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The Fourth Kind. Hmmm, not necessarily the film I would have chosen to be inducted into in my little town's Super Secret Movie Club, but then, any flick would have served the purpose.

Maybe "super secret" is a bit of a stretch, and maybe "club" is too formal a word to describe it. It certainly wasn't and isn't open to the public. It wasn't a fanboy moment or a midnight screening or a paid admission to pre-premiere. It was just a gathering of a special sort of tribe, a young, smart and kicky group of aficinandos, of movie heads, of great unsung popcorn slingers and college bound assistant managers. It was a late summer night, just another weeknight for some, a definitely later than usual night for me. But what more could I ask for? A different crowd, sure, but a bunch of kindred spiritis doing exactly what I would be doing at home but doing it out and about and in front of a big screen, instead.

I had no idea that this subculture I joined up with a month ago would open up so many new avenues of approach for me. Movie passes, sure, that I could grok to but having keys to the movie house and access to the projection booth is like having keys to the Kingdom of Celluloid. With a lightbox, open spigots of pop and a handful of dvds one's world changes overnight. Or, at the very least, and in this case, at least for one night.

I know that when and where that special time arrives when I am draped with the sacred managerial mantle that I won't have this group around me to help me take advantage of the space and time and the auditorium like this group did with me tonght. I am sure that I will have to look more closely at the bottom line, pay attention to how those extra hours of energy use add up, see where those extra ounces of flavored corn syrup are going to. Right now I am not in charge, I am not accountable, I am not the one signing on the dotted line. I am just a newbee, a volunteer worker bee, another one of the pack, in this case, the newest of the bunch, the funny old guy who sweats buckets fretting over the threading of the projector.

But that didn't stop those youngsters from inviting me along to participate in the Super Secret Movie Club tonight and for that little gesture I am glad. I felt like it should have come along with a decoder ring, a gilded card for my wallet. I was the kind of thing that should have a super secret handshake to go along with it. Maybe when I am boss I will expect that, turn that little after hours movie club into a sort of speakeasy experience. In order to get the popcorn you need to whisper to the usher a password at the door. Instead of all that tonight I experienced the wonderfulness of youth and got to immerse myself in laughter, friendship and a light sort of cinematic spontaniety that had me racing back to catch one of the cheesiest horror films I have seen in ages.

They may not be my people, but tonight we were all pals, a band of late night movie goers, a group with a purpose and a plan in mind, even if that plan was just to suffer through a silly movie together. That's what clubs do, you know! Share both the pain AND the glory!

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The lure of the free pass

To paraphrase Gordon Gecko: "Free is good".

As you know I have plenty of free time on my hands these days. I wake up, look at my schedule, figure in my volunteer duties, my job search needs and then plot out the day. As much as I hustle I do find that I hit some dead spots on my calendar come mid week. For most folks that has to be the ultimate luxury. For me it's just business as usual.

So, how do I handle it? Okay, let's just say that I have a free Wednesday afternoon. It's a sunny out, sure, but then it is August in the Northwest. The options on how to fill a day are somewhat endless. There is plenty of yardwork to do, any number of drives I can take. I can work on my resume, continue to search for jobs. I could work on my house, paint my bathroom, empty out the cottage, pick up a book, try a new recipe, get on the phone or take a walk. Sure, I could always second hand or take a nap or snack, heck, it wouldn't be beyond me to open up a bottle of wine, get out the grill and pop a half dozen cd's in the stereo, blow the afternoon away. Sure, it IS summertime, but buddy, this has turned out to be the longest summer vacation I have EVER had. A day off is not so much a treat at times, it sometimes turns into a burden. You want to use your days well, not squander them, make them count.

Then again, there are those days where you just want to screw around and do squat.


That's when I crank up the 'net, get on my "employers" website and see what's playing in their stable of movie houses around the region. I am not on the payroll, and I don't even have an official status outside of my boss's made up term for my volunteer status: "managerial intern". But those hours I work in the evenings five days a week are movie house gold. I turn that time that could be used for gold bricking into adding to my skill set and, in turn, turn that time sweating it out in front of the projector into free movie matinees.


It's been a different experience taking in the movies that way. I walk up to the door, tell them who I am, where I work, what I want to see. No passes, no id cards, no one calling to verify my employment. It's strange and wonderful and slightly schoolboyish, having a movie auditorium practically all to myself midday. I haven't had that kind of fun on the job since my old drive in days. Instead of taking a car load of buddies to the movies I haul my bones to the theater and walk right on in as if I own the place.


To date I've caught Inception, The Other Guys and Scott Pilgrim vs the World. I have an old friend that I'll take to the movies later on this week, in that wee window of afternoon time I have available right prior to my evening shift. I am getting closer all the time to actually, possibly, hopefully, coming on board full time at my little local theater. But in the end, even if that doesn't work out, even if I bag another 40 hour position that takes me out of that wonderful movie house experience I will still find time to hang out, volunteer my time, stay on the "payroll" as it were and continue to generate not only goodwill but free movie passes. It may not be a retirement package or a health program I'm enrolled in but for the moment those movie passes feel like a paid vacation, and the thrills I get out of walking in the door gratis are about a great a thing I can think of to take the edge off this job search weary heart of mine.


Good things come to those who wait or, better yet, who hustle their butts as a volunteer out in the community.


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The Grand: now here's a local movie house that does that "volunteer a shift/get a free movie pass" thing right:
http://www.grandcinema.com/

Laserdisc central

Okay, just what I needed. Another format, another platform to play movies on. It's already tough enough finding time to watch all the movies I currently have in house, but, you see, I keep seeing these large, glistening discs all over town and I had this intense desire to see how they looked, how they played on my big analog set. I knew that I was still a few years away from Bluray, from a high def set to play those discs on. I knew that I really didn't have a right to drag yet another piece of gear into my life but the desire alone gave me another reason to get out of the house, gave me one more thing to look for when I went out and about on my second hand shopping excursions. It's a good thing, really, to be able to broaden the focus. Well, maybe. Goodness, what does it matter, all this philosophical bantering? I am now in for a penny, in for about a hundred bucks.

