Cinema Salem's Quirky and Interesting Newsletter

(See the bottom of this post for information on this wacky photo.)

I love this newsletter for two main reasons -- the funny writing and the great movies that always seem to be available at Cinema Salem. I hope you enjoy it when I do share it with you.

Cinema Salem is located only one block away from the Hawthorne Hotel, so it makes a great afternoon or evening out -- you can come here for drinks before, see a movie and then have a nice meal right here afterwards, or reverse the process.

I hope to see you here, or there!

Juli

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Now Playing: The American (R); Going the Distance (R); The Other Guys (PG13); and The Complete (Restored) Metropolis (NR)!

Opening today is an intriguing George Clooney film, THE AMERICAN, ironically a thriller with a thoroughly European sensibility. As Metromix writes, "For a change, a thriller that explores the calm, not the storm." Internet heavyweight Emmanuel Levy agrees: "In Corbijn's minimalist, uneventful art thriller, basically a Western in disguise, George Clooney challenges himself--and the audience--with his quietest, stillest, most internalized part to date as solitary gunslinger seeking redemption in seclusion."

THE AMERICAN is already here, and will screen today and tomorrow at (12:00), (2:20), (4:40) and 7:00; Friday and Saturday at (12:00), (2:20), (4:40), 7:00 and 9:30; Sunday-Wednesday at (12:00), (2:20), (4:40) and 7:00; and then Thursday (the official end of summer according to the Salem Public Schools) at (5:00) and 7:00.

Opening on Friday is an unusually real and gritty romantic comedy, directed by a documentary filmmaker, GOING THE DISTANCE. Australia's At the Movies has already screened it: "Manages to be interesting as well as amusing, and there are good performances from both Drew Barrymore and Justin Long at the core of it." Trespass Magazine also found it charming: "The writing here is really quite endearing and Burstein's use of hand-held camera in several scenes helps add spontaneity."

GOING THE DISTANCE will screen on Friday and Saturday at (12:30), (2:45), (5:15), 7:30 and 10:00; Sunday-Wednesday at (12:30), (2:45), (5:15) and 7:30; and Thursday at (5:15) and 7:30.

New to us this week is THE OTHER GUYS, which the New York Times finds perfect: "The Other Guys is most authentically itself when it indulges in a free-form but nonetheless highly disciplined silliness that has the effect of dissolving, rather than piquing, whatever worldly anger or frustration you may be harboring." Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe also was amused: "What seems like another desperate adventure in stunt casting turns out to be a combustible comic bounty."

THE OTHER GUYS will screen on Friday and Saturday at (12:15), (2:30), (5:00), 7:20 and 9:45; Sunday-Wednesday at (12:15), (2:30), (5:00) and 7:20; and Thursday at (5:00) and 7:20.
A ton of you are trekking to our Screening Room to catch I AM LOVE this week, some who've never been there before. It's an awesome destination, presenting a new, challenging film every week, in pretty much any genre you might like to sample. There are a few handfuls of people who have established the habit of seeing every movie we present in there. If you're the adventurous sort of film lover, this is the place for you.

This coming week, we'll be screening a true classic, Fritz Lang's immortal METROPOLIS, immaculately restored and augmented with footage originally desired by Lang, but cut by studio suits. The visual images alone are enough to justify the price of admission, a style that still influences the design and art direction of film production. Go to RottenTomatoes.com to read the dozens of 100% positive reviews, but we''ll give you Ty Burr's from the Globe: "Here's a coincidence: The first must-see movie of 2010 is also the must-see movie of 1927. The difference is that you can actually see it now." And Roger Ebert adds, "Few films have ever been more visually exhilarating."

THE COMPLETE METROPOLIS will screen Friday and Saturday at (11:45), (3:30), 6:30 and 9:20; Sunday-Wednesday at (11:45 AM), (3:30) and 6:30; and Thursday at (3:30) and 6:30.
Check out our new website yet? Prepare to be dazzled. We think it's the best movie theater website east of the Mississippi, although that's not based on thorough research or anything, -- mostly on our own opinions.

We've also made a bunch of friends on Facebook, where we offer fun free giveaways, surveys, and insider information you can't find anywhere else, except of course, here in this newsletter. To participate, all you have to do is say you "like" us. You don't even have to really like us, although apparently most of you do anyway.

One of our upcoming events is the result of a Facebook slow-motion flash mob event, where Salem FUTURAMA fans mounted a campaign to convince CinemaSalem to show the series finale at 10pm tomorrow night. And guess what? We're convinced! So come on in for the free screening tomorrow night at 9:30.

Thanks for supporting CinemaSalem!

(Picture is from METROPOLIS, by the way, not FUTURAMA. Here's how to tell them apart: Metropolis is in black and white and contains iconic and hauntingly artistic tableaux of an evocative and somewhat nightmarish tomorrow; Futurama is in color and has been animated by people working very, very quickly for $8 per hour, -- however it's the funnier of the two films. Update: I'm told that the lead animator on the METROPOLIS team also made $8 an hour, but it was in 1926 dollars which works out to $96 per hour in 2010 dollars.)