Tag Archives: Titanic

Tales of the tape

Remember the very first scene of Downton Abbey in Season 1, when the operator learns the Titanic has sunk by reading the telegraph machine’s paper tape?

Is reading Twitter really all that different?

reading telegraphOn Sunday evening, I was one of maybe 10 people on the planet who wasn’t watching the Grammys.

(Doing so would only highlight how little I know about music.  Plus, Downton Abbey was on.  Please.)

Of course, I was checking Twitter while I was watching PBS.  And by evening’s end, it felt like I had watched the Grammys…because every news outlets, friend and celebrity I follow had blabbed all the details from the ceremony.

The Twitter version, that is — 140 characters or less.  So I had been reading a kind of modern version of the telegraph tape.

Look how far we’ve come in 100 years!

All wet

AMC Theatres recently replaced their Moviewatchers loyalty program with their all-new “AMC Stubs.”

As a longtime Moviewatcher, I have received numerous emails about the change, and promos about the new program have played before every movie at the theatre.

One of the ads centers around a favorite moviegoer memory.  A young man waxes poetic about watching the movie Titanic with his girlfriend.  As they both reach for the popcorn at the same time, their hands touch and at that moment, he knows she is the one for him.

Very romantic, butter and all.

I have my own Titanic movie memory.  I too saw it with a date, the brother of a co-worker.  He seemed nice enough during dinner, but after the movie began, I quickly discovered:

He was a movie talker.

He talked — aloud and loudly — during the entire film.  But he wasn’t talking to me; he was talking to the characters on screen.  “Don’t go down that corridor!”  “Be careful — he’s got a gun!”  “It’s sinking!  It’s sinking!”

Titanic may have lasted 2 1/2 hours, but it felt twice that long from where I was sitting…especially since I saw it with a group of my friends who were extremely entertained by the movie and the floor show my date was giving.

I didn’t see him again.  Titanic wasn’t the only thing that sank that night.

Ah, movie memories…

A good scare

I don’t buy that many movies on DVD.

I’m at the theater most weekends, subscribe to three premium channels and DVR pretty much everything else.

But I did buy a VHS (remember those?) way back in 2003 after seeing a movie called “The Mothman Prophecies.“  Richard Gere plays a Washington Post reporter whose wife dies after seeing visions of a bizarre winged creature.  Doctors say it was a brain tumor that caused the hallucination, but Gere unexpectedly finds himself in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, where this “mothman” has been making a series of bizarre appearances.

The movie was supposedly based on a true incident in the city of Point Pleasant, and was creepy, creepy good…so good that I bought it.  I still have it, too.

And just today I discovered that the Mothman Prophecies live on far beyond my VHS tape.  The city of Point Pleasant has erected a 12-foot statue of the creature on Main Street, and began a Miss Mothman Pageant in 2008 to headline their already popular Mothman Festival.

If you decide to watch the movie, you may find it odd that the city is trying to profit off of what was an alarming tragedy.  But with time comes perspective.

I guess Point Pleasant sees the “mothman” as their Titanic.