BUT! You see, it wasn't a bad deal as deals go. I wasn't looking for it, but I have had it on my mind for a quite a while now. I saw a nice videodisc deck last December when I was in Seattle, at that new Goodwill there in Ballard. Big as a vinyl record turntable, heavy, clean. I kept seeing titles around town that I wanted to buy, but, what was the point? I didn't have anything to play them on. So I let things go, as well we should. And then the Hollywood store closings changed the game for a while, kept my focus on finding Criterion prints there on the cheap. And that, dear readers, is really what started this whole affair. The high cost of Criterion prints out in the world, the big box bookstores, even online. I wanted to somehow beat that, and well, ask long enough and the gods hear your supplications.

I walked into Goodwill yesterday with a ten spot in my pocket, thought to myself, cool, I'll go in and find a handful of movies, blow a couple, three bucks, take off to do other things with my day. And indeed I did find a couple movies right off the bat to take home. A remastered copy of Snow White. A Hong Kong print of Iron Monkey II. I was thrilled. Then, baby, the thrill was gone. I saw out of the corner of my eye a HUGE collection of laserdiscs in the book aisle. Well, all big, new to the store, fancy looking collections must be checked out. What a freaking mistake that was. BUT, and here's the big but, what caught my eye right away was the Criterion name on top of the packaging. I knew right then and there I was doomed.

What a nice small haul it was, considering the label. Brazil. Shine. Chasing Amy. Seven. Robocop. Silverado. Four bucks each. Clean, no scratches, great box sets, lots of features, lots of pluses. Okay, but what good were they going to do me without a player to play them on? Well, lo and behold, off to the right, on the electronics shelf, now conveniently placed a couple feet from the movies was a Pioneer deck, clean, with a manual, fifteen bucks. Damn and double damn!

So, I walked out of the store with a player, those above mentioned Criterion prints, a nice Clint Eastwood box set containing a documentary and all the Dirty Harry films and a handful of other titles including unopened copies of Young Frankestein and The Return of the Pink Panther. I left behind a number of great movies titles that I may go back and look for later on, well, maybe, after I pay the lights and gas. No good having that new player around if there's no juice in the sockets to play it with!

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How Stuff Works: The Projector

Wow! Now the mystery of what the projectionist does up there in the booth is revealed! Just the little video attached to this article is worth seeing if you want to get a feel for what my projectionist experience has all about! The gear that I work with doesn't have automatic rewinding, as it's an older model and doesn't come with any modern bells and whistles but everything else in that video is spot on. I can practically use this as a tutorial on those days when I could use a little mental brushing up on the ins and outs of threading a projector! Enjoy!

Action!

How Stuff Works:
http://www.howstuffworks.com/movie-projector.htm/printable

Here's another take on the projectionist's art:
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_6_2/feature-anightintheprojectionbooth.html

Small town movie house

I got lucky, plain and simple.

A month or so ago I decided to take a walk down the block to see the manager of our little local art house theater to see if he could use my volunteer services again. As I strolled up to the door I saw the manager do a double take. He was in the lobby talking to an old friend of his, another pal who was deep into the movie business, and as I came in he related to me that he had just brought up my name just a second before I walked up to the door. As it goes my old friend, the young manager of the movie house, was looking to get out from under the duty of running the place and thought I might be interested. Looking into his eyes I could tell he was a bit weary and that he needed a break. Two full time jobs, a handful of kids, a newborn, yeah, a busy life will do that to a man. So, of course, I said to him, "sure, when do I start?"

So, a few weeks ago I got into the saddle and have been riding hard ever since. Five days a week I train and I sweat and in the midst of it all I am finding that I am truly having one hell of a good time. I work with dandy, talented and enthusiastic young staff, all of them real, true movie heads. They are all well versed on film new and old, watch them at all hours all the while doing all sorts of other young gal and guy stuff, hanging out with friends, gaming, attending classes, playing music, taking trips into the city to, of course, catch rare and delightful movies that don't always make their way across the pond to the peninsula.

It's a grand bit of volunteer duty, learning everything from the fine art of making movie popcorn (one scoop of p-corn, one large spoonful of specialty oil and one small touch of a delightful mystery powder that truly turns plain old popcorn into movie house gold!), to cleaning windows and scrubbing sinks. These days I find myself doing wonderfully mundane things like sweeping floors, changing the letters on the marquee, building and breaking down films and, most importantly, threading the projector. Believe it or not I turned away from volunteering with this bunch last fall because I just couldn't wrap my head around the ins and outs of that damn piece of machinery. But this week I successfully threaded not just one but two films perfectly, much to my satisfaction and to the quiet amazement of my college bound colleague.

Love that job, love the endless popcorn, the movie passes to other houses in the chain, the midnight screenings to check out the films we built only hours before. I love the camraderie, the spirit, the walls up in the projection booth papered with films I've seen, I own or have immense respect and love for, sight unseen. I think that if nothing else happens, if this job only lasts a few months, I will look back at this moment, at this chance to run my little local movie house, as the watershed career moment I have been craving for years, a job I truly wanted and needed and just didn't know it at the time.

Gosh, screen 'em, Dano!

Action!

Exploding clowns

There is nothing more satisfying on a beautiful summer's day than a morning wasted on a direct-to-dvd, 100% certified "B" feature. The sun is shining, the air cool and inviting, the morning stretches out before me like a magic carpet and in the midst of all that God given beauty I found comfort squandering a bit of this preciously short and sweet life on Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball.

Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 28. Allmovie didn't bother to rate it all. I am sure if I really wanted somebodies opinion I could find it right away online, but, you know, I really don't care to hear what those poobutts have to say. It wasn't an Academy award winner or a Sundance film I was in the mood for this morning. I wanted something to get me past this seriously bad attack of grown up itus I am suffering from. No, I don't want to go to work or even look for it, I want a summer vacation, I want to sit on the beach, have little mamasitas bring grilled fish and coconut pie to me while I rest, somewhat borracho, under the shade of ratty ass palapa somewhere down on the Mexican Riviera.

The Smokin' Aces films are the kind you put on if you can't get away, if your summer vacations look like anything close to mine. Better yet, they're the kind of movies you want close at hand when the buzz of that inexpensive Merlot you were nursing has worn off and you have a bit of latent sugar energy coursing through your veins that you need to burn off. Anymore these days I have a hell of time making it to two or three in the morning when movies like this really do the trick. There are nights when I wake up with all the worries of the world nestled right next to my head on my fluffy down pillow where a movie like SA2 would really fit the bill. This morning, well, I was wide awake, antsy, a bit bored and it suited my needs perfectly!

