talbotlucas.org: a word to the wise is sufficient

Last night, Terrence and I finally saw Amadeus on the big screen, at no less a venue than the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (aka the people who bring you the Oscars®). Neither of us saw it at the theatre--only on the small screen--and so we had been looking forward to this screening, which was part of the Academy's "Facets of the Diamond" series, a 75-week-long series of events showcasing each year's Best Picture, best short film, best song, clips from the featured year's Academy Awards telecast, and the original trailer for the film that won the subsequent year's Oscar for Best Picture. (For this screening, the trailer was for Out of Africa.)

Several members of the cast and crew were in the audience, including Jeffrey Jones (who played the Emperor), John Strauss (who won an Oscar for the original musical compositions in the film, and who also played a conductor in the film), and the producer, Saul Zaentz. (For those of you who remember my stint in Berkeley, the offices in which I worked were located in Zaentz's Fantasy Records building on the threshold of Berkeley and Emeryville.) Zaentz's next Oscar-winner, The English Patient, will be shown at the end of October, and if we can fit it into the schedule we're going to get tickets.

The theatre at the Academy is very comfortable, but what was best of all was the silence. No one talked during the movie. No food or beverages are allowed so there was no annoying chomping, slurping, or unwrapping. And perhaps even more notable, not one cell phone rang during the movie, which runs 2 hours and 40 minutes. It made seeing a movie in a theatre an enjoyable experience, rather than the test of nerves it sometimes seems to be.