The Ohio Sci-Fi and Horror Marathons

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PostPosted: Wed Jan 16, 2013 4:38 pm 
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SCI-FI SPECTACULAR 7

Special Guest FRANK HENENLOTTER
(dir. of Basket Case, Brain Damage, Frankenhooker)!

24 hours of Sci-Fi Movie Madness! March 9, 2013

Portage Theater
4050 N. Milwaukee Ave.,
Chicago, IL 60641
1.773.736.4050
Doors Open at 11am

Current Film Line-Up:

ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES (Roger Corman Craziness!)
THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (Vincent Price Classic!)
MATINEE (Joe Dante!)
THE DARK CRYSTAL (80's Awesomeness!)
SILENT RUNNING (Rare 70's Stunner!)
INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS ('78 Remake!)
BRAIN DAMAGE (with director FRANK HENENLOTTER in Person!)
IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS (Carpenter Craziness!)
BATTLE ROYALE (Teenage Terrors!)
CAMERA (Rare David Cronenberg Short!)
THE HEART OF THE WORLD (Guy Maddin Short Film!)
Dark City
Soylent Green

Tickets are $20 pre-sale 'til January Saturday 26th,
$25 pre-sale 'til March 8, Friday.
$28 at the door, day of show of show.

Pre-sale tickets:
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/302719

PLUS: Vintage Trailers, Dealer Tables, Charity Auction
for Vital Bridges (http://www.vitalbridges.org) and more!

Free Parking in the Sears Lot Around The Corner
Films, times and guests subject to change.
No Refunds, No Returns

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Last edited by Jaws3dfan on Wed Feb 13, 2013 9:18 am, edited 2 times in total.

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PostPosted: Tue Jan 22, 2013 8:52 pm 
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Update.

ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES (Roger Corman Creatures!)
THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (Vincent Price Classic!)
MATINEE (Joe Dante!)
THE DARK CRYSTAL (80's Awesomeness!)
SILENT RUNNING (Rare 70's Stunner!)
INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS ('78 Remake!)
BRAIN DAMAGE (with director FRANK HENENLOTTER in Person!)
IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS (Carpenter Craziness!)
SHOCK WAVES (Nazi Zombies!)
BATTLE ROYALE (Teenage Terrors!)

Plus more features coming soon!

Short films include:

Dead-ish by Nate Mack
Cheery Point- (Trailer) A Film by Versa Studios Media.
Platoon of Power Squadron (Trailer) by Jake Jarvi

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PostPosted: Wed Jan 23, 2013 9:31 pm 
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Just added:

Special Guest:
Director ALBERY PYUN
Dollman
Sword and the Sorcerer
Cyborg
Radioactive Dreams
Nemesis

And one of the above films will be also be shown (I am hoping for Sword and the Sorcerer) you can vote on FB at:

https://www.facebook.com/scifispectacular

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PostPosted: Tue Jan 29, 2013 6:35 pm 
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Are you coming out here for this Jaws? I have my tickets but I don't know if I'll be doing the entire marathon or not. Kind of an odd line up but still a fun time and it'll mostly be 35mm prints.

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PostPosted: Wed Jan 30, 2013 10:59 am 
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MEATFETISH wrote:
Are you coming out here for this Jaws? I have my tickets but I don't know if I'll be doing the entire marathon or not. Kind of an odd line up but still a fun time and it'll mostly be 35mm prints.


As of now I am planning on being there, i hope nothing comes up to prevent me being there. I like the line-up so far but I could live without BATTLE ROYALE because we just saw it on the big screen.

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PostPosted: Wed Jan 30, 2013 9:47 pm 
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I just have a feeling Brain Damage will be DVD projection which will look terrible at the Portage. They played the DVD of From Beyond a few years back at the Music Box and claimed it was because the prints are all censored and the director made them play the DVD since Stuart Gordon was the guest...cut to a week later in Columbus where Gordon was also the guest and he didn't seem to have any problem with the R rated 35mm print we played. I'd rather see a print with a minute less gore than a crappy dvd.