It wasn't the kind of movie I would want to chase down if only had a couple bucks in my pocket. There wasn't a class A director attached to it and there wasn't really a stellar line up of stars tacked onto it, either, but those who turned out for it were grand. Tom Beringer? Goodness, where has he been? Vinnie Jones? Always a pleasure. The rest of the names and faces of the rest of the cast are somewhat familiar and yet lost on me. Some were carry overs from the original film (SA2, by the way, if you care to know, is a prequel..somehow we couldn't let loose of those endearing manaical characters who survived the 2007 action comedy slip away without slipping another check into their pockets..) many were just celluloid faces, stock action film character actors, some atrocious, some spot on, but most..well, what's the point of being critical? This film had was made for popcorn and a chaser not the red carpet treatment.

Truly, it was a bit of mindless summer fun. Wickedly good looking ninja star wielding pistol packin' gals, hilarious rednecks toting oversized military weapons, English footballer types utilizing the most foul (possibly Craftsman) tools around to extract pain from clients, heck, it even had exploding dwarfs being shot from a circus cannon. Tell me, does any film that qualifies for the Palme d'Or have any of that going for it?

I can't say when this movie will ever screen again around here but as for my satifying my needs today? Yeah, it was golden! Now, anyone care to sit and catch a little bit of Ingmar Bergman or Woody Allen?

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Cornucopia of film

It wasn't enough that Hollywood Video decided to go out of business and had to sell off all their titles. That act of contrition left me hurtin' and outrageously broke, all that chasing down of titles up and down the coast and all over the Northwest, all those well thought out price concious sales, taking each and every store in the country running down their inventory one by one, customers wiping out rare and special titles at any given price, leaving all too many at lower and ever lower prices until I found myself going back for more and more stock that I either didn't have, passed over at higher prices or stuff I just plain didn't see before.

So, there's that, the passing of Hollywood and the loading up of my cinema larder. Not that THAT hasn't been going on for years thanks to Goodwill and all the regional pawn shops. Yeah, thank you, God of Flickers. Yes, I was and am a happy man. Now, just when I am overloaded and somewhat satiated, with flicks piled up all around the house, they both lower their prices on films. Fifty cents a throw for tapes, two bucks for a DVD, and, if I am so inclined and want to find titles on Blu-ray for my kids, I can get those for ten dollars a throw or less.

I am sitting on shipper box after banana box filled to the brim with movies, quite a few of which I have never seen before, only read about or heard about or was just intrigued by the jacket art and blurb. And then, just when you would think it was safe to settle in and watch a couple movies a night at home what happens? I suddenly have free access to the whole local movie house chain I volunteer for! I have to say that that last part is an outrage! Don't they know I just don't have time for new films when I have all that old stuff to watch? Damn, just when I thought I was going to get ahead of the game.

I know one thing I have to do and need to do it soon, if anything for the sake of posterity and insurance claims and that's to do a thorough inventory of my stock, type up a list of all the titles I have, if anything just so I can go against the 1001 Movies I Must Watch Before I Die, or whatever the title of that book is called. I know I have quite a few to catch up on, even more to watch again. If that were the only thing I ever had to do in this world I would be happy, but man, a guy has to earn a living...

Oh, okay, there we go! Roger Ebert, old buddy, move on over or at least train me to follow up in your footsteps or something! My heart and my pocket book are in the right place! I must put all those movies, new, old and upcoming, to good use! Oh like, maybe, watch them? Okay, well, I have time for at least a couple flicks tonight...the line up for this evening are Lumet's Night Falls on Manhattan and Eric Red's horror fest Body Parts. Why I am not watching the recently purchased Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity or the Roger Corman like, early Jack Nicholson biker flick Rebel Rousers is beyond me. Oh well, there's always tomorrow morning!

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On the couch with Jane: We all want to be found

I somehow stumbled on this film back in the summer of '05. Where I found it I can't be sure. Was it in the branch collection? On the "new arrivals" shelf at Hollywood Video? It doesn't matter now but somehow it went toe to toe with your viewing of Spanglish that long ago summer. You were desparate to get me to watch Spanglish. You watched it once on your own, on one of those famous popcorn/movie Sundays, then you tuned into it again when your sis came by for a visit. Somehow THAT love story caught your eye, one that was sweetly tragic, patently sad, a story of unfulfilled, unrequited love.

I, in turn, really took to that very same theme delivered up, Tokyo style, in Lost in Translastion. Maybe it was the protagonists in our respective films that made that tragic sad message resonate. I loved watching Bill Murray suffer, hated watching him pile back into his taxi, one that would take him to the airport, back to his insufferable wife, to his stullifying life. I studied those two films back to back and maybe, because the time is right, because it's a solid five years since I've seen those two films together on the same playbill, that I need to watch them this weekend. to see if the message is still the same, see if those characters still speak to me after all those years.

We've lived a hard five years since we talked about those movies under that shade tree, the one on the edge of that red dirt j-high track, the one down and around the corner from the path through the berry brambles where we once feasted on sunripened berries. It's been a long time since I've watched Spanglish, and I am sure it's only because I knew once I did I would be flooded with memories of that hot, bothersome and wistfully painful summer. But then, see, that's what those movies were all about, about love sipped, lightly tasted then set down, put away. That love was too heady of a brew, too heavy of a meal, a sweetly poisonous repast that we had to taste and leave behind if only because, from watching the movies, we already knew what the ending would be all about.

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http://thehighhat.com/Nitrate/002/lost_in_translation.html


Roger Ebert's take on Lost in Translation:

http://www.franciste.com/images/art_pieces/lost_in_translation.jpg


LA Times: 50 Tokyo taxi toppers:
http://www.latimesmagazine.com/2010/05/50-tokyo-taxi-tops.html

Now you tell me!

