Movies

SFO Museum offers free films at SFO Airport

Art, Movies, ,

 

Courtesy SFO Airport

Airports in Portland, Oregon and Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn. have them. And now San Fransciso International Airport has one too!

The SFO Museum has opened a gallery space for video art and short films at SFO Airport.

Located in the the International Terminal Main Hall, the gallery will show a rotating reel of short films, including documentaries, narratives, experimental films and all forms of animation – with a new film introduced weekly.

Up now: a program that includes works by South African filmmaker Tlhonepho Thobejane and an award-winning animated short by Michael Bidinger and Michelle Kwon.

This free gallery is located pre-security at SFO Airport is free and is open daily from 5:00 a.m. to Midnight.  You can also see the videos on the SFO website.

 

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Free movies & games at Frankfurt Airport

Entertainment, Movies, , ,

 

If you have to get to the airport really early – or wait around for a few hours during a layover – why not take in a movie?

You could watch it on your computer or tablet of course, but an increasing number of airports are showing movies – for free – in their own movie theaters.

The latest to add this cinematic amenity is the Germany’s Frankfurt Airport, which has set up two “Movie World’s” in Terminal 1, on Piers A and Z, to show full-length movies, documentaries and some popular series.

The screening areas don’t have rows of seats, but are set up in a living-room style, with carpeting, couches and small niche seating areas, with TV screens. Each theater can accommodate 22 people in eight separate viewing niches and, like airplane entertainment systems, travelers can choose what language to watch a film in and when to start it.

There are a handful of other airports that offer movie theaters for travelers,  including Portland International Airport, Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, Sinagpore’s Changi Airport, Hong Kong International Airport and some others. I’ve wrote about airport movie theaters in one of my “At the Airport” columns on USA TODAY.

No movies? How about gaming?

For those who would rather play computer games than watch a movie on a layover, Frankfurt Airport has also opened a second Gaming World offering free, controller-based, interactive games such as FIFA, NBA and racing and a variety of others. “Scientists have shown that playing video games helps overcome jet lag,” says Frankfort Airport operator, Fraport, and these games “have the extra benefit of reactivating tired limbs after hours of sitting still in the plane.”

Not sure if that’s true, but free games – and movies – are certainly welcome airport amenities.

Look for Movie World at Frankfurt Airport in Terminal by Gate A58 and Gate Z58 and find the Gaming World areas in Terminal one by Gate A52 and Gate Z54.

 

Let’s all go to the movies – at the airport

Entertainment, Movies, ,

 

My ‘At the Airport’ column for USA TODAY this month is all about airports where travelers can watch movies.  All the time and on special occasions.

Here’s a slightly abbreviated version of that column:

In February, Oregon’s Portland International Airport hosted the official opening of a free microcinema on Concourse C.

A branch of the city’s historic Hollywood Theatre movie palace, the new Hollywood Theatre at PDX has a bright, 1920s-inspired neon marquee, seating for 17 (but capacity for 49) and a $200,000 state-of-the-art projection and sound system isolated from the roar of the planes and the shaking of the airport building.

The cinema replaces a rarely used post-security service center. Now, instead of sitting at work tables with power outlets, passengers can use this space to watch an hour-long reel of G-rated short films by Oregon filmmakers that will run around the clock and be refreshed quarterly.

The opening program reel includes the premier of an animated film, a music video, a documentary, mini-shorts about Portland by local film students and more than a half-dozen other features.

More airport cinemas

Portland International isn’t the only airport to offer movies to passengers who have a bit of extra time to spend at the airport.

At the end of 2014, Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport opened its “See 18” Screening Room near gate C18 to show short films, documentaries, music videos and art programming by Minnesota filmmakers and shot predominantly in Minnesota.

All films are under 10 minutes, run 24/7, are curated by The Film Society of Minneapolis-St. Paul and are refreshed three time a year.

Elsewhere, Lithuania’s Vilnius Airport promotes its free ‘cinema hall’ showing work by Lithuanian filmmakers and there’s a Cinema Time screening room showing a wide variety of free films at the Vaclav Havel Prague Airport.

Terminal 3 – Transit – Movie Theatre – Interior

Singapore’s Changi Airport has two 24-hour movies theatres (in Terminals 2 and 3) offering free screenings of full-length movies for passengers, with a line-up that currently includes ‘Star Trek Beyond,’ ‘Keeping Up with the Joneses,’ and ‘Kubo and the Two Strings.’ And there are movie theaters selling tickets to recent films in the public areas of Hong Kong International Airport, South Korea’s Incheon Airport and a few others.

Special screenings  

Airports without dedicated film-screening spaces have dabbled with movies events as well.

