{"id":10200,"date":"2014-06-05T12:26:35","date_gmt":"2014-06-05T16:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/?p=10200"},"modified":"2014-06-05T12:26:35","modified_gmt":"2014-06-05T16:26:35","slug":"summer-movies-great-cinema-no-fun-yes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/2014\/06\/05\/summer-movies-great-cinema-no-fun-yes\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer movies: great cinema? No. Fun? Yes."},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>

The Malta, NY drive in. Still screening movies after dark. Photo: Malta Drive In<\/p><\/div>\n

Remember drive in movie theaters? The good news: they still exist. In fact, six of the remaining 30 or so in NYS<\/a> are located within the NCPR coverage area, and many others are just outside the station’s reach.<\/p>\n

Drive ins are perfect for action and adventure movies, perhaps an animated feature. Nothing too heavy, please.<\/p>\n

In general, summer releases–whether for drive in or traditional theater–are fluffier fare than the fall releases as industry moguls jockey for Academy Award shots before year’s end.<\/p>\n

So, what’s your favorite summer movie experience? Was it the movie? Was the summer romance associated with a movie what keeps the memory alive? Seems as if horror and monster movies have a leading role in summer offerings.<\/p>\n

In my teens, the stand out summer movie experience had to do with the climate more than what was being shown on the screen.<\/p>\n

Living in New York City, at a time when only the affluent had air conditioning in their apartments, we’d head to 42nd Street where some of the theaters would show triple-headers for a single ticket price. On a hot, humid afternoon you could enter the cool darkness and not exit until late evening and more moderate outdoor temperatures.<\/p>\n

This is how I saw all of the early Clint Eastwood “spaghetti” Westerns (so named because they were largely filmed in Italy or Mexico, with English dubbed in for the supporting cast), plus some great old classics (think Fred Astaire and Alfred Hitchcock’s pre-1960s work).<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Camel billboard in Times Square, 1948. Photo: National Archives, via Wikipedia<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

Of course, this was also the time when 42nd Street was synonymous with “pornography” and the sex industry. But there was our more wholesome (mundane?) frequenting of Times Square–relief from the steamy city summer weather. Those air-conditioned theaters cured our hot weather crankiness and saved us from the unremitting discomfit associated with NYC in July and August.<\/p>\n

Here’s a video of the iconic Times Square Camel cigarettes billboard in 1964, which went through a \u00a0number of permutations through the years.<\/p>\n