"Film Projectors

In 2005, less than 100 movie screens in the United States used digital projectors. Now there are close to 16,000 digital cinema screens, with over 5,000 of them having stereoscopic (3-D) capabilities. Digital film projectors allow a cleaner and crisper viewing experience compared to traditional film projectors, which often makes the picture scratch or break. Movie studios are also pulling for the full digital revolution, as it saves them significant costs in making film prints and shipping them to and from the theaters in bulky metal containers. "

Excerpt from 11 Technologies in Danger of Going Extinct

And all I have to say is "Great! Now you tell just when I finally have a handle on threading that damn projector!

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Full article below..oh yeah, say goodbye to your fax machine and e-book reader, too!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/11technologiesindangerofgoingextinct;_ylt=AvqMsSCZSMGP4dHb14__1OdH2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTQybnJydWFxBGFzc2V0A2xpdmVzY2llbmNlLzIwMTAwODAzLzExdGVjaG5vbG9naWVzaW5kYW5nZXJvZmdvaW5nZXh0aW5jdARjY29kZQNtb3N0cG9wdWxhcgRjcG9zAzUEcG9zAzUEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawMxMXRlY2hub2xvZ2k-

Small quibble

$ (Dollars) Review
by Brendon Hanley

"After the success of Bullitt, crime movies felt the need to include high-velocity audience grabbers. The same year as The French Connection, $ (Dollars) featured a bizarre, laughably long -- it lasts more than twenty minutes -- chase scene with almost no dialogue and a rather shrill score by Quincy Jones. Was this a comment on the trend? More likely, it was director Richard Brooks' attempt to catch up with the times. Brooks had made a number of important Hollywood movies (Blackboard Jungle, In Cold Blood) and was probably feeling pressure from the new wave of young filmmakers weaned on a French disregard for rules. $ was his attempt at the "avant-garde," which may also account for the film's wild swings in mood and tone. Regardless, Warren Beatty's charm and Goldie Hawn's winsome good looks help make the movie a pleasant bit of 1970s fun. "

Thanks, Allmovie, for the dandy review of a film that really got lost in the shuffle of seventies cinematic greats. I was kept on the edge of my seat, sometimes far too long, during the screeing of this audacious and fun filled flick. Somehow, in the midst of Bullitt and The French Connection and all the rest of those other classic new Hollywood flicks that were prescribed for my enlightenment back in the day this thriller/buddy/action piece slipped right on by. And maybe that's why that one little snippet of drug laced humor towards the end of the film was so touching, so laughable, so rotten in its delivery.

When the bad guys were trusting the courier to deliver a number of bottles of acid to Hamburg they weren't passing along drain cleaner, so why, when the somewhat evil US Army Top Kick takes a celebratory swig of a supposed bottle of high end bubbly does he do the instant clutched throat death scene as if he just took a big hit out of a bottle of Drano? The truly wicked courier did a switcheroo, sure, put the flagons of LSD in champagne bottles in order to clear customs, but if a man were to take a hit from one of those bottles he wouldn't expire like the guy did up on the big screen, he would just trip out massively and seemingly endlessly for hours on end.

I am sure that there would have been times during that long and winding trip when that character would wished to die, but then again, considering the times, the supposed purity, the quantity we saw him imbibe, I am sure that on the psychic plane he did die many times over. Afterwards, if he had any thoughts of his own left inside his paisley colored mind, he wouldn't have remembered his role in any kind of caper. But die? I don't think so. What kind of acid were they talking about, anyway? Oh, yeah, right, this was screened in Des Moines, too. Just say no!

Okay, go find the movie. Goldie Hawn was wonderfully silly and charming, Warren Beatty never more handsome and the twists and turns in the plot were dandy. Once hard to find even on VHS this oldie but goodie is worth the hassle to seek out.

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Something Wicked that way plays

There was a time when I took my true calling for granted. Looking back I was about as close as I could be to really assuming the mantle of a being my father's boy, of being yet another Hice in the movie industry. Sure, it wouldn't have been as a grip, but then, with alittle insistence, I might have been. No, it was that stint with Disney that I sabotaged, that I let go through a general lack of caring, persistance, focus, vision. But then again, what post military hairy chested recently separated drug using heavy drinking kind of guy around the age of twenty three really knows what his true calling is? I was just working, earning a paycheck, not knowing that I had a bit of destiny in my pocket and instead of pulling it out and reading the fine print I tossed that little scrap of paper and my future into the washer, instead.

No matter, you always find that path you were meant to be on at some point along the way, if you truly were seeking it out to begin with. In this case, it might just be all about being an exhibitor. But more on that later. What brought about this little bit of remonstrance this morning was the article posted below, a story about the upcoming screening of rare Disney films, notably Something Wicked This Way Comes.

Back when I worked for WED we were deep in the throes of cranking out big time amusement: EPCOT, Tokyo Disneyland, a revised Fantasyland, the Disney Channel, all that. Lots of irons in the fire, lots of fantasic, imaginative and somewhat wild folk working on really big and wondeful stuff. But the studios were busy, too, talking up the indie film talk, cranking out more edgy fare for a new and more discerning audience. Tron was one thing that was in the pipeline at the time, but Something Wicked was another. Darker than most things that had come out of the studio before, it was a real bellwether piece, one that signaled that gee, we weren't walking around in Walt's old house anymore. Frankly this was a tough thing to pull off as His ghost was everywhere. Everyone had his name close at hand to toss into a conversation and anyone who had anything to do with the Grand Old Man was respected in the way that is usually reserved for folks who have personally talked with God.

As worker bees of WED we had a chance to attend screenings of Disney movies at the studio prior to release to the general public. Something Wicked was a really big event. Bradbury was there, the big wigs were present. There was lots of hoopla, lots of talk. Then it hit the streets and it was another story entirely. Folks didn't know what to think of this brand new dark Disney. And while it had a hard time with the critics, it managed to grab a certain niche of the movie going public that wanted it's Disney scary. Heck, for scary all you have to do was screen Snow White or Pinnochio for a good ol' frightening time, but that's another story entirely.

Now, it seems that Something is a bit of a cult film and it's once again getting it's due with this fresh big time screen release. It's on the playbill with a number of other older and interested bits of Disney fare, but I were you and I lived down south, down in LA with easy access to the this old fare kind of fun (does anyone really have easy access to anything down there in LA?) I would make it a point to jot down the date on your calendar and make the time to catch that flick.

