The 48 Hour Film Project is coming to Boston on May 3-5! Come make a movie in a
weekend!

• Register your team at: http://www.48hourfilm.com/boston
• Join a team at: http://www.48hourfilm.com/join
• Watch the best films from 2003-2012: The Brattle Theatre on April 9th
• Find out what the 48HFP is all about: http://www.48hourfilm.com/what

For more info or to register, go to: http://www.48hourfilm.com/boston

For several years, film promoters have contacted me with free passes to local screenings of upcoming films.  Often these passes come in paper form, and I bring them to the club meeting on Sunday and distribute them there.  But increasingly the promoters are using email to distribute these passes.  I’ve always been REALLY reluctant to pass this information on to the newsletter list because I know not everyone is interested.

I decided to create a second mailing list called “noise”, to which I will forward these pass opportunities as well as some news about other small film events around Boston (such as the Coolidge’s “Science on Screen” events).  If this is something you are interested in, there are two ways to subscribe:

1. Send an email to snfc-bos-noise+subscribe@googlegroups.com and follow the directions in the auto-response you receive.

2. Visit https://groups.google.com/group/snfc-bos-noise/ and click “Join this group”.

The Coolidge Corner Theatre will launch a brand-new season of its popular Science on Screen series on Monday, September 1 at 7:00 p.m. with a special presentation of Steven Spielberg’s classic adventure tale, Raiders of the Lost Ark. Before the film, archeologist Curtis Runnels will speak about the realities of archeology versus how it is portrayed in the movies. Harrison Ford stars as Dr. Jones, a world-renowned professor of archaeology hired by the U.S. government to track down the Ark of the Covenant, a supremely powerful (and deadly) Biblical artifact. With his trusty leather fedora and all-purpose whip, Jones sets out on a journey across the continents. But he isn’t the only one after the Ark. With a little help from his friends and his old flame, Marion (Karen Allen), Jones must fend off unscrupulous SS officers eager to get their leather-clad mitts on the Ark and harness its power for their evil cause. Curtis Runnels is professor of archeology at Boston University. He taught at Stanford University from 1981 to 1987 before moving to BU, where he is also editor of the Journal of Field Archaeology. He has carried out archaeological research in Greece, Turkey, and Albania since 1973 and has published numerous articles and books. With Science on Screen, the Coolidge Corner Theatre presents a feature film or documentary with a basis in science along with exciting introductions by notable figures in scientific fields. This monthly series is co-presented by the Museum of Science, Boston and New Scientistmagazine. All Science on Screen programs are $7.75 for students and Museum of Science members and $9.75 regular admission. Events are free for Coolidge Corner Theatre members. Tickets are available in advance at the box office or online at www.coolidge.org/science. The Coolidge Corner Theatre is located at 290 Harvard Street in Brookline. For more information, visit www.coolidge.org or call 617/734-2500.

For the longest time I’ve been trying to figure out a way to use SMS (Text Messaging) to get in contact with club members for a number of reasons. Some examples:

• The theatre lobby is crowded and you might have trouble spotting me
• Perhaps the show is sold out and I want to warn people
• I might be running late

I’m going to be experimenting with Twitter to accomplish this goal. Once you create a twitter account, you can add boston_snfc to your ‘follow’ list. If you then verify your phone you can receive these updates directly on your cell phone. It’s somewhat complicated and completely nerdy, but I’m hoping that it’s just another way to improve club communication…

I’ll also add anyone I see “following” the club account as a friend, so you can use Twitter’s direct text capability to contact me directly if you, say, can’t find anyone from the club.

Back in late 2002, when Max started recruiting people in other cities to replicate his successful San Francisco Sunday Night Film Club, several people jumped at the opportunity. In addition to the Boston chapter, which we all know and love, chapters were started in several other cities (LA, Salt Lake, and Washington D.C., to name a few). Unfortunately, none of the other chapters seemed to reach critical mass and died off after a bit… Sadly, even the original SF chapter passed away when Max moved to the other side of the country.

