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This past Wednesday, Open Air Cinema and Swank Motion Pictures hosted a free screening of Transformers 2 at the National Parks and Recreation Association (NRPA) national congress in Salt Lake City, Utah. The screening was a blast, and everyone really enjoyed watching the movie on the huge 30′ screen. It was really great because everyone was able to see the screening on a brand-new system. The sound was amazing, and the projection was stunning. National Parks and Recreation administrators from all over the place came to see the screening: Alabama, Texas, Utah, California, New York, Colorado, Arizona, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and many other places. Here is an excerpt of a review from io9:
“Critical consensus on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is overwhelmingly negative. But the critics are wrong. Micheal Bay used a squillion dollars and a hundred supercomputers’ worth of CG for a brilliant art movie about the illusory nature of plot.
Oh, and I would warn you that there’ll be spoilers in this review — except that, really, since I still have no idea what actually happened in this movie, I’m not sure how much I can spoil it.
Since the days of Un Chien Andalou and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari filmmakers have reached beyond meaning. But with this summer’s biggest, loudest movie, Michael Bay takes us all the way inside Caligari’s cabinet. And once you enter, you can never emerge again. I saw this movie two days ago, and I’m still living inside it. Things are exploding wherever I look, household appliances are trying to kill me, and bizarre racial stereotypes are shouting at me.
Transformers: ROTF has mostly gotten pretty hideous reviews, but that’s because people don’t understand that this isn’t a movie, in the conventional sense. It’s an assault on the senses, a barrage of crazy imagery. Imagine that you went back in time to the late 1960s and found Terry Gilliam, fresh from doing his weird low-fi collage/animations for Monty Python. You proceeded to inject Gilliam with so many steroids his penis shrank to the size of a hair follicle, and you smushed a dozen tabs of LSD under his tongue. And then you gave him the GDP of a few sub-Saharan countries. Gilliam might have made a movie not unlike this one.”
Read more at http://io9.com/5301898/michael-bay-finally-made-an-art-movie
The rolling hills of the beautiful Strathmore Mansion is an excellent place to enjoy movies under the stars. The Comcast Outdoor Film Festival has been running all month long and will continue screening outdoor movies until the 21st. You can enjoy popular titles such as Twilight and Slumdog Millionaire. Films are shown on a giant inflatable movie screen. And since the outdoor cinema event is free, there’s really no reason to miss it. Screenings usually begin around 8:10pm; movie-goers should bring blankets and beach chairs. Food will be available for purchase. The Strathmore Mansion is located at 10701 Rockville Pike, North Bethesda (Metro: Grosvenor).
Each night of the festival, outdoor cinema screenings begin at sundown, and on most nights the stars and northern lights are clearly visible, creating a unique movie-watching experience. Local talent as well as Canada’s best will be showcased. Audiences will have the opportunity to vote for their favorite film at each feature.
Home to nearly 30,000 refugees, Dakhla, named after the beautiful coastal city in Western Sahara, is a remote camp located 175 kilometers away from the nearest city, Tindouf. It has no paved roads and is entirely dependent on outside supplies of food and water. In the summer months, temperatures on the hammada desert plain regularly top 120 degrees. With sandstorms, little vegetation and no sources of food or water, it is little wonder that the area is known locally as ‘The Devil’s Garden’. And yet, incredibly, for a week each May, this desolate refugee camp plays host to the 
The film festival hosts several events and workshops but the crowning event is the open air cinema, held at the very center courtyard of the refugee camp. The outdoor movie screenings are the primary venue for festival submissions. Tents surrounding the outdoor cinema are set up as well for workshops, training classes, and indoor screenings. Dakhla residents love to watch movies under the stars, and they hope that the film festival will help bring an end to their displacement.
