Posts filed under 'Moviegoing'
May 9th, 2008
Here, to get your weekend started on the right note, is a nifty little compilation of the movies of one of my favorite directors, Wes Anderson.
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In related Wes Anderson news, Criterion (the DVD collector’s best friend) announced it will be releasing Anderson’s debut film, BOTTLE ROCKET, later this year (let’s hope it includes his original student-film version). Â And what’s more, it’s going to be part of Criterion’s first wave of Blu-Ray DVDs. Yowza!Â
April 28th, 2008
With SPEED RACER opening this weekend, IRON MAN out the next and INDIANA JONES following up on May 22, it’s obvious: Despite the snow in the skies of Rockford, the summer movie season is almost here.
With studios banking (literally) on making most of their profits during the next few months, it’s hard to believe that just a few short decades ago, the big movies came out in the spring (THE GODFATHER debuted in March) or near Christmas (TOWERING INFERNO arrived in December) with kid flicks and low-budget nonsense (as opposed to big budget nonsense) arriving while the kids were out of school. JAWS changed all that, of course, hitting theaters at the end of June 1975 and riding that summer wave of fear and excitement straight to the top of the all-time box office. It was a movie about a shark terrorizing the beach, which meant it was made for summer viewing, but the studios realized that young audiences with lots of free time would go see would-be blockbusters again and again, a theory proved two years later by a little art film called STAR WARS that knocked JAWS off the top of the box office stack and pretty much changed all the rules, including release dates.
STAR WARS, not so coincidentally, is the first movie on the Onion AV Club’s new list, “Part Hype, Part Art, All Movie: 18 Pretty Great Summer Blockbusters Not Directed by Steven Spielberg.” Also included are CON AIR, THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM, X-MEN 2, BATMAN BEGINS and a personal favorite, FACE/OFF (also the first movie I saw at Rockford’s ShowPlace 16, screened for a public preview of the then state-of-the-art stadium-style theater.) John Woo’s bravura direction, a big budget (that must’ve gone mostly toward ammunition, doves and slow-motion film stock and a pair of hilariously over-the-top performances by John Travolta and Nicolas Cage made it one of the craziest, biggest and strangely most personal action movies ever made. If you’ve never seen it, check it out — on the biggest screen you can find.
Another movie on the list proves how set-in-stone the summer release plan had become by 1984. GREMLINS, directed by Joe Dante, is actually set at Christmas, with snow, lights and the whole holiday bag (including Phoebe Cates’ dad getting stuck in a chimney dressed as Santa), but it was released in June. And it was a huge hit, too. Not even carols and candy canes could keep shorts-wearing moviegoers away.
Coming tomorrow: The big summer movies of this year, and my take. I expect all of you movie fans to toss in your two cents, too.
Bonus quiz: Can anyone tell me what movie (released during the summer, of course) had the title of this blog entry on its soundtrack?
February 28th, 2008
“He’s never seen this movie or “Dr. Zhivago”? What’s his problem?
In this piece that ran last Sunday, San Francisco Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle confessed that he’d never seen some films generally considered classics, then watched them and wrote up some short reviews. (For the record, he was unimpressed by TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, generally amused by YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, impressed and entertained by AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER, impressed but not entertained by BLADE RUNNER, and bored by 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.)
There’s been some debate among movie bloggers whether admitting these gaps in his film watching was brave or having such gaps was lazy. (Actually, I think not seeing 2001 in a city where it gets shown on a big screen every year is pretty lazy, but that’s not why I’m bringing up LaSalle’s confession.) Instead, I want to make a confession of my own and own up to some of the classics I’ve never seen. If you have seen them, convince me to watch them (or argue why I shouldn’t). And, if you want, confess to some of the classic movies you’ve never seen, either.
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA: I know, I know, it’s a great epic. It won the Best Picture Oscar. It features some of the most breathtaking cinematography ever captured on film. But the odds of seeing it on an actual movie screen are pretty slim these days, and I want it to have the full impact on my virgin eyeballs. Plus, I have to admit … it looks a little dull. I’d be happy to hear arguments to the contrary.
