Day: November 18, 2013

Three sentence movie reviews: My Own Private Idaho.

This is not my favorite Van Sant film and watching it today it’s easy to reflect on so much that has been lost:  River Pheonix, gritty Portland, Keanu Reeves’ youth.  It’s a fun movie to watch from the perspective of glimpses of Portland past, and it’s gleefully weird in places.*  But overall, I find it to be a so-so story.

*That scene where River Pheonix dresses as the little Dutch Boy and cleans for/before his “date” comes to mind.  Also:  Flea!

Cost:  Free due to remodeled Baghdad promotion.
Where watched:  remodeled Baghdad, which looks and sounds terrific.

Baghdad Refurbished.


Before seeing a free showing of My Own Private Idaho, I heard the end of the lecture on the history of the Baghdad Theater.  I arrived for the lecture during the period when the Baghdad was going through a transformation to a “multiplex” which meant walling off the balcony for a separate theater and shoehorning a third theater, called the Back Door Theater, behind the main theater space.  All McMenamin’s movie screens show slide shows before their movies begin, and interspersed with the slides for the many McMenamin’s products are historic pictures.  I have been seeing the picture of the Back Door Theater for years and wondered about it.  Now I know.

This picture was a poster for a premiere that happened at the Baghdad:  They Live.  Among other things, this  forgettable movie had the involvement of the man who invented the propeller beanie.  Thus the explanation of the strange juxtaposition of these two pictures.

The history of the theater was quite interesting and I was sorry I didn’t prioritize listening to the entire lecture.