While the Toronto International Film Festival was underway in 2010, passengers at Toronto Pearson International Airport could watch movie trailers from the festival in a pair of 10×10-foot pop-up screening rooms. Free popcorn was provided each night.

https://vimeo.com/14827161

For the past three summers, Germany’s Dusseldorf Airport has hosted an outdoor cinema to show blockbusters on a giant screen set up on a concourse rooftop, with wireless headphones for each moviegoer. The series returns in July with ten screenings.

During 2016, Denver International Airport showed free outdoor movies on the outdoor plaza between the main terminal and the Westin Denver International Airport as part of a “Film on the Fly” series.

No program is set yet for 2017, but the 2016 line-up included “Top Gun”, “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” and “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.”

And, at San Francisco International Airport, in Interim Boarding Area B, a selection from Laurie O’Brien’s Peephole Cinema features silent film shorts inspired by travel and the writings of Danish author Hans Christian Andersen.

Back to the Future

While an airport movie theater may seem like a fresh new amenity, the idea is far from brand new.

From the early 1950s into the mid-1970s, there was a ‘regular’ movie theater – the Skyport Cinema – showing first-run films at Pittsburgh International Airport.

And when the new Dallas/Fort Worth International airport opened in January 1974, “all the major airlines moved their operations there from Love,” said Bruce Bleakley, director of the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas, “That left a big empty terminal with only Southwest flying its 8-10 flights a day.”

In November 1975, a developer turned the terminal lobby into an entertainment center with three movie theaters, skating rinks, and other activities and called it the Llove Entertainment Center, said Bleakley, but the complex was closed by May 1978.

 

 

Movie theater opens at Portland Int’l Airport

Movies,

It took more than three years to make it happen, but on Thursday the marquee lights at the Hollywood movie theater inside Portland International Airport were switched on and a series of short films by Oregon artists began to play.

The mini-cinema has less than 20 seats but, with standing space, has room for more than 40 people to enjoy the hour-long selection of films that will be shown round-the-clock and refreshed quarterly.

Hooray for Hollywood!

 

 

Free chat + Free movies on Alaska Airlines

Movies, ,

Alaska is one of the airlines offering  travel waivers for passengers affected by winter weather this week, which means you may have to wait to try out the airlines’ newest perks:

Free use of iMessage, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger on Gogo-equipped flights.

The option is offered in a beta version right now and should be fully functional by January 24th, the airline promises.

Also free (through March 31, 2017): access  – on your devices – to the all the entertainment offered to Alaska Airlines passengers during flight, including Hollywood movies and popular TV shows.

The airline’s new Premium Class service also debut this week on some routes, offering passengers who have purchased this perk extra legroom, early boarding, complimentary snacks and alcoholic beverages. About 40 percent of Alaska’s fleet has been retrofitted with the new premium class section seating so far and the airline promises that 90 of the fleet will offer this option by the end of 2017.

 

Hawaiian Airlines’ 3 new liveries for Disney’s “Moana”

liveries, Movies, ,

hawaiian-airlines-moana

A new Hawaiian-themed Hawaiian themed move – “Moana” – is coming and Hawaiian Airlines is working with the Walt Disney studios to bring out three Airbus A330 aircraft with special livery.

The design of the first plane has been revealed and it features the characters from the movie. The next two liveries will be revealed next month.

All planes will fly on Hawaiian’s U.S. domestic routes and international destinations through March of 2017 and you can track where they’ll be here.

hawaiian-moana-caption

As part of the collaboration Hawaiian Airlines will feature a “Moana” caption-contest , with a grand prize of a trip for two to Los Angeles to attend the Hollywood Premiere of Moana.

Other movie-themed collaboration efforts include videos, Moana-themed amenities including luggage bins and  inflight entertainment, as well as limited-edition products such as blankets, towels, and apparel.

They’ll also be a line of items  you can buy – so if you’re taking your kids on a Hawaiian Airlines flight, bring your credit card…

“Sully” the movie: a view and a review

Aviation history, Movies, , ,
sully-snip

Courtesy Warner Bros.

The Sully movie, from Oscar-winning director Clint Eastwood, starring Oscar winner Tom Hanks as Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, of “Miracle on the Hudson” fame,  is out in theaters now.

And while I know it has a happy ending, I’m not sure yet if I can go see it.

But I did ask two smart folks with some insider knowledge to share some thoughts on the film.

Christine Negroni, whose book, The Crash Detectives: Investigating the World’s Most Mysterious Air Disasters,  is about to be published by Penguin, said:

“In the Times, Michael Wilson writes that no one will go to see “Sully” for the airport scenes.