See, there was a time when I was relished playing the role of Mr Dark, even dressed up once as that character at a Disney staffer's Halloween party. Not long afterwards that imfamous blowout I found myself on the employment roles, a victim of "consolidation", just another worn out cog tossed in the rubbish heap because the big jobs were done. But see, I couldn't see my destiny in front of my face as I had other things to do, and, just for the record, I did them. Welding, firefighting, magnetic tape sales, swimsuit fabric inspector, none of those things were what I was meant to be. I went back to school, became a librarian, cycled through a number of wives, ended up in a small burg far up the coast from where all that old stuff started. After years of serving the public and waiting for my destiny to unfold, I am now looking at being a small town theater manager who gets to screen all the sweet and dark and edgy stuff that was promised me years ago, something I might have already been doing if only I had seen the proverbial writing on the wall. Well that's an ending to a story that my father could relate to and that my inner Mr Dark, could approve of.

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http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2010/08/something-wicked-brings-a-darker-disney-to-arclight.html

Case of the missing babe

Great poster, you know? Completely dragged me, damn near forced me to buy the DVD, all due to the hyper dynamics of the photoshopped illustration. Almost Frazetta like in it's voluptuousness. Lots of implied mayhem, lots of purported action, bullets flying, hair akimbo, sassy thrust of the hip, gun cocked and ready to fire. All very sexy, a complete and total come on for fanboys everywhere.

Then I went and watched the movie. Hmm, maybe Bitch Slap would have been a better choice? All I know is that the movie had it moments, that there was a promising set shoot out piece that didn't really evolve the way that I had hoped (did Heat and Public Enemies spoil me for life?), that the character development was edgy but had already been done better in a half dozen other crime films and that really stellar marquee actors (Faye Dunaway! Malcolm McDowell!) were spot on but squandered, like spending top dollar on Sabretts hot dogs for a backyard bbq kids party.

Sure, I liked the ending, liked it alot, but still. Yeah, still I wondered where was the babe on the box cover? Where was the short midriff shirt, the black bandana, the really big pistol? Why didn't they play up the Luche Libre masks on the box instead of that oh so sexy bandita thing (really, loved that bandoleer of bullets! New fashion accessory on the South Side? Stranger things have happened!)?

Oh, well, it was a Sunday early evening film. I wanted B, I got B. B as in babes, b as in bullets, nada mas. Oh, okay, then, b as in Bueno, good enough for me.

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Names in the database

The IMDB listings. My father is there, so is my uncle, but that I expected as they are movie people, folks you would think would show up because they've had their time in the industry, messed around on screen, worked the teams that built the movies, the tv shows. I would expect for them to show up online as they've been part of the industry for a long time. And while many walk folks out once the action is done and the theater lights resume, I've been taught by those men that, hey, those people you see there up on the credits? well, they are the people who put the movie together, they are the real stars of the picture, so sit down and give them their due. So I do and my kids do, too. Takes lots of people to put together a movie.

So I was thinking about old pals of mine, wondered if any of them showed in the Internet Movie Database, too. So I trolled awhile and came up with one old friend of mine, a guy I used to be really tight with. Traveling buddy, drinking pal, a kick around friend that shared a lot of highs and lows with me over the years. In the midst of all that tightness he had to go away, as friends tend to do when they find new work. This old pal of mine moved out to the high desert, not in search of fame or to be a hermit, but to work for the Department of Defense to be a missle tester. He found a gal, bought a couple homes, got some horses, became involed in local theater, became a big shot with the hometown vaudeville troupe, took his fascination for guns out to the local tourist trap and became a black powder/stunt show/wild west reenactorand then, somehow, someway, made connections with Hollywood and got on the production team of a few movies, got his mug up on screen. How cool.

So his name is out there on the net, on IMDB, with all the rest of the folks and productions that ever came out of La La Land. I am happy for him and pleased that I know yet another real life Hollywood player with behind the scenes, and in his case, real on screen time. How great is that, Steve? Pop the bubbly, buddy, you're a star!

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IMDB reference to my old pal:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0805647/

My son, the auteur

"Please come to the ArtsWest Film Festival and enjoy our two PG-13 offerings: ASILO and SCATTERED. May 17th, at 5:30-6:40 pm at the Flicks, in Downtown Boise. It’s free admission, please purchase a few food items from eth FLICKS as they have donated the screen time for our showing. Feel free to take a look at the 3 minute ASILO Intro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5J1AcA7ug8. Our 3rd and 5th period film classes have worked hard the last semester making these great films. My hope is that you will enjoy them as much as we did making them. ASILO is a psychological drama/horror about love, loss and mental instability. PG-13 for violence and violent special effects.SCATTERED is an action/war/drama about loss, revenge, resistance and dictatorship. PG-13 for violence and violent special effects."

The above info was what I received one afternoon around the end of April. It was an announcement for an upcoming film fest, a real film premier, one guaranteed to have a red carpet at the entrance of the theater, be balloon festooned, to be followed up with a crew and hangers-on party at the home of one of the parents. All very Hollywood, all very much downhome Boise, all so Our Gang.

It was a grand time, not only to see my kid's face and his name up on the big screen, but to have heated follow up discussions about the pros and cons of the film, to see his dedication in following up on those niggling problems and cleaning up the sound issues, the continuity issues, that made the initial presentation so hard to take.

So, I feel good now about all the choices, the small paths, the financial outlay that got him there. All those years of buying movies, cobbling together quality electronics, sitting up late at night and watching film after film with him is finally paying off. His storyboarding techniques, his choice of gaming materials, his general overall sweetness and light shows in his demeanor but more in the way that he is approaching this possible career choice. His heart is set on going forward with film and somehow I see that happening regardless of future financing or peer influence. His friends of late are all art school students, and each and every one of them is poised and ready to make their mark on the world, with or without film as the key tool of choice.

I saw that movie premier as being the public launch of a long term film career, never mind that his stop motion animation piece and his other live action number, Special Delivery, were even better, more exciting, viewing. I look forward to someday sitting in a darkened theater and seeing his name up on the screen as the credits unfold. All big things have to start somewhere. I am happy to have seen the start of it.

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Genghis Blues, Paul Pena and the glories of discovering a very wonderful singer and a great man just a bit late..

