The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/cinemapolis/)
As an avid movie watcher, I spend my spare time watching anything under the sun. With my people-pleasing tendencies, I will never admit to detesting a movie. Well, my people-pleasing era stops today. This past weekend, I watched a movie that pushed me straight into my villain era, and I will no longer sit silent. To preface, I would like to add a disclaimer: I have deep trauma from the first horror movie I ever watched.
The Ithaca Mall Regal Cinema is closing its doors, prompting sadness from many Cornell students who consider the theater a landmark of Ithaca.
On March 22, Sen. Chuck Schumer visited Ithaca to celebrate the passing of the American Rescue Plan.
Cinemapolis, Ithaca’s beloved independent movie theater, is coming out with a reimagined cinema experience. Starting on March 12, movie lovers will be able to book one of five private rooms with up to 15 guests. Guests can preorder snacks and drinks from the concession stand to enhance their experience.
While big cinema chains across the country struggle with covid restrictions and delayed releases, Ithaca’s own Cinemapolis has been screening films for patrons to watch at home and has moved live panels and discussions online.
Even though Tompkins County is one of the few counties in the area given this privilege, theaters will remain in their virtual or closed state.
“And in the luck of night, in secret places where no other spied, I went without my sight, without a light to guide, except the heart that lit me from inside.”
— St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul
Cinema is a miracle. Franchises and multiplexes make us forget, but to watch cinema is to receive profound insight on the inner workings of life and to experience a meditation on the world from another’s point of view. Roger Ebert called the movies a machine for generating empathy. Ideally, you can feel your world growing when you watch a special movie.
By CATHERINE HWANG
Director Lyndsey Turner’s Hamlet surprised me a bit at the start with Benedict Cumberbatch, our Hamlet, wrapped in a loose brown sweater, sitting on the ground listening to vinyl. This production’s intro (as shown at Cinemapolis) is not the beginning that I am familiar with. While Hamlet broods, someone knocks on the door, and it’s Hamlet (not Bernardo) who shouts, “Who’s there!” — only, instead of his father’s ghost, it’s Horatio (Leo Bill), clad in a button-up and square-rimmed glasses, a knapsack and tattoos. I don’t know if I like the re-arrangement of the script, but as Hamlet and Horatio exchange words, the premise is set regardless and the anachronistic nature of the outfits tickles my fancy. It becomes clear rather rapidly that Cumberbatch plays an incredible Hamlet — charismatic, unflinching and dynamic, he prances around the stage with limber movements.