DR. ZHIVAGO: I know, another epic, this time with lots of snow instead of sand. But this sounds even more dull than LAWRENCE, and besides — reputation aside, is it really any good? Or is it just a big-budget soap opera? Because that’s what it looks like.
THE AFRICAN QUEEN: I love Humphrey Bogart. I like director John Huston. I can tolerate Katherine Hepburn. But I’ve never seen this movie. I guess I’m waiting for the DVD. (Though the movie ranked #17 on AFI original list of the 100 greatest American films, it still isn’t available on DVD.)
HIGH NOON: I have no good reason for not seeing this one. I even own a DVD of it. Sue me, I’m lazy.
WEST SIDE STORY: Not a big fan of musicals. Sorry.
The films of Charlie Chaplin: He’s one of the screen’s most celebrated comedians/directors, but aside from a few shorts and THE GREAT DICTATOR, I’ve seen very few of his movies. THE GOLD RUSH? No. CITY LIGHT? Nope. MODERN TIMES? Uh uh. I guess what I have seen just didn’t connect with me. Maybe it’s because I find Chaplin too maudlin and desperate for audience empathy. The movie comedians I like — Buster Keaton, the Marxes, W.C. Fields — are a lot less sentimental. Sorry, Charlie.
So that’s my list of movie confessions. Be sure to share your own in the comments section so I’m not the only one feeling guilty. And speaking of confessions — and the title of this post — I’ve seen plenty of Hitchcock, but I’ve never seen his 1953 movie, I CONFESS either.
January 30th, 2008
Watching “Cars” with my daughter again (it’s her current obsession, following months of nonstop “Finding Nemo”), I got to thinking about how these kids today, with their DVDs and DVRs and Netflix and Blu-Rays, they don’t know what it was like to be a kid way back in the long ago days of the 1970s, like I was. We couldn’t just watch a movie any time we wanted, then watch it again (and again and again). No, back then (and, according to the legends I’ve heard, in the years before the 197os) movies were seen in the theaters and then — if you were patient and lucky — they might show up on TV.
And, this being the early days of cable, those movies would be hacked up, censored and slapped between some commercials. Even the theaters were different. No megaplexes then, kids. My hometown had one theater with two screens. If there were more than two movies playing at the same time, you were going to miss something. You just had to hope it wasn’t something you were dying to see. Or, if something was showing that you were dying to see, that it stayed in town for as long as possible.
Which brings me to “Star Wars.”
Hitting my town like it hit the rest of the world, “Star Wars” changed snagged a spot on one of those two screens and, believe it or not, stayed there almost an entire year. During the holidays, the Cleveland Plain Dealer ran a Christmas-themed ad with the “Star Wars” characters because the movie was still packing houses, seven months after it hit theaters. Ten years old at the time, I loved “Star Wars” like no other movie — like no other thing– I’d yet encountered. And, because I was living in the pre-VCR age and didn’t know when — if ever — it would show up on TV, I saw it as many times as I could. I dragged mom, dad, grandparents, friends and mere acquaintances along for showing after showing, trying to commit every frame of the film to memory before it left town. After all, once it did, I might never see it again.
I’m pretty sure my final total was 10 viewings, not counting any re-releases or TV/video viewings. Three years later, I saw “Empire Strikes Back” four or five times, but by the time “Return of the Jedi” rolled around in 1983, VCRs were pretty common and though my family didn’t have one yet, I could see my dad (a movie fan himself) getting the itch to buy one. I knew my days of seeing the same movie 10 times in the theater were over.
Now on video, well, that was another story. Check this space tomorrow to read it.
In the meantime, now that I’ve confessed my “Star Wars” obsession, it’s your turn. What movie have you seen the most times in a theater (video and TV don’t count — we’ll cover them later.) Maybe it’s “Jaws” or “Titanic” or maybe even “Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Whatever it is, don’t be shy. We’ve all got cinematic skeletons in our closets.
