Open Threads

I’m a crazed, unrepentant, obsessive, incurable, doomed-beyond-all-hope-of-redemption movie junkie.

No, it doesn’t matter what type of movie it is. I’m usually not stuck in a specific genre, actor, or filmmaker.

It could be a superhero popcorn flick by Disney or a dour German soap opera filmed with an iPhone on the weekend, I don’t care. As long as the people who brought it to the screen are passionate about the story they’re telling and it’s done with artistry, I will find value in it.

And sometimes when I’m watching a movie, I think: Mom would’ve liked this.

No matter where I am, I can feel her next to me every time I watch a movie. And that’s appropriate because my mother gave me a precious gift a long time ago and I’ll carry it with me for the rest of my life.

My mother was my first movie buddy.

Loew’s Burland Theatre was once one of 14 theatres that the original Loew’s circuit operated concurrently in the Bronx.

Situated in the West Morrisania area, it first opened in 1896 as an open-air theatre that operated only in the summer months. In 1913, the site was excavated for a conventional movie theatre that opened as the Burland Theatre on November 1, 1913. Within a short time it was taken over by Loew’s Inc. and renamed Loew’s Burland Theatre.

In later years it was taken over by Cinema Circuit Corp. and the Burland Theatre closed in 1971. It presently houses a supermarket and a dry cleaners.

TV was my introduction to the movies.

Television was different when I was a kid; there was no streaming, no cable, no satellite dishes. People didn’t have to pay bloated subscription fees every month, so there were a lot of viewing options available. For free. When you don’t have a lot of money, that’s a big deal.

Besides the major TV networks (ABC, CBS, NBC), there were the local NY stations (WPIX, WOR, WNEW) too. So there were game shows, reruns of “classic” dramas, westerns and sitcoms, soap operas, and lots and lots of movies.

But I never saw a movie in its “natural habitat.” I never saw a movie with an audience in a theater before.

The first time I saw a movie in an honest-to-God movie theater was at the Burland Theater in the South Bronx, which was only about a fifteen-minute walk from where I lived.

One afternoon my Mom and I went to see a triple feature of James Bond movies: Dr. No,  Goldfinger, and Thunderball. I think I was eleven years old, and even though I didn’t realize it this was a big deal.

Before movie theaters were divided into little shoeboxes, they used to be the size of cathedrals. The screen was enormous, and the sound from the large speakers in the walls made the inside of the theater vibrate.

We got there late, but I got to see Dr. No fall into a nuclear reactor pool and die, so it was OK because I still believed that the good guys always won.

I enjoyed Thunderball, although I barely remember anything about it now. Oh sure, Bond using a jet pack was cool, but that’s it.

But it was Goldfinger that made a huge impact on me and changed the way I saw movies from that point on. It was a transformative experience.

First of all, it cemented in my head the conviction that only Sir Sean Connery was worthy of carrying his trustworthy .32 caliber Walther PPK.

Despite the heroic efforts of Lazenby, Moore, Dalton, Brosnan, and Craig, none of them said “Bond. James Bond”, with the same seductive resonance of menace and charm as Sean did.

(Mind you, my opinion is just a variation of the endless arguments about who’s the “best” Batman or Sherlock Holmes. I don’t care. You never forget your first Bond.)

Secondly, I think of Goldfinger as being the best of the Sean Connery era of James Bond movies.

Lovers of the superspy genre have cited Goldfinger as the film when the franchise found its identity (the gizmos, foreign locales, tongue-in-cheek humor) and it created the blueprint slavishly followed by espionage thrillers from Our Man Flint to The Kingsman. The bottom line is there’s no Jason Bourne without James Bond.

Auric Goldfinger, memorably portrayed by Gert Fröbe, was a superb adversary for Agent 007. The scene where Bond is strapped to a metal table as a laser beam is preparing to slice him in half has been permanently bookmarked in cinematic history:

“Do you want me to talk?”

“No, Mr. Bond, I want you to die!”

But I never expected a needle drop from Robert BrownJohn, the legendary American graphic designer:

“The title sequence for the James Bond film Goldfinger is BJ’s most famous and iconic work. The titles have been celebrated by both graphic designers and audiences universally. The sequence is a combination of conceptual brilliance and visual extravagance and is still the gold standard of film titles to this day.”

This wasn’t your grandma’s credit sequence, where the audience saw names on a placard. It felt like going from a horse and buggy to Warp Factor Five. It was a music video years before MTV.

More importantly, I think this was the first time (although I didn’t realize it until much, much later) that I began to process movies differently. I wasn’t just thinking about the characters and what the story was.

This was the first time I wanted to check underneath the hood in a movie and see what made it go.

The lens through which I experienced movies got bigger and things were never the same afterwards. That was the afternoon I became a film critic and it blew my eleven-year-old mind. I guess it was my Origin Story.

For whatever reason, that was the last time my Mom took me to a movie theater. But the damage was already done. As soon as I was old enough to go by myself, the Burland Theater was my crack house, my opium den, my shooting gallery. I was hooked for life.

This was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Sometimes it’s painful to take that long walk down Memory Lane because it means saying goodbye to the people and places that we valued.

On the other hand, it’s the remembrance of the joy we experienced that illuminates the path ahead of us.

Psychiatrist Dr. Colin Murray Parkes said, “The pain of grief is just as much part of life as the joy of love: it is perhaps the price we pay for love, the cost of commitment.”

I have left many bad habits behind me throughout the years, but the kick I get from movies still feels as good as the first time.

Whether at home or at the Cineplex, I can still feel the excitement blossom inside me whenever I sit in the dark and the opening credits appear on the screen.

Thanks, Mom.

It’s My Mom’s Fault I’m A Film Critic, Thank GodPost + Comments (226)

Mindlessly reprinting a Trump Turd (“Truth”) as if it meant something is the latest offense against journalism from the Times.  In fairness, a bunch of other media outlets fell for it, too. Anyway, here’s the KamalaHQ response:

As usual, really good.  Then this:

The Harris campaign is the first one that I’ve seen that knows how to really use social media.

I Agree to Accept $100 From Every Citizen of the USPost + Comments (111)