I was trolling the aisles of Goodwill yesterday as I generally do when I'm bored and rootless. I really didn't have the cash to be throwing around, but hey, that's what next week's payday is for, to make up for the small budget busters of the weekend. Looked over the movies and found a VHS copy of the Academy nominee film Genghis Blues. I had heard Tuvan music before, was a big fan of Tuvan recordings back in the days when I worked for SPL up on Queen Anne hill. I was even lucky to catch Hunn-Hurr-Tu once at a folk festival in Seattle, so finding a movie based on the experiences of a blues singer going over to Tuva to sing in their national symposium on throatsinging sounded like a lot of fun.

Never did I expect for the story of Paul Pena to strike so deep a chord, to hit me so hard. I watched the movie, the story of a blind musician who found himself immersed in a musical form that so few Westerners knew about or understood, who managed, through the help of Friends of Tuva, to make his way to Tuva, to sing with folk masters, to win the hearts and minds of a nation through his warm and inviting nature, and I kept asking myself as the movie unspooled, as the man got closer and closer to having to return to an America, to a land that never really appreciated him or gave the break he always deserved, "did he ever get to go back?"

There was a moment in the film, a real two hankie scene, where everything seemed to go bad for the crew. Paul had medication issues that needed to resolved in order to him to live, a San Francisco radio dj that was along for the trip suffered an almost fatal heart attack and their good Tuvan friend and guide fell and broke his hand warding off a drunk. Everyone there, both crew and the folks of Tuva, were all wishing good things for Paul, saw his distress and wished that they could somehow make all his problems go away. I was watching this man truly ache, wishing he could stay there in Tuva, live with it's people, for it seemed to him and those of us fortunate to watch this moving documetary that he had finally found his people, in the way that movie stars or writers sometimes find their audience in lands far away from where they normally write or publish. In Paul Pena's case, he stumbled on Tuvan music one night back in 1984, cruising his short wave radio looking for Korean language lessons. He heard a cut off a Tuvan recording that was being played on Radio Moscow, spent years looking for additional recordings of the music and then, once he secured a cd from a little world music store in the Mission, immersed himself in it, learning the music and the language the best he could through a sort of cobbled together system of repetitive listening and sheer brilliance (no English Tuvan language dictionaires existed back then).

I found out today with a bit of internet research that Paul has since passed away, that illness and disease and all the bad breaks that seem to fall out of the sky for blues singers finally did him in. But was lucky, in that he found friends in far away places, made friends in a faraway land where, if all things were fair and good, he would have more than likely spent the rest of life living in. It wasn't enough to watch the film, now I want to seek out his Genghis Blues recording, I want to hear some of his old blues recording, too. I want to plug into that movie again if only because that man made me feel something deep and profound, something that I think went into hybernation during this long furlow of mine. He made see that illness or blindness or a lack of work, nothing, really, should get in the way of your passions. Really, Paul, what more can anyone own other than that?

Thanks, Paul, for blazing that Tuvan trail, for sharing with the rest of the world your heart and soul. Rest in peace.

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Friends of Tuva website: some links are old and don't work, but check it out:
http://www.fotuva.org/friends/paul_pena.html

Mama Mia, 'bout time!

Gosh, what was it? The long lost '02 trip to Cali to look for work? It was that long drive I made from Sacramento to LA in that wee little rental, knowing that I would have to make that long hot drive back there again in a few days, that made the trip to Whittier that night so memorable. The in-laws didn't know I left behind a good paying Seattle job, they didn't know that the lad, the husband of their daughter, the one with the two kids and a newborn, the one that sleeping on their couch, sipping their brews, eating at the trough, was unemployed. Big secret and it's been kept that way.

No matter. On that trip, down the San Jaguin valley, up the back side of the Sierras, I was listening to Abba Gold. Something about that music was infectiously peppy, upbeat, cheery, something completely different than the soundtrack to Oh Brother Where Art Thou? I was hauling along, much more clearheaded, emotionally sound than the strange but edgy electronic Christian music I found at St Vinnies in Ridgecrest. Abba took me to new heights in the mountain passes, took me to places outside of Vegas and in the backwaters of LA that I never expected, and that was to a place where I really and truly learned to appreciate their harmonious world beat pop. It was good.

Try as I might I couldn't get anyone else to see that. Played that same disk at a bbq one weekend and was roundly booed, made to change the happy upbeat tunes for another, more wild and raccous rock and roll album. Left it behind for awhile, set it aside, thought it to be an aberation. Maybe it was just the road, the lack of work, the need for speed, that made Abba sound so good that trip.

Then Jane changed it all again. She went to go see Mama Mia! with her boon companion downtown Seattle winter of '05. She came for supper one night not too long afterwards and I played the Gold album for her on my deck. Then the musical went away, only to surface here and there around the states, Las Vegas, NY. I thought it, too, to be another abberation, a long lost musical flashback, another strange bitg of Abba madness. Low and behold it took off again, this time capturing hearts and minds and musical tastes of America on the big screen.

Finally caught up with that musical tonight with Punkin, a borrowed copy from the Peninsula library. I had already passed along Abba Gold to her months back, so we both knew the music if not the lyrics. We bounced along to the soundtrack, happily humming and kinda dancing to the tunes. The movie made use of the music in a way that Dark Side of the Moon, side 1, has made use of the Wizard of Oz for oh so many years. Pure fun, lots of laughs, nothing but conjecture and happenstance and merrymaking. Happy happenstance.

Watching that movie tonight I was taken back to that moment when I got off the plane that afternoon in Sacramento and smelled the "green" coming off the fields near the airport. I was also taken back to that dinner I made for Jane close in to the time she had to head off to Arizona, right on the heels of my first Christmas trip to Boise. I heard Abba's music tonight and listened to the lyrics for the first time, truly, and know, that if I had the chance I would spin that record for M once more time, sit in happy bouyancy and, if given the chance, would happily watch this movie with her, too, side by side on that worn leather love seat of mine.

But, hey, life moves on and I loved it for what it was worth, and that was a chance to share some very happy music and very happy times with my daughter.

Mama Mia! Bout time!