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PostPosted: Mon Feb 11, 2013 3:45 pm 
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Just Added:

CAMERA (Rare David Cronenberg Short!)
THE HEART OF THE WORLD (Guy Maddin Short Film!)

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PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2013 12:34 am 
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Just added:

Dark City!
Soylent Green!

This lineup just got remarkably better!

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PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2013 9:18 am 
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MEATFETISH wrote:
Just added:

Dark City!
Soylent Green!

This lineup just got remarkably better!


YES!!!

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 05, 2013 7:35 pm 
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Well due to an death in the family I will not be able to attend this weekend :(

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PostPosted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 1:09 am 
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So sorry to hear. Too bad on 2 fronts. I'll post my recap of it next week.

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PostPosted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 9:48 am 
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MEATFETISH wrote:
So sorry to hear. Too bad on 2 fronts. I'll post my recap of it next week.


Thanks man!!

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PostPosted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 1:56 pm 
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So I'll quickly recap the Chicago Sci-Fi marathon for those interested enough to read it. Before I continue though I want to thank them for even putting on the event at all and a big shout out to Bruce, Joe, Jeff and everyone involved in bringing these events to the public in any city. It's becoming more and more obvious how difficult it is to obtain 35mm prints-even ones that were available in the last 5 or 6 years. I've been going to marathons for the better part of 24 years now (missing a huge chunk after the Drexel North closed until the first Studio 35 marathon) and this was the earliest I've ever left a marathon. The lineup was pretty solid but the Achilles heel was the over reliance on video projection. The organizers have historically been pretty good at getting 35mm prints since Chicago has started doing marathons, so I'm sure they did their best to get prints of the titles but at events like this, I'd rather see a 35mm print of a mediocre movie than DVD projection of a great movie especially at a theater as big as the Portage Theater which seats around 900 people. On to my recap:

Attack of the Leeches Projected on what looked like a matted 16mm print that was in decent condition. Pretty typical early Corman rubber monster stuff. Some good laughs but nothing memorable.

Matinee I haven't seen this since it came out 20 years ago and it was a lot of fun to see again. Excellent 35mm scope print. Not really sci-fi per se but a big crowd pleaser. Not a great movie really but a great love letter to movies that I have a new fondess for.

Dark Crystal A beautiful 35mm of a movie that I don't really care one way or another about. I remember seeing it as a kid but even then it wasn't really a favorite of mine. Really great production design and I'm glad I saw it.

Soylent Green A movie I was really looking forward to seeing because I thought it was going to be a print. It wasn't. Probably the best looking of the DVD projection I saw. I probably shouldn't have expected a print since I know how hard it's been to locate (I don't think it's ever played Columbus) and whatever print might be out there would probably be faded and pink as a grapefruit. It's in no way a masterpiece but I love the 70s look and feel of the film.

Then they played a bunch of short Roger Corman inspired trailers by local filmmakers. Some were really clever and funny, some not so much.

Brain Damage Another DVD projection introduced by the director himself, Frank Henenlotter. A pretty silly horror sic-fi grindhouse film from the 80s. Fun audience movie. Afterwards, there was a Q & A that was really entertaining. He signed autographs for free after.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers '78 An absolute classic in every sense. Beautiful 35mm print with great colors and minimal scratches except at the reel changes. As much as I love the movie, it could probably have trimmed down the amount of chasing that goes on in the film. But it does develop that creeping sense of dread and paranoia. Also an excellent critique of the limitations of flower power and the transition to yuppiedom that the Reagan revolution would eventually cement into the mainstream.

In the Mouth of Madness I was really looking forward to this and Dark City. I was completely surprised when I walked back into the screening and saw an awful looking dvd being projected. I mean I know 1994 is almost 20 years ago now, but if there's a print of Attack of the Leeches, certainly there's gotta be a print of this somewhere out there. But maybe not.

