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Chapter 243 Complaints about Chicago
🕑 Added 2025-01-13 17:37:22 +0000 UTCAfter parking the car, Richard Thomas tightened his clothes and walked towards the most famous independent cinema in Long Island against the cold wind. He soon entered the cinema. Unlike the previous times when he went to watch movies, most of the people in the theater were middle-aged and elderly people like him, many of whom had white hair.
Thomas felt a lot younger walking among them.He stood in front of a conspicuous poster in the theater and took a look. It was a large poster of "Chicago". Tom Cruise and the other two heroines looked really good, especially the two actresses in short dance skirts. They were pretty and sexy enough, much more pleasing to the eye than the leading actors in the newly staged Broadway musical.
A man may age physically, but his heart never grows old.
Thomas would naturally not say this out loud. If someone asked, it must be purely for art, because he wanted to see what the differences were in the movie version of "Chicago", and because this was the Toronto Film Festival's "Audience Choice Award"!
In the past few years, the films finally selected by the Toronto Film Festival have been very much in line with the tastes of North American audiences. On the other hand, how many people can sit there and watch the Golden Lion and Golden Bear films peacefully?
With this thought in mind, Thomas walked to the ticket office, and the ticket seller immediately gave him a bright smile, "How can I help you, sir?"
"One ticket for the latest showing of Chicago!" Thomas prepared to take out his wallet.
"I'm sorry," the ticket seller said directly,
"There's a show in half an hour, but there are no tickets left."
"No tickets?" Thomas was a little surprised.
"How could there be no tickets? Chicago is so popular."
The female ticket seller quickly explained, "The film received very good response in the two screenings in the morning, resulting in many people calling to reserve tickets for the two afternoon screenings. If you want to buy tickets, you can only wait until the evening screening. Or you can wait here for a while. If someone chooses to refund the ticket 15 minutes before the screening..."
"No need." Thomas didn't want to wait and waved his hand, "I'll go look somewhere else."
After leaving the cinema, Thomas drove his car and took some time to get to the slightly farther Emperor Cinema, which is one of the most famous cinemas in Long Island, with many theaters. It was Friday daytime, so it shouldn't be difficult to buy tickets.
Thomas walked into the theater lobby. Without hesitation, he went to the ticket office to ask and bought a ticket for the latest show of "Chicago". He found a vacant seat and waited for the ticket inspection.
Bored he looked around and found that just like the last cinema, there were a lot more middle-aged and elderly people here than usual, and he could hear several people talking nearby.
"Tickets for Chicago are very tight," said a man in his 50s. He told another man of the same age, "I went to three theaters in Manhattan and couldn't get a ticket. So I had to come to Long Island."
"Is it so popular?"
"A friend of mine attended the Toronto Film Festival and watched the screening. He thought the film was better than any other version of the musical." The man seemed very confident, "Otherwise the film wouldn't have won the Audience Choice Award."
After listening to a few words of discussion, Thomas discovered that someone from a TV station was doing a program. A female reporter from NBC was walking in front of the camera and interviewing the audience.
"What movie are you going to watch next?"
The female reporter Juliet smiled softly, which made people like her very easily. "Why did you choose it?"
"I want to watch Star Trek..."
Juliet interviewed more than ten audience members in a row. Most of them chose Paramount's latest commercial blockbuster "Star Trek", a few chose "Chicago", and only a small number chose "The English Patient".
The reasons for choosing commercial films like "Star Trek" are basically the same, while the reasons for watching "Chicago" are varied.
The majority of them were said by older audiences because it was "Chicago", and the rest included "I want to see Tom Cruise", "This is the Audience Award-winning film", "Duke Rosenberg's new work", "I want to see the director's collaboration with his new girlfriend"...
What surprised Juliet the most was that there were people who came here because they heard from others in the online chat room that the film was good.
However, Juliet also heard a voice complaining about Chicago.
"I live in Manhattan. My friend who watched the movie in the morning said it was great, so I wanted to go out and watch it in the afternoon. But all the theaters showing Chicago in Manhattan were sold out. So I had to come to Long Island and found two theaters in a row..."
After asking several people who were planning to watch Chicago, Juliet found that there were quite a few complaints. Many people said that tickets for the movie were in short supply, as if there were a lot of people watching...
