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Dan Carlson
Los Angeles, California

I'm a twentysomething white male with ambitions to be a professional film critic and generally spend my days getting paid to watch movies and write about it. A compulsive reader and stubborn cineaste, I take an often contrary stance to my more fundamentalist peers and upbringing by celebrating the pursuit of the good, and the Good, in life, love, art and film. If you watched enough episodes of certain TV shows — for starters, "The Hungry and the Hunted," "The Cut Man Cometh," "The Body," "The Zeppo," "Waiting in the Wings," "Out of Gas," "April Is the Cruelest Month," "20 Hours in America," "Colonial Day," "An Echolls Family Christmas," "Look Who's Stalking," "The Garage Door," "Charlie Gets Crippled," "Wind Sprints," and "Corner Boys" — you would understand me completely, and you'd also realize that much of my worldview and philosophical insights are heavily influenced by fictional works/programs, and many of the good things I've said in my life are just a regurgitation of someone else's imaginings, or at any rate a heartfelt attempt to interpret them. I guess I was made to be a film critic.

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« Headline Punctuation, And Another Glimpse Into My Deeply Rule-Oriented Psyche |Main| October 2007 »

October 29, 2007

Review: Rails & Ties

By Dan Carlson

There were only four of us in the theater to see Rails & Ties on a hazy Friday morning in L.A., the town still reeling from fire. But everyone else staggered in during the trailers, meaning that for a long time there, it was just me, sitting quietly in one of the ArcLight's smaller houses and peacefully reading a book. When it was time to start the show, the usher strolled in and saw it was just me, and then solved one of the great and usually unsolvable mysteries of living in L.A., namely: What happens when you're the only one at the ArcLight? Does the usher still give you the speech about who's in the movie and then ask you to silence your phone and inform you that ushers will be monitoring the film throughout for sound and picture quality? I mean, if it's just you, do they still go through the whole act, or do they just drop it and grin at you and tell you to enjoy the show?

They do the act. The whole thing. The guy welcomed me to the theater, told me who starred in the movie (though he mispronounced Marcia Gay Harden as Mar-SEE-uh, which was weird), and asked me to turn my phone off and to contact him if I had any problems. I smiled the whole time.

The movie sucked.

Click here for the review.

Comments: 2

Beckylooo

That whole song and dance makes me uncomfortable regardless of how many folks are in the theater. I probably would have interrupted and told him he was off the hook. Thanks for crossing that quandary off my list.

Oct 29, 2007 1:42 PM

Sarah

One of the reasons I love the ArcLight so much.

Oct 30, 2007 9:17 AM

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