At this point it was 12:30am and I started to wonder about Dark City so I found one of the organizers to see if Dark City was a print or not. He confirmed that it was a blu-ray since there are no prints of the directors cut. I never saw the movie theatrically so I didn't even realize that what I've been watching for years was the director's cut. Apparently there's a huge difference. If In the Mouth of Madnesshad been a print I would've sat through another DVD to get to the 35mm print of Shock Waves, which I've never seen. But I couldn't sit through 4 hours of DVD to get to a movie that might really suck for all I know. So at 12:40, we decided to call it a night. I don't know if Last Man on Earth or Silent Running were prints or not, but Battle Royale was going to be Blu-ray for the finale and since we watched that last year, I felt no need to stay past Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Overall I had fun and I seriously appreciate the efforts of everyone involved. I also know I am a lot more sensitive to the film vs. digital projection debate and most people don't care-especially young people. If I weren't so tired from long days of working from 6am-7pm all week, maybe I would've stayed longer. But I'm old and sleep mattered more to me this year.

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PostPosted: Sun Mar 10, 2013 7:40 pm 
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That's too bad about the preponderance of video content, although it also opens a window onto one of the great growing debates of modern programming (and Marathon programming) in film capable venues: how to balance a solid slate of titles with a solid slate of films. Like I said at the Horror Marathon last year, if we were living in, say, 2019 (in Los Angeles!), there might be a very strong slate of genre-related DCPs to play. But in the meantime, theaters are too often left only with the DVD or Blu-Ray option. And that ain't the same. Having sat through some fairly dreadful looking DVD/Blu-Ray content at this year's Cleveland and Boston Marathons, I'm not too excited by the possibility of near future events clogged with washed out levels of darkness.

A 35mm print of In The Mouth of Madness played at the New Beverly Cinema in L.A. last year, so one exists. But that and Dark City are both New Line titles, the catalog for which is distributed by Warner Bros., which has turned into one of the more notorious "just play the DVD" distributors around. They'll still loan film prints to longtime archives and high end venues (the Wexner Center in Columbus still seems to be on good terms with them), but in the last few years they've shut off much of their print library to everyone else.


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 11, 2013 1:56 am 
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The previous couple of posts illustrate a real issue when it comes to events like these - namely, the availability of film "prints" to show.

There has always been some difficulty in finding a 35mm (or, at some venues, 16mm) print of the exact title the organizer dreams of showing. Prints of older titles may no longer exist or be in such poor physical shape that they can't be projected any longer. Even when a print exists, there may be legal issues as to ownership (for instance, check out William Friedkin's current battle over SORCERER: http://www.deadline.com/2012/04/william ... %E2%80%99/) or the studio just doesn't want to deal with digging out a copy for a single showing. Plus, getting brand new films was always difficult for smaller events or festivals because they are considered too small potatoes.

Now, there is the added issue of the sunsetting of 35mm film prints in general. The studios basically want all celluloid to be gone as far as theatrical exhibition is concerned. Film prints (and negatives) are basically just there to be harvested to strike digital "prints" (DCPs) or DVDS/Digital Downloads from. So, even if a 35mm print has been shown in a theater very very recently, it doesn't mean that it's available to rent. It is also a main reason why so many 35mm showings nowadays are actually private prints - not, studio copies. It's still worth it to fight and harangue the studios to fork over their 35mm prints whenever possible, but, it is, sadly, becoming a losing battle.

All this is why it is critically important for every venue holding a Festival to upgrade its digital projection to be the best it can be. In Boston, we have a terrific projectionist named David who does his absolute best to make even a screener DVD look as good as it possibly can. It's still half as good as the best 35mm prints, but, it doesn't look like washed out VHS tape either - and, I've been to several digital screenings that look just like VHS!

It truly sucks that this is what theatrical distribution has come to. I wish it were different, but it's only going to get worse and worse. I think it will be a long time before Digital gets close to where top-line 35mm film (let alone 70mm) are.

In the meantime, it is best to look at the bright side. It does mean that your "wish list" film title is more likely to be available to show. Witness, last year's Ohio showing of THE GREEN SLIME. A film which Bruce and I searched for a 35mm print of for decades. It's half of what it could have looked like with a pristine 35mm print - but, at least it was shown.

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