Pardon Our Dust: Tips for Reader Web Site Users
How to find the list of what movies are playing
I already miss the clean concise “Now Showing” feature in the movie section of your Web site. It gave an alphabetical list of films playing in the city during the week along with “bugs” indicating your critics recommendations. I had made this an essential part of my planning for the week and it especially helped with finding limited run revival films at a glance. Hopefully this feature of your Web site is not gone forever.
Thank you for your time and continue the otherwise good work!
Greg Zagrocki
The alphabetical list of films playing each week is still available (though improvements are ongoing). All you have to do is go to the movies homepage (by clicking on the yellow movies tab at the top of any page), then click on “find a showtime” on the right. The list you’re looking for will drop down. If you go to the showtimes page (using the same yellow tab) you can use the tools on the left side of the screen to do a quick search for Critic’s Choices and other titles we’re recommending.
How to find a week’s worth of listings at a particular movie theater
Is there really no way to look at a venue’s showings for the week? You’ve eliminated showtimes from the print edition, and as far as I can tell you can only see a theater’s showings a day at a time online. What a pain in the ass.
Jake Werner
There is a way! Select a theater in the “find a showtime” area to the right on the movies homepage OR by clicking on it in the showtimes following a particular film). Then click on “location details” to view that venue’s showtimes for the whole week, all in one place.
How to find restaurants near a theater or other venue
What happened to the feature of restaurant search that allows you to find places to eat within a specified distance of a location, landmark, etc? Hope it is still there in the new design but only hidden. Without a doubt this is one of the strongest reasons for using the Reader‘s restaurant search instead of another. Please advise!
Frey Hoffman
It’s true you can no longer search for a restaurant within a specified distance, but the system, which now blends all our different listings databases, does allow you to search for restaurants near different locations. If you, for instance, wanted to find restaurants near the River East 21 movie theater, you’d click on “location details” from the movie listing. That would give you the week’s show times and, to the right, a little map with a drop-down box just beneath it, where you can search for nearby restaurants. If you were to click on one of those restaurants, you could perform the same kind of search for nearby movie theaters. This feature is still being adjusted, but give it a shot. We appreciate the feedback.
Geeking Out Over Metal
Re: “Fans Behind the Camera” by Cliff Doerksen, July 23
Have you ever done research on Norwegian Black Metal at all? Or did you just skim through “Lords of Chaos” and all of a sudden you are an expert on the subject? Obviously you’re just one overpretentious hipster who thinks that anything with corpse paint and pentagrams is comical. Do your research, listen to the albums, and maybe you’d have a tiny bit of credibility to even review this awesome documentary on one of the most powerful underground music movements in the world. Maybe you should just stick to your Kings of Leon and Flaming Lips albums, since getting exposed to extreme ideologies gets your panties in a wad, exposing your extremely thin Nigel hipster skin.
KVLT
Hey, prior poster KVLT, are you kidding? This review is genius! I laughed out loud several times. And death metal totally rules independent of this film—so what if the documentary sucks? It’s not like Doerksen is commenting on the entire genre (although he obviously has an opinion about the subject matter—but hello, he’s a CRITIC). And really, any filmmaker who would say something as asinine as, “It’s so metaphorical, so symbolic and so doomed to misinterpretation” deserves to have his head handed to him for his pretension. Even if the church-burner himself thought it highly symbolic, the behavior is really rooted in the same good ol’ fashioned destruction that drives punk, rock, etc. Maybe the same cool guy who kills “faggots” could do it. C’mon, man—death metal doesn’t have to be taken at its literal name. I’d have hoped that metal fans like us were more enlightened than that.
Nice review, Mr. Doerksen.
Allison Augustyn
Death Metal and Black Metal are two completely different genres, dumbass. Death Metal aims for brutality, blast beats, acrobatic riffage and guttural vocals. Black Metal goes for the jugular through its atmospheric atavism. There is a huge difference between bands like Autopsy and Entombed versus bands like Darkthrone and Mayhem.
What I’ve observed is that the “critic” DOESN’T HAVE A SLIGHTEST CLUE WHAT BLACK METAL REALLY IS. Do you know who Venom is? Bathory? Tormentor? Do you know the difference between Orthodox Black Metal and Nationalist Socialist Black Metal? YOU ARE ALL JUST A BUNCH OF SELF SERVING CLUELESS MORONS.
Get your facts correct before you even comment, poseur.
KVLT
Hey Cliff. I’d like to point out, as diplomatically as I can, that I think you’re tarring black metal with a pretty broad brush. I am not going to defend Varg Vikernes or Bard Eithun or NSBM or any of the nastier elements of the scene—there’s no good way to do that—but the fact remains that they’re just elements, not the whole scene.
Criticizing fans for liking black metal because its practitioners include a minority faction of racists and criminals is a little like giving rock fans a hard time because Jerry Lee Lewis married his underage cousin and the Rolling Stones did a lot of illegal drugs. I’m obviously exaggerating to make a point, but I still think it’s a valid point.
Not all black metal artists are homophobes or crypto-fascists or half-baked neo-pagans. At the risk of sounding like an idiot fanboy myself, I’m gonna suggest you look into an American band called Wolves in the Throne Room—they’ve responded to their own apocalyptic worldview in a positive way (in my opinion) and are homesteading and farming with the aim of disconnecting from the grid.
Of course, if you have no tolerance for occultism in any form, you’re likely to be exasperated by pretty much any black metal band, even WiTTR. I’m just saying that these folks aren’t thugs and idiots to a man. There are bad reasons to like black metal, of course, and it sounds like the filmmakers are pretty lazy about interrogating them. But there are also good reasons.
Philip Montoro
Jeez, and here I’ve been bracing myself all week for possible light-saber assaults.
Hi Phil:
I’m under the vague impression that there are other white-supremacist metal scenes out there (why, just now I was reading about something called “National Socialist Black Metal”) but the notion never crossed my mind that all, most or many other metal fans share the Grishnackian mindset. My comments were meant to apply only to what I saw on the screen. For all I know, Darkthrone is the greatest band of its genre. But that wouldn’t really have any bearing on my problems with the movie.
Hi KVLT:
“Do you know who Venom is?”
Sorry.
“Bathory?”
Not unless you mean the vampire countess of Hungary.
“Tormentor?”
Doesn’t ring a bell.
“Do you know the difference between Orthodox Black Metal and Nationalist Socialist Black Metal?”
Fuck no, but you’ve totally got my attention. If someone were to make a decent documentary about sectarianism in metal, I’d be first in line.
“Did you just skim through Lords of Chaos and all of a sudden you are an expert on the subject?”
That’s one of quite a few books I didn’t read in preparation for writing this review. Another was Matthew Bortolin’s The Dharma of Star Wars. Point being that you’re taking exactly the same position as the professor who objects to the fact that non-fans are allowed to talk about Star Wars in the media. Does it make sense to you when he says it?
“your Kings of Leon and Flaming Lips albums”
I take it these are not Orthodox Black Metal bands.
“since getting exposed to extreme ideologies gets your panties in a wad”
Dude, I live for extreme ideologies. Bet I know about more crank movements than you own LPs.
“hipster”
If only. I live in Berwyn.
Hi Allison:
Thank you very much. I’m glad you liked it.
cliff doerksen