Hollwood is for (movie) lovers

Despite my ongoing love-hate relationship with this town (where “love” means “feel indifferent”), I will confess that this is a great town for movie lovers, even if you’re not interested in making movies but just enjoy watching them. The studios and the major film archives are right here, so rare or recently restored prints are common. Studios unveil works in progress or otherwise-unreleased films on a regular basis. There are tons of theaters dedicated to showing films for film lovers and not just the latest blockbuster.

Case(s) in point: on Tuesday night I took in the nerdtacular double feature of Tron and The Last Starfighter at the New Beverly, a single-screen theater that doesn’t seem like it’s changed much since those movies were in their first runs. It was great fun, laughing at the ridiculously cheesy parts of those films (“Greetings, programs!”) while reliving some of the excitement we felt when we first watched them. (Unsurprisingly, the male-to-female ratio at this screening was unbelievably high.) Then last night we ventured to the Aero for a sold-out screening of Hotel Chevalier and The Darjeeling Limitedfollowed by a chat with Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola, and Wally Wolodarsky. There have been two advance screenings of Control, the Ian Curtis biopic, in the last week. Earlier this year we saw Brand Upon the Brain, Guy Madden’s latest film, accompanied by a live orchestra and live foley artists. These kinds of things are so rare in SF, and yet down here screenings of rare prints, in-person appearances, and other activities for film lovers are rather commonplace.