After hearing a passionate endorsement of the movie Happy-Go-Lucky by an NPR film reviewer about a month ago, I was determined to watch it. I ended up going to moviefone.com and doing a search for the nearest place where I could watch the movie. The closest place ended up being Washington, DC, a good 300+ miles away. This in turn partially prompted me to embark on what eventually became my sugar-addled DC trip.
Since then, the movie's made it to Charlotte, Greensboro, Asheville, Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, but not Winston. So the moral seems to be that if you're willing to drive, say, up to 100 miles, you can generally find the movie you're looking for if you give it a couple weeks. But generally, an art-house movie is hard to find in this town. I regularly attended the North Carolina School of the Arts' Films on Fourth movies last year, which brought in some great movies. But then the series ended last December, because there wasn't enough interest and attendance to keep them going. Outside of the RiverRun Film Festival in April (mark your calendar!), this town's got nothin'.
C'mon people! If this town is supposed to be known as North Carolina's "City of the Arts," we can do better than this!
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Exclusion Principle
1 day ago
4 comments:
AGREE! There was one Spanish film I wanted to see once that actually showed up one Friday in the listings of the theatre on Reynolda, but when my husband and I went that same night, it had disappeared. We were told it was cancelled. No explanation. Nothing. I was so disappointed.
Central Library does free foreign films from time to time. They just had a series recently (I remember blogging it).
I totally agree. I have to schlep up to Chapel Hill to see "Synechdoche New York"? And we NEVER, EVER get any foreign films here. What gives?
On a more aesthetic note, I'm also devastated that there's no true art-house cinema in Greensboro. Carousel may show the odd independent or foreign film, but it's still a multiplex.
Ooooh it's April 22-29. And I was thinking of taking my vacation to the DC area right around the end of April. That movie festival actually looks amazing, and indie movies are my favorites. Mainstream is SO badly written these days.
Better not joke about that stuff JG! I hope you can make it!
Newest movie that I'm appalled is not showing within 50 miles: Slumdog Millionaire (closest venue: Charlotte)
WTF! I can understand why some of the art-house movies are limited distribution, but Slumdog should be playing everywhere!
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