A Year at the Movies: One Man's Filmgoing Odyssey

A Year at the Movies: One Man's Filmgoing Odyssey
Author	Kevin Murphy
Subject	Motion pictures
Publisher	HarperEntertainment
Publication date	2002
Pages	362
ISBN	978-0-06-093786-7
OCLC	49531629
Dewey Decimal	791.43 21
LC Class	PN1994 .M83 2002

Last updated April 10, 2019

A Year at the Movies: One Man's Filmgoing Odyssey is a book written by Mystery Science Theater 3000 performer Kevin Murphy about his experiences of seeing a movie each day, for the entire year of 2001. Much of the content derives not only from Murphy's "filmgoing odyssey" but also from his thoughts and observations on the changing nature of the filmgoing experience itself. Murphy comments extensively on the overwhelming prevalence of multiplex movie theaters which generally screen Hollywood blockbuster films at the expense of a wider range of classic, independent and foreign language films. While many of the daily film viewings chronicled in the book fall into the Hollywood kitsch category, quite a few sections deal with films that Murphy actually enjoyed watching, whether because of the film itself or because of the quality of the theater in which it was viewed.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) is an American television comedy series created by Joel Hodgson and produced by Alternaversal Productions, LLC. The show premiered on KTMA in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on November 24, 1988. It later aired on The Comedy Channel/Comedy Central for seven seasons until its cancellation in 1996. Thereafter, it was picked up by The Sci-Fi Channel and aired for three seasons until another cancellation in August 1999. A 60-episode syndication package titled The Mystery Science Theater Hour was produced in 1995. In 2015, Hodgson led a crowdfunded revival of the series with 14 episodes in its eleventh season, first released on Netflix on April 14, 2017, with another six-episode season following on November 22, 2018. As of 2019, 217 episodes and a feature film have been produced.

Kevin Murphy (actor) American actor and writer

Kevin Wagner Murphy is an American actor and writer best known as the voice and puppeteer of Tom Servo on the Peabody Award-winning comedy series Mystery Science Theater 3000. Murphy also records audio commentary tracks with Michael J. Nelson and Bill Corbett for Nelson's RiffTrax website.

Multiplex (movie theater) movie theater complex with multiple screens

A multiplex is a movie theater complex with multiple screens within a single complex. They are usually housed in a specially designed building. Sometimes, an existing venue undergoes a renovation where the existing auditoriums are split into smaller ones, or more auditoriums are added in an extension or expansion of the building. The largest of these complexes can sit thousands of people and are sometimes referred to as a megaplex.

Some notable experiences:

Dressing as a nun during a showing of The Sound of Music in London.
His extreme dissatisfaction with the movie Town and Country .
Bringing an entire Thanksgiving dinner into a movie.
Enduring the Chris Kattan film Corky Romano with fellow MST3K alum Michael J. Nelson.
His thoughts during the September 11th terrorist attacks.
Seeing a movie in a theater made of ice and snow.

Nun Member of a religious community of women

A nun is a member of a religious community of women, typically living under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the enclosure of a monastery. Communities of nuns exist in numerous religious traditions, including Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism, and Taoism.

<i>The Sound of Music</i> (film) 1965 musical film directed by Robert Wise

The Sound of Music is a 1965 American musical drama film produced and directed by Robert Wise, and starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, with Richard Haydn and Eleanor Parker. The film is an adaptation of the 1959 stage musical of the same name, composed by Richard Rodgers with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. The film's screenplay was written by Ernest Lehman, adapted from the stage musical's book by Lindsay and Crouse. Based on the memoir The Story of the Trapp Family Singers by Maria von Trapp, the film is about a young Austrian woman studying to become a nun in Salzburg, Austria in 1938 who is sent to the villa of a retired naval officer and widower to be governess to his seven children. After bringing and teaching love and music into the lives of the family through kindness and patience, she marries the officer and together with the children they find a way to survive the loss of their homeland through courage and faith.

