YOUR GOOD FRIDAY

[davemerrill]

What a week! Had Passover on Monday with Shain's family. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday was work, and today we're all off because it's Good Friday. Monday it's back to a normal work week. The temperature is finally back up to where it ought to be, in the comfortable double digits. Anime North approaches and I'm working on my panels, TCAF approaches and I don't gotta do nothin' for that other than show up, and my checklist of Stuff I Gotta Do is getting checked off nicely.

First on my list was to update the look of Let's Anime so it's not quite so ultra 1990s looking. I did all the illustrations in the background and that's an actual old VHS tape of mine making up the logo.

Stupid Comics this week is taking a look at a fake Dirty Pair comic from the 1980s. No, not the one we covered earlier, but ANOTHER fake Dirty Pair comic. Seems Americans couldn't stop themselves from ripping off the Dirty Pair.



Shain's Georgie Girls this week is super cute for some values of 'cute'. Zero Fighter and Behind The Blue Door also updated last week, and only one of them features tentacles. Last week also featured the return of MAD MEN and a great Bob's Burgers that I enjoyed very much, both.



Tonight I think we're going to go to the Trash Palace and see a movie since I have Friday off for once. The story is that the Trash Palace is going to be closing in May so this might be our last chance to see a crazy movie in somebody's basement. I'm really gonna miss this. Toronto needs a lot more of this ground-level entertainment. Tomorrow is a free "FanFare Geek Fest" in Hamilton, run by the folks who run Con Bravo, it's basically a big dealers room/game room with free admission. There need to be more shows that are free to get into. I don't know what's happening Sunday other than me drawing another Zero Fighter and watching Mad Men and Bob's Burgers. So predictable!

Comments

[animejump.livejournal.com]

Man, Boston needs its own Trash Palace. I wish I was independently wealthy so I could run my own weird underground movie theater.

Re:

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

yeah, I'd go to that. Hell, if I had the space and the time I'd start something like that myself, get a video projector and a cheap stereo and pick a night once a month and show a movie and a cartoon. Then of course it would just turn into an anime club, and I'd have to set myself on fire. But darn it, there needs to be someplace people can gather and watch strange old movies.

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

Agreed. But I'm an iconoclast, I'd prefer something other than those 'independent' films that just ape old French stuff or try and out-weird 'Eraserhead'. Some place to show 'Panic in Year Zero' or 'No Blade of Grass' or 'ZPG.

We have such a theater, the UICA or UCIA or some such, something forgettable as all get out because it's about hipster cool and crap. They spent millions building a new 'center' with condos and retail space (both unleased) and surprise, they went bankrupt and got bought out by the Art Museum (which is now in money trouble, natch)...

We USED to have a 'hole in the wall' theater in an underused strip mall that would show stuff like 'Forbidden Planet'. Gone.

I would love to open a theater. I'm sure it would lose money.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

The Royal here shows strange stuff every Friday night, which is kinda cool. But the Annex theater turned into an all-documentary house (except for Rocky Horror) and there are so many film festivals that it's hard to program old B-pictures reliably. There used to be an actual B-picture festival in Toronto but it's gone. All the kitsch film people are getting priced out of the city. I mean, I love seeing movies at the TIFF, but there needs to be a low-rent Not Tiff.

OTOH the TIFF is pretty good about covering the full spectrum. We were in there seeing "Creepshow" a few weeks ago.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

oh yeah, I forgot about the Underground. In Chinatown, Golden Harvest (THE Golden Harvest) had a theater, a nice 1980s style auditorium, that had been closed for years, and some film people here leased it and got it back up and running, and they screened a lot of neat stuff for about a year as the Toronto Underground Cinema. Then they started hosting a lot of the nerd burlesque events and private events, they just quit showing films, and then they went out of business and now it's empty again.

[jasonrmerrill.livejournal.com]

GSU's Cinefest is about to stop showing 35mm, I believe due to the difficulty of getting prints. This is the poster for their send off:

http://www.cinefestfilmtheater.com/posters/Night%20Flight%20flyer[smallpdf.com].jpg

Not closing mind you, but having to quit showing actual film.

[animejump.livejournal.com]

That's happening all over. It's a shame, but real film is expensive to ship, prone to damage, and the projectors are a bitch to maintain. If I was emperor of the world and had my own movie theatre, I'd just do digital-- 1080p is hard to distinguish from large-format film until you get wider than 18-20 feet.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

I know there are a lot of 35mm purists out there, but film is a hassle and a half. My dream is that good-quality digital projectors are going to get cheaper and indy cinemas will be able to rent and screen weird and obscure films digitally. It would be easier and cheaper for everyone, right down the line.