Picture Perfect: Cinemapolis to Reopen for Private Movie Screenings

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.

Cinema of Transcendence: Knight of Cups

“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.

Blue Burdens and Hipster Horatio in Hamlet

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.