If you happen to be wandering the streets of Uptown tomorrow night and happen to see a large individual who bears more then a passing resemblance to Michael Moore, surprise, it is Michael Moore. The charismatic filmmaker will be in town to support his latest film Capitalism: A Love Story. But that film isn’t supposed to open in the Twin Cities for another couple of weeks? True, but The Lagoon Cinema will be hosting a semi-secret screening tomorrow at 7:00 pm of the film, and Moore will have a Q&A afterwards.

Great, so how can you get tickets? You can’t. This is a word of mouth screening so you have to be invited. In case that doesn’t register that means that you shouldn’t call The Lagoon to ask for tickets because they can’t give you any. You also shouldn’t show up at The Lagoon to ask for tickets because they can’t give you any. And it also means do not email me because I can’t get you in either. And if that isn’t enough reasons, please remember to not talk about Fight Club either. Because it has nothing to do with Moore’s film.

But, if you want to show up to stand outside and people watch and snap a few photos of the jolly director and then feel like sending them my way I’ll be more then happy to post them.

And, if anyone who actually has been invited to this screening could give me any details on what is discussed in the Q&A that would be awesome, because I’m stuck working tomorrow night and won’t be able to attend. So I’m just as screwed as the rest of you.

Capitalism: A Love Story opens at The Lagoon Cinema on October 2nd.

Tags: Capitalism: A Love Story, cinema, director, Fight Club, film, Lagoon Cinema, michael moore, movie, screening, The Lagoon Cinema, trailer, Twin Cities, Uptown, word of mouth

During the course of our relationship I have “forced” Anna to watch several movies that she had absolutely no interest in, thus resulting in several treacherous crossroads for us to navigate. And even with huge successes like The Descent, Fight Club and American Movie, it has still proven to be quite the struggle to convince her that my love of a particular film might actually translate into being worth her time to view it. Recently such an event happened involving Slither.

Now when Slither was released about 2 years ago we had been dating for several months and my birthday was fast approaching. I had gotten some passes to an advance screening of the film that was to occur on my birthday. Now, with a March birthday it can be a bit of a struggle to find even a competent birthday film, so I was quite excited at the prospect of watching a halfway decent horror comedy as my own personal birthday present to myself.
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Everything Bad is Good For You

With the difficulty in modern literature finding an audience, it is no wonder that classic literature is having an even more difficult time connecting with readers. Results from marketing research performed by Orion Group publishing were “near-unanimous” in revealing that people thought classic literature to be “long, slow and repetitive” and “many respondents admitted to having an interest in the stories when they had come upon them in another way, like watching a TV adaptation or film that brought alive the story and characters.”

This lead to Orion to consider publishing condensed versions of classic literature:

“Literally, life is too short. Once you get to a certain place in your life, you realize that there is a finite number of books you’re going to be able to read,” [Malcom] Edwards [of Orion] says. He admits to “bouncing off” Moby Dick several times, even though the whaling, the quest and the biblical aspects of the book all sound appealing. Would he have had more success with a shorter, snappier version?

The condensing of classic literature can be seen as a beginning. How long will it be until modern literature is viewed as being slow or repetitive? Already English teachers are using film at some point “as a replacement for a long text, or as a supplement to a written text or thematic unit.” How long before teachers exclusively use movies as an alternative experience of the text, especially when taking into account the finite amount of classes and the seemingly infinite amount of available material? How long before the idea of the text becomes just as important – if not more – as the text itself? (more…)