London is the capital and largest city of both England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south-east of England, at the head of its 50-mile (80 km) estuary leading to the North Sea, London has been a major settlement for two millennia. Londinium was founded by the Romans. The City of London, London's ancient core − an area of just 1.12 square miles (2.9 km²) and colloquially known as the Square Mile − retains boundaries that follow closely its medieval limits. The City of Westminster is also an Inner London borough holding city status. Greater London is governed by the Mayor of London and the London Assembly.

External links

Official site of the author and book

This article about a non-fiction book on film is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Related Research Articles

A movie theater, cinema, or cinema hall, also known as a picture house or the pictures, is a building that contains an auditorium for viewing films for entertainment. Most, but not all, theaters are commercial operations catering to the general public, who attend by purchasing a ticket. Some movie theaters, however, are operated by non-profit organizations or societies that charge members a membership fee to view films.

The cinema of the United States, often metonymously referred to as Hollywood, has had a large effect on the film industry in general since the early 20th century. The dominant style of American cinema is classical Hollywood cinema, which developed from 1917 to 1960 and characterizes most films made there to this day. While Frenchmen Auguste and Louis Lumière are generally credited with the birth of modern cinema, American cinema soon came to be a dominant force in the industry as it emerged. It produces the total largest number of films of any single-language national cinema, with more than 700 English-language films released on average every year. While the national cinemas of the United Kingdom (299), Canada (206), Australia, and New Zealand also produce films in the same language, they are not considered part of the Hollywood system. Hollywood has also been considered a transnational cinema. Classical Hollywood produced multiple language versions of some titles, often in Spanish or French. Contemporary Hollywood offshores production to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Graumans Egyptian Theatre movie theater in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California

Grauman's Egyptian Theatre is a historic movie theater located at 6706 Hollywood Blvd. in Hollywood, California. Opened in 1922, it's an early example of a lavish movie palace and is noted as having been the site of the first-ever Hollywood film premiere. Since 1998, it has been owned and operated by the American Cinematheque film archive.

Robert Joseph Pastorelli was an American actor.

The Boondock Saints is a 1999 American vigilante action-thriller film written and directed by Troy Duffy. The film stars Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus as fraternal twins, Connor and Murphy MacManus, who become vigilantes after killing two members of the Russian Mafia in self defense. After both experience an epiphany, the brothers, together with their friend "Funny Man", set out to rid their home city of Boston of crime and evil, all the while being pursued by FBI Special Agent Paul Smecker.

The Accused is a 1988 American legal drama film directed by Jonathan Kaplan, written by Tom Topor and starring Jodie Foster, Kelly McGillis, Bernie Coulson, Leo Rossi, Ann Hearn, Carmen Argenziano, Steve Antin and Tom O'Brien. In the film Sarah Tobias, a young waitress is gang-raped by three men at a local bar. She and district attorney Kathryn Murphy set out to prosecute the rapists as well as the men who encouraged them.

A trailer is a commercial advertisement for a feature film that will be exhibited in the future at a cinema, the result of creative and technical work. The term "trailer" dates back to the distribution of movies on reels of film. The reels were always distributed un-rewound. Therefore, the end of the movie was the most accessible part, to which previews were spliced, "trailing" the film.

United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc., 334 U.S. 131 (1948), was a landmark United States Supreme Court antitrust case that decided the fate of movie studios owning their own theatres and holding exclusivity rights on which theatres would show their films. It would also change the way Hollywood movies were produced, distributed, and exhibited. The Supreme Court affirmed in this case that the existing distribution scheme was in violation of the antitrust laws of the United States, which prohibit certain exclusive dealing arrangements.

TCL Chinese Theatre is a movie palace on the historic Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6925 Hollywood Blvd. in Hollywood, California. Originally named and still commonly known as Grauman's Chinese Theatre, it was renamed Mann's Chinese Theatre in 1973; the name lasted until 2001, after which it reverted to its original name. On January 11, 2013, Chinese electronics manufacturer TCL Corporation purchased the facility's naming rights, under which it is officially known as TCL Chinese Theatre.

