on some google searches from expert travelers.

That is the long story short of my 2 weeks in Spain! It was amazing and I am eternally grateful I was able to visit.

Time of Year

My boyfriend and I visited Spain in April. Prior to visiting I had the idea that Spain has a similar weather pattern to California. In this case, I was very wrong. We arrived to Barcelona in mid-April and the temperature was around 63 degree Fahrenheit or so during the day. Madrid was much colder and we spent time walking around in 40-45 degree Fahrenheit. ON a trip to the Royal Palace of Madrid the clouds burst into a rainstorm and I picked up a souvenir umbrella. Not sure I’ll ever use it again but it’s cute!