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Sweltering hot cinema

It was fitting, that opening scene in The African Queen, camera tracking throug that central African rainforest, tropical birds and monkeys screeching. The sun was still pounding through the window, the heat, oven like, was making my usually comfy and restful Futon Cinema an equitorial hothouse. I live in an old house, one that I've managed to insulate and keep to a comfortable level in the downstairs area, especially in the wintertime, but upstairs, in bedrooms pressed up against the roof in a thirties style "story and half" set-up, well, let's just say that when summer comes and delivers it's high eighty and ninety degree heat I would much rather be downstairs when it comes to bed time. Thank goodness for a high quality flying couch.

No matter, Punkin and I braved the heat and grooved on an old bleeding color VHS copy of the John Huston classic. To the credit of screenwriters, the romance between Bogart and Hepburn was believable and worthy of deep sighs. I have always cherished the scene when Hepburn, obviously in the throes of early love, offers Bogart that first cup of morning tea as the newly broken in lover. It was she gave him was more than classic, it was pure professionalism, one filled with admiration and a raw sort of authenticity, one that said, "yeah, man, well done. Look at what we're pulling off here in this hell hole of jungle setting, a "real life" romance for the ages." Never mind the fact that the set was deep in an equatorial African forest, that the animals, oh so threatening, were real, that Huston and company would take off on unscheduled safaris, that Bogie had his Bacall and that their love was still and would always be wildly on fire. All those much documented things made the timeless interplay between Charlie and Rosie that much more believeable and yet forever emblazoned in our minds as one of the great cinema romances of all time.

I was turned onto this movie as a boy and now I fulfilled my duty and passed along the torch to my girl. Toy Soldier Boy sat in at first, lasted just alittle while and then decamped to his video games, pity, as he missed the meat of that timeless adventure story. Maybe later on in life he'll find the time, or the right mindset, or a budding young romantically inclinded gal to groove to it with, find that place in his heart that's a little less jaded, a little less worldly than he is now, only in the way that a 13 year old boy can be. Heck, I am certain of that, for in our heart of hearts we'll always desire to have a winsome, handsome Rosie to go along with our rough cut inner Charlie, a sweet damsel worthy of our affections, one who is willing to give us hell, dump our booze, go over the falls with us and still see the wonder and glory that lies deep down inside us, the only true treasure we have to offer in this world filled with dangerous rapids, wild animals and timeless, everchanging cinema tastes and values.

And when he does, I hope it's in a cooler, more hospitable movie house!

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Great old movie house post from Dorothy of The Tyee

This Old Movie House
Say goodbye to the Capitol Six and others theatres of yore.

By Dorothy Woodend, 4 Apr 2005, TheTyee.ca

It's the end of an era. The Capitol Six Theatre in downtown Vancouver is closing. If you’ve seen a movie there any time recently, likely you knew this already. The place has been in a state of decline for quite a while now, the seats are broken, the carpet threadbare and the popcorn substandard. The theatre has two more weeks to live, and it's looking like it will crawl towards the end on its hands and knees. On the day I was there, there was a huge ragged leak in the ceiling with plastic tubs underneath to catch the drips.
The man who took my ticket is happy to be moving to a new theatre on Burrard and Smithe. "It's swanky!" he says. "Swanky is good," I say. But the fact that the Capitol Six has gone so precipitously downhill makes me a little sad. There was a time, when every snack bar was busy, and every theatre packed with punters. But then movies used to cost $2.50 on Tuesday. Man, I am old. My eyelids are falling down the same way the theatre seats are cracking, time the great leveler marches on.
When The 6 closes it will join the ranks of Vancouver movie theatres since passed, including Royal Center which is now a food court. I still miss Royal Centre even though it wasn't much of a theatre, more like many little living rooms with screens. I liked it despite the fact that there were pillars in the middle of rows of seats, because they played any number of strange art house films, and often if you went in the middle of the day, there was no one there but you. Vancouver Centre is gone. The Fine Arts, the theatre that used to be out on West Georgia where The Gods Must be Crazy played for approximately 120 years is long gone. And now The Park Theatre as well. It closed on Sunday. The last time I saw a film there, every person who walked in the theatre asked the manager whether something or someone else would keep the place open, to which he dutifully informed them, that they were a number of parties who had expressed interest. Whatever that means, your guess is as good as mine.
The old days
I am old enough to remember when the Stanley on Granville was still a movie theatre, though mostly what I recall is standing in line out on the street, waiting to get inside. I also remember a time, when I opened the paper and realized I'd seen every film that was currently playing. Those days are gone, and maybe that's for the best. When you're younger, your judgment or taste is not always what it should be, if you find yourself thinking, "Have movies gotten a lot worse recently or is it just me?" It's probably it's a bit of both. If you take small children with you to something like Robots, for example they may emerge from the theatre tootling in piping tones, "That was AWESOME!!" whereas you will be bemoaning the fall of modern culture where there are no new ideas, just an endless rehash of already slung hash.
Theatres come and theatres go, but mostly they go. And now it’s the Capital Six's turn to darken the houselights.
Twenty years ago, the notion of six theatres in one building boggled my imagination, Wow!!! Bright lights, big city. Since it's been here the almost 20 years I've lived in Vancouver, I have spent many days and evenings and so on sitting in the dark, staring at the screen. One summer, in a somewhat misguided attempt to take my sister's mind off a broken heart, we saw every film that was playing including the vehicular homicide that was Madonna's Who's that Girl, Jaws: The Revenge, and Howard the Duck. After seeing these, she forgot all about her sadness and decided that she wanted to kill me, her helpful sister, instead.
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Drunk or sober
So yes, I paid good money to sit through Howard the Duck in the theatre, but I tell you it was in pursuit of a higher cause because nothing takes your mind off a broken heart like the sight of a talking duck from outer space, or Michael Caine being eaten by a mechanical shark, it simply doesn't get any worse than that, which has the odd effect of making you feel a little better about your own life. At least that's not you up on the screen. Over the years I have gone to movies for many reasons, often alone, so that I could watch things in secret. My Jean-Claude Van Damme years. I've gone drunk, I've gone sober. Although unlike many other people, I have never gone stoned. Upon hearing that the Capitol Six was closing a friend of mine said, "But that was my stoner theatre!"
Some of the film going experiences that mark you are the ones you're least prepared for. For example, during a particularly bad breakup I got a pass to see a film with Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon, something called Thelma and Louise. I went because it was free, and when Louise pulled out a gun, and shot a would-be rapist, I felt the back of a head blow off, because killing men seemed like a really good idea at the time. Where and when you see a film can have a major impact on your feelings about it. Sometimes you go back, wanting to recapture that initial thrill. Nothing has come close to seeing Aliens in Theatre Number 1 at the Capitol Six. It was so huge and dark, that you could virtually feel, the blackness around you rustling with xenomorphs, creeping up behind you and your bucket of popcorn.
On this last, and probably final visit, the movie won't start, and when it does, the framing is all wrong, there are a few quiet groans, but the nice man at the door gives everyone coupons "to make up for trouble we had there at the start." The people who work at the theatre all seem remarkably cheerful, maybe it's just me that feels sad. The movie Beauty Shop, is full of sassy black mamas, 'oh no you di'nt', and fried cat fish, but even Queen Latifah's magnificent bosoms fails to cheer. I feel like a little bit of my history is passing, a tiny little piece, but it is going nonetheless.
Thanks for the memories
All you have left eventually is memories, a movie screen in your brain that features flickering, scratched images from your life. Many movies about movies have made this link explicit whether its the sappy Italians in Cinema Paradisio, or introspective Chinese in Farewell, Dragon Inn. To paraphrase John Prine, "Old trees just grow stronger and old rivers grow wilder every day, but old people (and theatres) just grow lonesome. Waiting for someone to say hello in there oh. . . ."
Over the years, with friends, boyfriends, family, and now my own kid I have gone to the movie theatre. And even now when I walk in, and the lights go down, I feel comforted. Thank God, I am at the movie theatre. I am home.
Dorothy Woodend reviews films for The Tyee.

