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Star Wars Fans in Line... at the Wrong Theater
Rollie Hawk writes "More than a month before the premiere of Revenge of the Sith, fans are already lining up. Outside Grauman's Chinese Theater, eleven diehard Star Wars fans (i.e. lifelong virgins) are waiting for tickets to go on sale. Unfortunately, it appears that the guys with girlfriends will have the last laugh as the Chinese Theater isn't even premiering the film."
That segment was so damn funny.
"Which one of these buttons calls your parents to pick you up?"
Except for the LOTR kid. That was just kind of sad.
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
Except for the LOTR kid. That was just kind of sad.
Blackwolf the Dragon Master was hilarious!
Besides, as weirdness goes, that kid's quirks were relatively harmless. It's not like his wizard robes were made out of human skin or something.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I mean, really, this is something QUITE obvious. You'd think these people would at least make sure they're at the right theatre!
Please RTFA.
The Chinesse theatre has shown all of the previous star wars movies. When the last movie came out there were rumors it wouldn't be playing at the Chinese theatre, but it ended up premeiring there despite those rumors.
AFAIK, the Chinese theatre is a single screen theatre a few blocks away from a huge super-mega-multi-omni-ultraplex. Said plex is trying to work a deal to be the exclusive premeire of the latest lucas craptation, but no deal has been inked as of yet.
The fans in front of the Chinese theatre are standing there, in part, to protest an exclusive deal at the super-mega...-plex. There's something special about the Chinese theatre, I'm sure tradition and what not, and something about the plex-theatre having assigned seating with tickets sold on line, rather than sit where you like, or something. I'm not all knowing, but for christ's sake, RTFA before you post your garbage!
It's a big and fairly well decorated theatre in Hollywood. Many premieres are held there. They have a very nice, very big curved screen and one of the worst theatre sound systems that I have ever heard (this was five years ago; perhaps it has improved since then). Amazingly, they have THX certification.
Pundits and observers dispute the relationship of the terms "nerd" and "geek" to one another. Some view the geek as a less technically skilled nerd. Some factions maintain that "nerds" have both technical skills and social competence, whereas "geeks" display technical skills while socially incompetent; others hold an exactly reversed view, with "geek" serving as the socially competent counterpart of the socially incompetent "nerd", and call themselves "geeks" with pride (compare Geekcorps, an organization that sends people with technical skills to Third World countries to assist in computer infrastructure development).
Some regional differences may exist in the use of the words "nerd" and "geek". Some claim that on the North American west coast the population prefers the term "geek" to "nerd", while the North American east coast prefers the word "nerd" to "geek" (see Ellen Spertus's page on The Sexiest Geek Alive (http://www.mills.edu/ACAD_INFO/MCS/SPERTUS/Geek/) ). Others on the east coast dispute this, claiming that they have always found "nerd" used disparagingly and "geek" used in a positive light. In Britain, this latter view tends to apply -- "nerd" has more offensive connotations than "geek", which speakers of British English often use affectionately. Compare anorak.
Nerd appeared earlier and at a time when being good at school was not seen as "cool". Therefore nerd is a derogatory word (although some people now consider it a compliment), while geek appeared later and has thus avoided many of the negative conotations. Geek is a milder version and is also applied to to people who are socially insignificant, while nerd is used more with people who are socially inept.
I hope so for his sake. He's definitely an "alpha nerd".
:)
I dunno, a lot of "embarassing stuff" other people find funny, I don't because it's painful to watch. Almost like I'm doing it. Same with rage. I watch something were someone is screaming and my body gets all worked up like I was mad, but I'm not. I watch someone holding their breath underwater and my breathing just tapers off. Maybe I'm the weird one
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
I got through :)
It was pretty funny. Basically the guy was just telling me that they're not losers and that they have an organization for this kind of thing. They have a system of signing in and signing out and the amount of hours they accumulate indicates their position in line.
I still think they're a bit freaky, but whatever you find fun, you gotta do.
Actually, there was a study (which I saw a bit about on PBS... "Scientific American Frontiers" I think... anyway, the one with Alan Alda hosting it) which showed that when you watch somebody experience something, your brain reacts in almost exactly the same way as if you experienced it yourself.
This function of the way our brains are wired is what allows us to feel empathy.
The corollary to this phenomenon could also be the reason why voyeurs often become crossdressers.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
The Star Wars fans will see it, and leave the theatre mildy annoyed by the lack of lightsabres in the movie, but you will hear comments like "When did George Lucas learn to write dialogue? Wow!" and "I was kind of worried going into it, but there was no Jar Jar in the ENTIRE movie!"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The word nerd was invented by Dr Seuss http://www.bartleby.com/61/32/N0063200.html
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
if you ever had sex you might know what it was that made you less of a human
all kidding aside you are obviously a useless human (biologically speaking) since you are not futhuring our existance.
These are not the droids you're looking for...
There are many promotion companies which will organize "fans" to camp out outside a theater to be among the first to see it.
It's a media event designed to generate word-of-mouth "buzz" for the movie, and generate free media publicity when a TV station/newspaper runs a story about the obsessed fans dying to see the new movie.
It's fake.
I know you guys like these old timer stories...
I saw Episode IV (the first one, at the time just called Star Wars) on its premier at the Chinese Theater (then called Mann's before the name went back to Graumann's). We didn't camp out but we did spend a couple hours in line.
