Billions and Billions

I stopped in at the Landmark Seven Gables Theater tonight in the University District to pick up this DVD of Mysterious Skin that I won from the Landmark weekly email. I haven't actually been to anything at a Landmark theater since I watched Mallrats at the Uptown with Jack after Teague's Zaireeka party, but I knew they had prize contests, and it only took me two weeks to win.

The real find, though, was this tiny, unbelievably crowded store around the corner called, I think, Cinema Books. The entire store was wrapped in shelves about six feet high completely crammed with books, plus an extra two feet or so stacked up top and leaning precariously out toward the customer. In addition to the shelves were tables buried five deep in art books and old magazines. The back room had years of musty issues of Sight & Sound, Film Review, and basically any movie magazine you can think of, as well shelves of biographies and memoirs rendered nearly inaccessible by the overflow of movie posters. In between all the shelving and tables out front were thousands of postcards, movie stills, and portraits, providing just enough space that I could squeeze by with my bag without knocking anything over. I'd imagine one could shop there for year without discovering all the treasures squeezed into dark corners behind piles stacked on already overflowing rows of every kind of cinema-related book imaginable. I can't even imagine how impossible the cleanup would be after an earthquake, or probably even a firmly slammed door.

Next Wednesday should bring a review of Ross McElwee's Sherman's March on Professor Yeti, which is sort of an expanded version of a blog post I did last spring just after watching it.