If I didn’t have to go to friends’ goddamn wedding party, I’d so go to this:
Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan will be visiting the Vashon Theatre on Saturday, October 9 and bringing a 35 mm print of THE GODFATHER, the 1972 classic from director Francis Ford Coppola. In a lecture he’s calling Godfather Revisited, Turan will talk before the screening about why the award-winning film remains influential and why it tops his list of essential American cinema.
How does a major LA Times film critic even know about the old-fashioned single screen Vashon Theatre, and why exactly is he coming to the island? Theatre manager Raechel Ehlers says that Turan has visited filmmaker friends on Vashon frequently over the years and loves and appreciates the historic movie house. Following last fall’s still unsolved theatre break-in and theft of digital projector and other vital equipment, Turan offered to present a special film and a Q&A as a benefit for the struggling cinema.
Tickets for the benefit event are $12 general admission and $11 for seniors. Advance tickets are available online at brownpapertickets.com or by phone at 206-463-6845. Doors for The Godfather event open at 6:15 pm, and there will be beverages available prior to the screening. Turan will speak at 7 pm before the movie, and the film will play following his talk. The Vashon Theatre is a short ferry ride away from West Seattle at 17723 Vashon Highway SW Vashon, WA 98070.
If I see this movie one more time this year (twice so far) I’m gonna plotz, but I love that Turan is doing this.
I’m starting to harbor the same resentment towards this movie that I do toward a lot of other just OK movies that are inexplicably popular.
I prefer Part 2, which is both a vast improvement, and the only one of the series deserving praise.
2: You are insane. 2 is brilliant but imperfect. 1 is perfect in every way. (And neither are as good as GoodFellas.)
Anyone crowing about the superiority of Godfather Part 2 should be forced to immediately rewatch Kay’s “It was an abortion! An abortion! An unholy thing! It was an abortion! It was our baby, and I killed it!” speech.
2. You’re out of your goddamned mind.
I wish I could go to this. I have Jim Gaffigan tickets instead.
Coppola has made better films than the Godfather series.
Turan will also be moderating a discussion with screenwriters Robin Swicord and Nick Kazan on Vashon the next night, Sunday 10/10 at 7 pm. Hosted by Vashon Allied Arts – http://www.vashonalliedarts.org. They’ve recently moved this talk to a larger space so probably still have some tickets left.
Naw, The Godfather was ploddingly paced, and was an intimate but melodramtic but trite story about people whom I didn’t actually connect with.
The Godfather Part 2 was so much better. It turned up the volume on its melodrama, so you knew it was aware of its own shortcomings (unlike the first), and cleaned up the pacing issues of the first. Both stories were 20x more compelling on their own, and it turned the camera on society as well.