Science fiction wasn't a big deal in those days. Probably the biggest sci fi film previously was 2001 from almost 10 years earlier. The last "line around the block" movie was Love Story. I was hoping it wouldn't be too crowded, but the weekend before it opened Time magazine had a big spread on the movie, with pictures that made it look fantastic. So we did have to wait pretty long.
But we got good seats, and as the lights went down I heard a couple of guys talking in the row behind us. Apparently they were in the industry and had already seen the movie in pre-release.
"I really envy the people here," he said.
"Why?" asked his buddy.
"Because they're about to see Star Wars for the first time."
Since moving to LA I've enjoyed many films at the Chinese Theater. In my opinion, it's still the best screen and auditorium in town. It seems like at the Chinese you're more likely to have a good crowd that's really into the film and having a good time. (The room holds close to 1500 people and the energy levels can be contagious... I always get a smile on my face when people start cheering the THX trailer before the film even starts...)
The one downside is, sometimes they book utter crap onto their main screen. A showing at the Chinese should be about spectacle. It's not where you want to see a small, intimate romantic comedy. It's where you go when you want to see things get blown up and have the speakers blast you out of your seat. As much as the Arclight tries, it really doesn't have the same impact as the Chinese, IMHO.
If Paramount is indeed a co-owner of Mann's, as the article mentions, that might explain some of their poor booking choices. No, I'm not in line, but I kind of agree with the guy interviewed. If it's not going to show at the Chinese, why bother seeing it on the big screen at all? Any other theater would pale in comparison and not be as enjoyable a movie-going experience.
This sig intentionally left justified.
There's been a few posts on how one guy said he didn't care that he was waiting in the wrong line; he wasn't there for the tickets, he was there for the line. Think about it. You've got a huge party of hundreds of people that all have at least one thing in common. Sounds fun to me.
And it isn't just geeks who share this view. A while back, I was dating this girl who was a diehard Hanson fan (blech! I'm sure that's what lead to our breakup), and she said she used to enjoy waiting in line for the concert more than the concert itself.
It makes no sense to me; I can't stand waiting around for indefinite periods of time. But to each his own.
[az]
Men at that didn't believe women had a place other than in the kitchen.
Simply not true...and if you had actually read the Bible (in particularly, the Gospels) you would have seen that this was not true.
From the Gospel of Luke:
"As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. 39She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. 40But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!"
41"Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, 42but only one thing is needed.[f] Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her." "
I mean, really, if all that the men were about were making sure that women stayed in the kitchen, wouldn't they have had a little bit more creativity here? Jesus would have told Martha that she was absolutely right and that Mary should get her lazy butt into the kitchen to help with preparing the food.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, go into business for themselves.
There are 5,000+ unique manuscripts of the new testament, dated to between 50 to 225 years after the NT was written. So no, it wasn't spread by word of mouth for 1,000 years and got corrupted that way. According to this source and numerous studies, based on just the new testament, 5,000 different (greek!) manuscripts corroborate to an accurancy of 99.5%. (Strobel, Lee. The Case for Christ (Zondervan Publishing House, 1998), p. 83-85). Feel free to take an issue with that.
They were also men, bound by the weaknesses of men.
Agreed, of course. Men aren't perfect. But the book of Mary wasn't even written by Mary, nor could it have been proven to be true. All of the books in the modern bible have been corroborated -- hundreds of separate manuscripts... not decided by committee. See The Da Vinci Deception by Erwin W. Lutzer.
Each translation was an attempt to make a bible for the local population, written with the current environment in mind. If the exact same people were to sit down and do a translation today, it would be vastly different.
It would only be different in the sense that the words they would come out with from the original Greek translations would be different. There are a few dozen different versions of the Bible out right now. Some a sixth grader could read. Some I can't read aloud. Some have had the modern language applied to them. When you have greek words that can turn in ways more subtle than the modern English language (you know, like how eros, agape, and philia all mean "love", but agape is far more encompassing), that's going to happen.
It scares me that most religious people aren't open to the fact there are several hundred different versions of the bible. The one their church uses is the correct one, and that's the end of the discussion as far as they are concerned.
I have a preferred version, but I have a couple of others as well. Yes, the Wisconsin Synod of the Lutheran Church uses solely the King James Bible, as far as I know. There's no biblical precedent for that, nor do I recommend it, and it is dangerously narrow-minded.
But there is also a difference between using just one Bible and going to another source (the Book of Thomas, the Book of Mary, the Apocrypha) that may not be as "proven" (through the manuscripts of old) as the 62 books that are there.
Keep in mind there is nothing banning you from reading any of those books. There may even be parts that are helpful to you in the study of 1st century Judaism! They just aren't counted as "the inspired Word of God", given that some of the parables related in those books are clearly unbelievable (as opposed to the corroborated (I cannot emphasize that enough) miracles in the Gospels).
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
Then you'll like this one: go find some 16th century paintings of Moses coming down the mountain with the tablets with the commandments on them. Then look at his head. Then stare at the little horns on his head!
:)
What happenend was a little translation error: the text translated from said something along the lines of '...and Moses came down the mountain with fury...' because he saw that his people where worshipping golden idols. But in hebrew, the word fury [or 'scorn'...I don't remember the exact word] and horns look very similar. Thus a translating error led the best artists of the generation to depict Moses with little horns on his head
Makes you wonder what other crucial information has been missed out on...
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
What is it with americans and "oh-bee-gee-why-en"? Why cant you just say gynacologist like the rest of the world? Is it a dirty word in the states or something? It took me years to figure out wtf that word meant.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!