The 48 Hour Film Project

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

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

Happy 10th Anniversary

Back on January 12th, 2003, the first meeting of the Boston Sunday Night Film Club, started by Heather, occurred. The club has now met 464 times, starting out with The Pianist and most recently seeing Zero Dark Thirty. While the club struggled a bit early on, these days we have a great core of people who come out regularly to watch and discuss movies. We’ve watched as members meet, get married and have children. That’s not to say we don’t have room for more. Feel free to join us any old Sunday, we’re always looking for new friends.

Many, many thanks to all of the people who have helped keep this club alive, especially to the coterie of “pinch-hitters” who have filled in when I’ve been unable to make it.

Below the cut is a list of all of the movies we’ve seen… While you could get all this information by plowing through the archives of this blog, I thought I’d make it easy.

See you Sunday!

-sean

Continue reading Happy 10th Anniversary

New “noise” mailing list created

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”.

Special Screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark at the Coolidge

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.

Same-Day Updates

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.

Welcome Back Washington D.C.!

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/!

Boston SNFC’s 3rd Anniversary!

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!

Continue reading Boston SNFC’s 3rd Anniversary!