Bowfinger is a 1999 American comedy film directed by Frank Oz. It depicts a down-and-out filmmaker in Hollywood attempting to make a film on a small budget with a star who does not know that he is in the film. It was written by Steve Martin, who also stars alongside Eddie Murphy in two roles, and Heather Graham as a vapid, ambitious starlet. The film was released on August 13, 1999 and grossed $98 million.

Carl Franklin is an American actor, screenwriter, producer, film and television director. Franklin is a graduate of University of California, Berkeley, and continued his education at the AFI Conservatory, where he graduated with an M.F.A. degree in directing in 1986.

<i>City Heat</i> 1984 film by Richard Benjamin

City Heat is a 1984 American action crime-comedy film starring Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds, written by Blake Edwards, and directed by Richard Benjamin. The film was released in North America in December 1984.

Interstellar is a 2014 science fiction film directed, co-written, and co-produced by Christopher Nolan. It stars Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Bill Irwin, Ellen Burstyn, and Michael Caine. Set in a dystopian future where humanity is struggling to survive, the film follows a group of astronauts who travel through a wormhole near Saturn in search of a new home for humanity.

Meet Dave is a 2008 American comedy science fiction film directed by Brian Robbins and written by Bill Corbett and Rob Greenberg. It stars Eddie Murphy, Elizabeth Banks, Gabrielle Union, Ed Helms, Scott Caan and Kevin Hart. The film was released on July 11, 2008.

Mark Christopher Lawrence is an American character actor, stand-up comedian and voice-over artist. He is known for his role as esoteric D.J., Tone Def, in the 1994 satirical rap mockumentary, Fear of a Black Hat. He has co-starred in popular films such as Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Tales From the Hood, Planet of the Apes, Lost Treasure and The Pursuit of Happyness.

Film sequence of images that give the impression of movement

A film, also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, or photoplay, is a series of still images that, when shown on a screen, create the illusion of moving images. This optical illusion causes the audience to perceive continuous motion between separate objects viewed in rapid succession. The process of filmmaking is both an art and an industry. A film is created by photographing actual scenes with a motion-picture camera, by photographing drawings or miniature models using traditional animation techniques, by means of CGI and computer animation, or by a combination of some or all of these techniques, and other visual effects.

<i>Tower Heist</i> 2011 heist comedy film directed by Brett Ratner

Tower Heist is a 2011 American heist comedy film directed by Brett Ratner and written by Ted Griffin and Jeff Nathanson, based on a story by Bill Collage, Adam Cooper and Griffin. The plot follows Josh Kovaks, Charlie Gibbs and Enrique Dev'reaux, employees of an exclusive apartment building who lose their pensions in the Ponzi scheme of Wall Street businessman Arthur Shaw. The group enlist the aid of criminal Slide, bankrupt businessman Mr. Fitzhugh and another employee of the apartment building, Odessa, to break into Shaw's apartment and steal back their money while avoiding the FBI agent in charge of his case, Claire Denham.

2016: Obama's America is a 2012 American political documentary film by conservative author and political commentator Dinesh D'Souza. The film was produced by Doug Sain and Gerald R. Molen. D'Souza and John Sullivan co-directed and co-wrote the film, which is based on D'Souza's book The Roots of Obama's Rage (2010). Through interviews and reenactments, the film compares the similarities of the lives of D'Souza and President Barack Obama as D'Souza alleges that early influences on Obama are affecting his domestic policy decisions.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a 2018 American computer-animated superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character Miles Morales / Spider-Man, produced by Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation in association with Marvel, and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing. It is the first animated feature film in the Spider-Man franchise, and is set in a shared multiverse called the "Spider-Verse", which has alternate universes. The film was directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman from a screenplay by Phil Lord and Rothman and a story by Lord, and stars the voices of Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, Brian Tyree Henry, Lily Tomlin, Luna Lauren Velez, John Mulaney, Kimiko Glenn, Nicolas Cage, and Liev Schreiber. In Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Miles Morales becomes one of many Spider-Man as they team up to save New York City from Kingpin.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.