Tomorrow night (Saturday!) is the Grand Illusion‘s annual fundraiser, where they invite you to mingle, nibble, and sip:

On Saturday, July 30, “Rear Window” will be screened from a beautiful 35mm print in the our intimate, 70 seat jewel-box theater. Doors will open one hour before each show for guests to mingle with other film lovers, nibble on hors d’oeuvres and sip on drinks. We’ll have a silent auction and raffle with great prizes from The Criterion Collection, Northwest Film Forum and neighborhood businesses.

It screens at 6:30 and 9:30 pm, and the $25 admission includes one drink. This is a good thing to do.

Here is the trailer for Rear Window, in case you’re a clam or something:

(Also at the Grand Illusion this week: Trigun, which “ain’t your typical anime,” and concerns an unlikely outlaw (“a pacifist with a doughnut obsession”) being chased by bounty hunters across a planet called Gunsmoke.)

Lindy West was born an unremarkable female baby in Seattle, Washington. The former Stranger writer covered movies, movie stars, exclamation points, lady stuff, large frightening fish, and much, much more....

15 replies on “Support Independent Cinema Tomorrow Night!”

  1. Lindy,
    “Rear Window” is outstanding. I’ve seen it twice on the big screen. For one who hasn’t seen it, check it out.

  2. While you’re there stop at Star Life on the Oasis Cafe and get a vegan chocolate chip cookie. Best damn cookies I’ve ever had.

  4. @3: It’s a fundraiser! For raising funds! To keep a cool little theater open! That’s why Lindy said FUNDRAISER! See?

  5. @3: Yes, it’s a fundraiser! The Grand Illusion is operated by volunteers from top to bottom. All of the $$ goes towards maintenance and operating costs to help us bring excellent films.

    @2: Star Life will be closed during the event (and all day). We’re taking over the whole place.

  6. “beautiful 35mm print”

    No such thing with analog projection. Biggest pet peeve I have with movies is dust on the film, which creates visual artifacts as we as static pops and hisses on the audio soundtrack. Me thinks this is part of the reason why many indy cinemas are struggling or dying.

  7. I realize this fundraiser is intended to show off the Grand Illusion as a theater, but the correct venue for Hitchcock’s masterpiece is your across-the-street neighbor’s big-ass flatscreen.

  8. I nearly shat myself trying to get to Brown Paper Tickets to head off the (impending/imagined) sellout for this. Did you see the poster?!?!

  10. @6: Sure, beautiful is relative. But tell me what you’ll do when all your DVDs and DCPs are scratched and corrupted, respectively. I can splice a film, but you can’t always fix a disc or retrieve corrupt data. And to me, there’s a big difference between the physical quality of LIGHT PASSING THROUGH FILM vs. pixels being turned on and off.

    Independent cinemas are not struggling because of dust and static. That’s a silly thing to say. Digital projection is not prone to a hiccup or two now and again?

  12. @10 ” But tell me what you’ll do when all your DVDs and DCPs are scratched and corrupted”

    Error correction fixes most of these problems. Plus, its unlikely that I will ever get a scratched disk because I have my 400 disc DVD collection ripped to a single hard drive, streaming off a jailbroken Apple TV 2G running XBMC. I dont even have a DVD player connected to my HDTV.

    “there’s a big difference between the physical quality of LIGHT PASSING THROUGH FILM vs. pixels being turned on and off”

    Digital projection still uses a lamp to project the image off a transparent lens. That aspect of movie going has never changed. I too can tell the difference and what sticks out with film, aside from the audio and video artifacts, is how film has a frame rate of 24fps. Digital can be 30, 48 or 60 fps. Making action that moves quickly on the screen to be more fluid. With film, its jerky, choppy, it strobes. A movie like Cloverdale or Jackass is probably the best example of how traditional film can look horrible. Watch those same movies on DVD and you dont even see the strobe. And yes, the human eye can indeed see passed 30 frames per second.

    “Independent cinemas are not struggling because of dust and static.”

    Im sorry, how many independent theaters has Seattle lost in the past year? 3? One of them was the fault of the owner for refusing to install a fire sprinkler and bring it up to code.

    Good luck at getting people to throw down 25$ a ticket to see a 60 year old movie thats probably being show in a free outdoor cinema.

  13. This may be Hitchcock’s best movie. For me, it’s either this one or Vertigo. (I’d add Strangers on a Train to this toss-up if it weren’t for horrible, horrible Farley Granger.)

  15. Happy to report that analog reigned supreme last night: no one complained of any dust or static. 😉

    For all you digiphiles we’re showing new films, projected via Blu-ray, for the next three weeks.

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