Recently, however, we were contacted by some people in Washington D.C. who were interested in bringing the chapter in that city out of suspended animation. After some discussion and technical setup, that chapter is ready to go, and will be “officially” meeting for the first time this Sunday! So if you know anybody in D.C. who might be interested, tell them to go check the club’s site over at http://dc.sundaynightfilmclub.com/!

Chuck thought that people who have seen Borat might get a kick out of this article.

Two anonymous plaintiffs are suing 20th Century Fox and One America Productions, claiming members of their college fraternity were interviewed to become part of the smash “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” film.

Me in the Boston Metro

Originally uploaded by seangraham.

The Boston Metro, a free Monday-Friday paper, gave a plug to the Sunday Night Film Club last friday. They even used a dorky picture of me that I link to in the newsletter to help people find me. It’s nice to have my picture in a section of the paper that isn’t the police blotter.

Chuck passed along a link to Wild About Movies, which has a great listing of Advance and Free screenings around the country (including, obviously, Boston).

On January 12th, 2003, Heather hosted the first meeting of the Boston Sunday Night Film Club. 3 years later the club is still going strong and some of the members that attended on that first meeting still come today! From time to time over the years people have said they would like to have a list of all the movies the club has seen over the years. I thought that a nice celebration of this anniversary would be to pull this together. It took some digging through the scraps of the old website, my personal email archives, and even some Google cache spelunking. Hope you enjoy it!

I try not to spam this site or the newsletter much, but this announcement from the Brattle Film Foundation seemed important enough to merit it. If you are in the position to help out this cause, please visit the Brattle’s online donation form.

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The Brattle Film Foundation (BFF), the nonprofit organization that programs and operates the Harvard Square’s landmark cinema, the Brattle Theatre, announced the most important fundraising effort in its 52-year history. The PRESERVE THE BRATTLE LEGACY CAMPAIGN is a two-year fundraising effort that is necessary to sustain repertory film programming at the Brattle. The Phase One goal is to raise $400,000 by the end of 2005; the Phase Two goal is to raise another $100,000 by the end of 2006. If BFF is not successful at meeting the goals set by Phase One of the campaign, BFF will be forced to cease operations at the Brattle Theatre, effectively ending the 52-year legacy of repertory film programming at the Brattle. The Brattle Theatre has outlasted most arthouse cinemas in the country. While landmarks like St. Mark’s and Bleeker Street in New York closed their doors long ago, the Brattle has survived. Of the Brattle’s current situation, Creative Director Ned Hinkle had this to say: “Repertory film programming at the Brattle simply cannot survive without significant community support. Our current challenges can only be overcome with the involvement of community members who want to keep the tradition of film programming alive at the Brattle Theatre.”

Our old listserv at finkelhedron.org went down again, so I took this opportunity to move the mailing list to the host of the webpage ( warped.net). So from now on all mailing list subscription/unsubscription can be handled here. I believe I have updated all of the links on this webpage to reflect the new mailing list, but if you see one I forgot let me know.

Unfortunately, the last backup I had of the mailing list subscriptions was from early March, so if you’ve subscribed since then you will have to re-subscribe. Sorry for the hassle..

Audra presents her 2004 “Top 10”.

Welcome to the new Boston Sunday Night Film Club webpage! Sorry for the generic-looking page, but my talents lie elsewhere… My goal for this page was to be functional and easy-to-use (for you as well as us). Our new easy-to-remember URL will make life easier as well. :)

There are a few things I’d like to point out to you:

• The mailing list information is the same for the time being, so if you’d like to subscribe (or unsubscribe) from the newsletter list visit this page ( Update: The mailing list finally moved to a more reliable server, so I updated that link to point to the new page).
• I am working on a system that will let me post to the mailing list, the website, Craigslist, and LiveJournal all in one step. I don’t have all the kinks worked out just yet, but it will be nice once it’s finished off.
• For those of you who prefer RSS/Atom feeds to mailing lists, feel free to subscribe to either our RSS or Atom feed.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the new site, but if not, I hope it is at least useful to you. If you have any comments or questions, please drop me a line