About that, he is wrong. Aviation geeks will love the film for all the luscious shots of planes, airports, takeoffs, flybys. It’s gorgeous. And the pilots aren’t so bad looking either.

They got a lot right. They got some things wrong. And the tension between the pilots and the crash investigators has the feel of Hollywood heroes and cardboard villains, a created tension to serve a dramatic narrative.

It is interesting to me that the filmmakers took a man who has been hailed as a hero since the accident for what he did on the plane and lionized him even more. In “Sully” he is made into the wise one who had to set the NTSB investigators on the right path, as if they couldn’t figure it anything out without him. This is the element of the movie that has the tin-kickers so miffed.

The movie does a stellar job of taking us on a trip to the terrifying, not just in the passenger cabin, but in the evolving comprehension in the cockpit of what is happening and the silent communication between the captain and the first officer.

The scenes between Skiles and Sully are some of the best in the film.

I think much more should have been done to examine the post-traumatic-stress-disorder experienced by the crew, which is greatly underappreciated in aviation. In my book, I interview a dozen pilots who handled similar near disasters. To a person they were unprepared for the emotional complications that followed.”

And Patrick Smith, of Ask the Pilot, offered up these comments – and the answer to a question many people ask:

“It’s funny. Flying has become so safe. We’ve engineered away what used to be the most common causes of air disasters.

We’re left with things like… birds.

Bird strikes are common, and the damage tends to be minor, if there’s any at all. I’ve personally experienced many strikes, and the result was, at worst, a minor dent or crease. I should hardly have to mention, however, that strikes are occasionally dangerous. This is especially true when engines are involved, as we saw in 2009 when US Airways flight 1549 glided into the Hudson River after colliding with a flock of Canada geese. Modern turbofans are resilient, but they don’t take kindly to the ingestion of foreign objects, particularly those slamming into their rotating blades at high speeds.

Birds don’t clog an engine but can bend or fracture the internal blades, causing power loss. The heavier the bird, the greater the potential for harm. Flying at 250 knots—in the United States, that’s the maximum allowable speed below 10,000 feet, where most birds are found—hitting an average-sized goose will subject a plane to an impact force of over 50,000 pounds. Even small birds pose a threat if struck en masse. In 1960, an Eastern Airlines turboprop went down in Boston after an encounter with a flock of starlings.

Your next question, then, is why aren’t engines built with protective screens in front? Well, in addition to partially blocking the inflow of air, the screen would need to be large (presumably cone-shaped) and incredibly strong. Should it fail, now you’ve got a bird and pieces of metal going into the motor. The incidents above notwithstanding, the vast improbability of losing multiple engines to birds renders such a contraption impractical.”

See the “E.T.” film for free at Denver Int’l Airport

Movies, ,

ET IMAGE

How’s this for a perfect match.

On August 18, as part of its “Film on the Fly” series, Denver International Airport (DEN) will host a free screening of Steven Spielberg’s classic film, “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial,” on the airport’s open-air plaza between the main terminal and the Denver Westin International Airport hotel

Starting at about 5:30, there will be music, raffle prizes and a performance of live bike stunts on the plaza (to get folks in the mood for E.T.’s famous ride).  The movie will begin showing at sunset.

I attended last month’s “Film on the Fly” offering – “Top Gun” – at DEN airport and had a great time. In addition to local residents who came by for the music and the movie, some passengers waiting for flights joined the audience, as well as airport employees on breaks or on their way home from work.

More information about this and other free events on the DEN airport plaza here.

Batman vs. Superman airport souvenirs

Movies, Souvenirs, ,

Hudson batman supeman shirt

If you’ve been anxiously awaiting “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” – set to appear in movie theaters March 26, 2016 – then you may be in the market for something to wear to the show.

If you’re traveling, you may not have time to shop for just the right thing to wear (a cape?, pointy bat ears?) to the theater, but Hudson stores at airports have you covered.

At eleven major airports – including LAX, Miami International Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport, Omaha Airport, Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, Chicago Midway International Airport, Lambert–St. Louis International Airport, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Burbank Bob Hope Airport, Nashville International Airport, and Boston Logan – Hudson shops will be offering two, exclusive, movie-themed t-shirts.

And it looks like you can choose your super hero.

The t-shirts would be the perfect thing to wear on the special Turkish Airlines plane that has a Batman v Superman livery and Batman v Superman amenity kits.

Turkish Airlines - Batman v Superman Special Livery 2

Turkish Airlines - Batman v Superman Special Livery3

Turkish Airlines Amenity Kits - Limited Edition Batman v Superman (1)