A Year of Memorable Moments

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

They are the moments that keep us going — those communal epiphanies that push us to turn off the DVD player and see the newest movie the way it was meant to be seen: on the big screen, in the dark, with your fellow man.

Here’s a chronicling not of 2007 movies but of 2007 moviegoing: the year’s six best experiences, as compiled by one compulsive movie buff.

1. ‘RAIDERS’ REDUX

Ironically, it wasn’t a moment in a theater that made the most indelible mark on my memory this year, but rather the size and scope of something I saw outside a theater on a frigid Thursday evening last month. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the public screening of Eric Zala’s 1989 home movie, “Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation,” when it arrived at Anthology Film Archives. The film, a seven-years-in-the-making, scene-by-scene re-creation of Steven Spielberg’s swashbuckling classic, was created by three high schoolers during their summer vacations on a budget derived mostly from birthday and holiday gifts.

But the sight outside Anthology five minutes before showtime was enough to tell me that I was in for a treat: The line stretched unbroken down East 2nd Street, made up of couples and groups of giddy friends, all enduring the cold and shouting to one another over the deafening construction at the corner of Second Avenue. That Mr. Zala’s film was a joyous homage to his hero was almost beside the point; New York is where audiences crave the unusual — where, for at least one night, this would-be Indiana Jones was the hero of the town.

2. ‘GREAT WORLD’ OF CONTROVERSY

I had seen a press screening of Craig Zobel’s brilliant, Gotham Award-winning “Great World of Sound” a month earlier, but the more I thought about his story of two deceived “record producers” caught up in a pyramid scheme, who set out to dupe actual, real-life would-be musicians, the more I wanted to experience it again.

And so I did, on the film’s opening night at the Angelika Film Center, where a question-and-answer session after the screening with Mr. Zobel and star Pat Healy evolved into a profound, polarizing philosophical debate on the moral responsibility of a filmmaker. Mr. Zobel’s discussion of how he recruited these aspiring musicians set things in motion. As he described the film’s production — how he placed real ads in real newspapers to lure real musicians to fake auditions, notifying them about the cameras behind the mirrors after the fact — the audience was blown away.

Were these musicians exploited, conned? Was it the only way to coax sincere performances? Might these real-life singers now, ironically, be getting the small dose of superficial fame they were seeking and that the film was criticizing? Forget the softballs that are tossed about in so many director-audience interactions. This conversation between an artist and his audience was the real deal.

3. ANGST IN GOTHAM

As Jonathan Sehring’s speech wore on, one could just about see the minds of the gathered celebrities and publicists wandering. But for those who kept listening, there was something profound about what he was saying. Taking the stage this month as an honoree at the 17th annual Gotham Awards ceremony in Brooklyn, Mr. Sehring, president of IFC Entertainment, challenged the gathered industry, asking why independent films that would have been given the green light just a few years ago are now being deemed uncompetitive and banished to obscurity.

As the chatter accelerated and many of the celebrity attendants tuned out, there were a few of us in the audience — regular patrons of the city’s thinly attended art houses — who nodded along, reminded that there is a passionate battle being waged here and now for the heart of independent cinema.

4. BLACKBERRY BACKLASH

I thought I was the only one who had noticed the latest trend of rude, inconsiderate moviegoers — those who flip open their bright Blackberrys and click away throughout the movie. Even when they aren’t typing, that maddening green light pulses away, reminding all of us sitting in the rows behind them that the Blackberry is still there, just waiting to be flipped over and turned back on.

But this year, at an East Village screening of Judd Apatow’s “Knocked Up,” I met my hero: an usher at the AMC Loews Village 7 who, some 30 minutes into the film, stopped by the gentleman sitting on the aisle in the row ahead of me and ordered him to stow the blackberry that had been blinking since the opening credits. Four well-chosen words, two nods of the head, and one ever-so-happy moviegoer watching with a smile.

5. CHURCH CINEMA

It wasn’t a great work of art, but something about the experience lingers just the same. As part of the Tribeca Film Festival, Paolo Cherchi Usai’s “Passio” was performed in two city churches — uptown at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and downtown at Trinity Church. I attended one of the very first screenings at St. John’s, walking up Amsterdam Avenue with a long line of intrigued festival-goers, all speculating as to what was to unfold. Beneath the church’s towering arches, as the soloists lifted their voices to composer Arvo Pärt’s haunting, soaring harmonies and dissonances, something about the combined effect overwhelmed the gathered mass. As the music washed over us, and as Mr. Usai’s fragmented array of images and icons lit up the space before disappearing into the blackness, the year’s most magical fusion of song and screen was upon us.

6. JUBILATION

It’s one thing to be part of an audience that is hushed in awe, but quite another to join a crowd as it reaches the very peak of euphoria — to be there on opening night for the first showing of “Borat” or “Bad Santa,” or present during a midnight screening of “The Big Lebowski.”

The happiest movie audiences I saw this year were at two wildly different events. The first was a star-studded closing weekend screening of “Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project” at the New York Film Festival. Looking to one side, Regis Philbin was turning red; looking to the other, director John Landis and his entourage beamed with pride. And onscreen, in a flurry of angry, vitriolic, endlessly offensive montages, was Mr. Rickles, the hilarity of whose well-meaning barbs drowned entire lines of dialogue in uncontrollable laughter.

A close second had occurred months earlier just down the street, in Times Square, at an opening-night screening of “Transformers.” The crowd had seemed somewhat jubilant from the first opening trailer, but nothing prepared me for the guttural, almost unconscious burst of joy that erupted midway through the movie when, in a prolonged sequence, the king of all robot warriors struck a pose and proclaimed, “My name is Optimus Prime!”

ssnyder@nysun.com


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