Thursday, July 28, 2016

It's A Mad House! A MAD HOUSE!

OK, so it wasn't really a mad house. In fact, the theater was pretty sparsely populated, but that didn't matter. What mattered is that we went to the movies this past weekend and saw the original "Planet of the Apes" on the big screen. I can't explain why, even though I've seen this movie countless times, that this screening was special.

Maybe it was the fact that this was my first time seeing it on something other than a television. The cinematography on the movie is glorious and can really only be appreciated larger than life. Scenes that would normally be riffed on MST3K for being nothing more than walking are rivioting and give you a sense of desperation of these men, lost on an alien planet.

Maybe it was because, even though we weren't in the same theater, I knew that my buddy Scott Gardner was also watching that same showing down in sunny Florida. Scott and I had a long talk on the Apes movies when we first met, face to face, back in 2014. We agreed to disagree on the repair of the space ship for the beginning of "Escape from the Planet of the Apes", but we did agree on our mutual love of this film.

Maybe it was because Michelle and Kira were with me. Michelle has seen the movie before but she said that she liked it a lot better on the big screen. Kira, on the other hand, has seen bits of the cartoon (yes, I'm the guy that watches the cartoon version), but has never seen the movie. We made sure to not tell her the ending, but she wasn't too shocked by it. That's probably because she's had a good amount of science fiction viewing over her short life, and the twist at the end, while unexpected, made sense to her.

Whatever it was, all three of us had a great time.

=========================
Like what I'm doing here on the blog and podcast? Why not check out my Patreon Page to see how you can help me do more? http://www.patreon.com/TheHammerStrikes

4 comments:

  1. I did not get a chance to go see it on the big screen, but I am glad you had the opportunity to do so. My wife and I are both fans of POTA but the timing just didn't work out . These big screen "events" are a great opportunity to see movies on the big screen which otherwise we will never have a chance for. I mean, how else could you see Night Of The Living Dead or Mothra on the big screen, even in Rifftrax form? (And yes I am champing at the bit for a full theatrical Tohoscope version of Mothra next month!)

    I am seriously seeing if my wife and I can find a babysitter for the Fathom presentation of The King And I, and later this year they are doing Labyrinth, which I actually saw in the theater as a little kid! Then later on in the year we have The Shining (!), Breakfast at Tiffany's, and From Here To Eternity!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Michelle is a HUGE fan of Labyrinth, so we're going to be juggling schedules to go and see that one. I was a little disappointed that this didn't feel quite like the event that "The Ten Commandments" felt like earlier this year, but POTA just wasn't of that era of movies, so I'm not surprised.

      I really like the stuff that Fathom has been putting on, between the live stuff and the re-releases, I've spent more money at the movies for their stuff than new movies in the past few years.

      Delete
  2. I love these classic films that Fathom has been bringing back to the big screen. We saw Frankenstein/Bride of Frankenstein a few years ago and it was fantastic. Wish I had been able to make PotA; I'm a huge Apes fan.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It was a really fun time. As Luke said, they're doing Labyrinth in September, but also The Never Ending Story the week before. And let's not forget Animal House and, of interest to you, Dungeons & Dragons Live. :)

      http://fathomevents.com/event/dungeons-and-dragons/more-info/details

      Delete