After waiting for nearly half an hour, Richard Thomas walked into the theater, which was a large hall. He habitually chose a seat slightly further back and sat there quietly waiting for the film to begin. Not long after, he discovered that, in line with the tight ticket supply reflected outside, the theater's occupancy rate was extremely high. When the film began, from where he sat, he could see that at least 90% of the seats were occupied.
"It's only Friday afternoon!"
Thinking of this, Thomas couldn't help but shook his head. Most of the people in the theater were of his age. For retired people like them, there was actually no difference between day and night, Friday and weekend.
The film began quickly, and from the moment the timer started, Richard Thomas was deeply attracted.
The director did an excellent job, using a seemingly complimentary tone to thoroughly satirize the impetuous mentality represented by Chicago in the 1920s.
Especially for someone like him with rich social experience, it is not difficult to find that the content of the film is still applicable today, 70 years later.
There is a classic line in the film, which goes, "Killing can be an art."
This resonated strongly with Thomas, who whispered, "It should be said that shamelessness can be an art!"
"You said it very aptly!"
Sitting next to him was the man from Manhattan, who said, "It's a very successful adaptation. Isn't it?"
"Yes." Thomas nodded and whispered, "The director has inherited Bob Fossey's style very well. He boldly processed the song and dance in the film into Roxy's hallucination, making the song and dance insertion more vivid and natural."
"He chose good actors," the man agreed. "Tom Cruise's performance was outstanding. The two leading actresses also sang and danced well."
After the film was over, Richard Thomas had become familiar with the people sitting around him. Several of them walked out while talking about the film. They were of similar age and had seen different versions of the musical, so they could talk about it very well.
Thomas said to a few people, "Depth is not the specialty of musicals. The director made the theme of Chicago so critical and created such colorful characters. It can be said to be very successful!"
"Although some cuts were made, the film still has a lot of song and dance scenes."
Another person said. "The song and dance are very smooth, unlike the previous musicals that always slowed down the plot, but instead pushed the plot forward quickly like a train."
The man from Manhattan said, "Chicago is a long-running stage play. Adaptation from stage to screen is very restrictive, but the movie can achieve this level. The director Duke Rosenberg deserves credit. I am very interested in him now, and I should go back and look for his past movies."
A few people nodded and said, "I'm going to go to the video store later."
Half an hour ago, Monty from TPZZ Investigations rushed here from another theater. He and several colleagues timed the end of the Chicago show and waited at the exit.
"Hello, sir..."
Seeing the audience coming out, he did not stop the older people, but instead found the young people, who were not too many among them, introduced himself first, gave them a small gift, and then asked, "Can you talk about the movie Chicago you just watched?"
"I've watched a few musicals on videotape before, but I couldn't stick with any of them until the end. They were too slow and boring."
The young man looked at the Roxy doll the other party presented to him, and then said, "Because Chicago is a collaboration between a great director like Duke and a big star like Tom Cruise, and it won the Audience Choice Award, I decided to watch it. The film is different from what I expected, it is very relaxing and joyful, and the plot is particularly exciting, especially the cage tango and the string puppet show, which are so cleverly conceived."
"If A+ is the highest score, what score would you give?" asked Monty.
"A+, the film is much better than imagined and advertised."
Then, Monty stopped another person, who said, "I came to see this movie because of Duke, and he did not disappoint. Although the genre of the movie has changed, it is still as good as before, especially the strong visual impact, and the song and dance design is also very good, which suits my aesthetic taste."
Ten minutes after the investigation, another movie "The English Patient" ended. Except for a few people, most of the audience members who came out were drowsy. People from another investigation and consulting company walked up.
"I find it boring to watch. The pace is too slow."
"I don't understand how love happens in the film. Can the director be less pretentious? It's such a simple thing, but he had to film it in the most complicated way!"
There were also many people who praised this movie, but compared to "Chicago", the proportion of viewers who thought the movie was boring was significantly higher.
"Why don't theaters have a fast-forward button? I was sitting there and was so bored that I really wanted to press fast-forward!"
"I am still confused and don't understand what the movie is about..."
Afterwards, investigators from both sides obtained the attendance data of each theater so far. "Chicago" was screened four times in one theater, with an average attendance of 79 percent!
"The English Patient" was screened four times in the same cinema, but the attendance rate was only 27%!
The strongest movie this weekend, "Star Trek: First Strike", had less than 20% attendance, but this movie was shown in seven theaters!