Film poster heaven!

TOTAL ART! Orignal movie poster collection (for sale, no less!) that warrants a post all unto itself! Check it out and be wowed!

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http://www.theartofmovieposters.com/ForSale/Pages/RollingRoadshow.htm

Delicious art house, explotationist, drive-in fare

Paul Schrader. I should have known. I have to wonder how long the script sat on the shelf, how many and passes those I'm Coming Home with a Pistol in My Hand dreams of vengence were fully exorcised. Lord knows you penned a mighty timeless epic with Taxi Driver, a sort of Searchers comes to New York in a heat wave/unexpected garbage strike. I am sure that you were champing at the bit to do your own version of Scorcese's masterwork. I saw it written all over Mr Flynn's seminal drive-in work. It was there all over again, the Vietnam vet/POW returning home to a world that he just can't get, a world filled with simpathetic characters that went on with their lives while those damaged, haunted men sold their souls or had them stoll away overseas.

I remember seeing Taxi Driver one night at the drive-in, right before I went off into boot camp. Took a car load of pals, a trunk full of beer, a pocketful of weed. Was so impressed with it that I went back and saw it again, twice. Lost my liquor store job due to that trunk full of libations, lost that girl to Jodie when I went off to boot camp, but Taxi Driver went off to international acclaim, never mind it lost to Rocky. I've only watched Rocky once. Taxi Driver is and will remain a perennial favorite.

Stumbling across, buying and viewing a copy of Rolling Thunder the other day I was reminded of the glory and almost dirty mystery of catching flicks at the drive in and third run suburban cineplexes. It's not easy to establish a diet for b-features, for exploitation film, for marginal fare these days. Multiplexes are big money, single feature for the price of a ticket kinds of joints these days. Drive-ins are disappearing landscape everywhere we go, all too many plowed under and paved over for subdivisions and shopping malls. There is nothing quite like "learning" about watching flicks in old movie house, the kind where leaky light, poor sound, ratty upholstery and low admission fees add to the atmosphere. Watching the opening titles for Rolling Thunder I saw Z. Arkoff's name displayed and thought, yeah, swallowed my share of that guy's goods, biker babes and horror shows and monster mania. But it was all good.

Schrader wanted to direct Rolling Thunder, it had Taxi Driver written all over it. It had that simmering, brooding anti-hero, the scumbags, the hyper violence, the pedigree actors, the mad writing that he was famous for, all of it, but it was destined for some other kind of noteriety. It was classic, alright, classic drive in fare. It was the kind of flick that had 70's b budget written all over it, had the makings of summertime, greasy popcorn and a car load of pals more than Scorceses classic ever would. Somehow I missed it on it's first run. I was already off dropping acid and taking mandatory Westpac trips overseas, I didn't have time for drive-ins anymore. Might have caught it in Olongapo if I had been paying attention, must have seen the poster overdisplayed in garish colors at some wonderfully ratty cinema somewhere along the Magsaysay.

Pity that that era is almost gone. B features, yeah, still have a taste, an appetite, for those things, an almost secret pleasure. I've never stopped watching them, I only graduated to art house flicks when I saw that's where real film was being stashed, being hidden away. Sure, I marvel at the never ending Hollywood buffet displayed on the marquees of the multiplexes. And yes, I groove on the latest and greatest blockbusters like anyone else, The biggest and newest of the CGI laden is always welcome on my screen.

But, if truth be told, I loved catching Avatar the other day in that hole in the wall dollar house. It lacked the tawdry feeling that I used to get back in the days when I trotted down to Stanton to catch kung fu, it was missing the bloated wonderfulness of a triple feature in a beat old movie palace on Broadway in LA and it certainly lacked that wild open goodness of partying through a feature in a big slab of Detroit metal, but it had the FEELING, the cheap thrillness of that long ago time when you could plonk down fifty cents and catch a handful of those Hammer/Arkoff/DiLaurentiis explotationers. Paul Schrader would have been proud to see his penned and forgotten thriller there up on the screen of that Boise dollar house. I know I would have.

So, do it. Go find a copy of Rolling Thunder if you can. Grab a bucket of p-corn, your gal and your pals and pretend you're sixteen again, young, stupid and bullet proof. Your cinema heart depends on it and so does your movie diet and education.

Action!

Nice review of Rolling Thunder (thanks, Bandiniblog!):
http://www.bandiniblog.com/2009/10/review-rolling-thunder-john-flynn-1977.html

Samuel Z Arkoff, producer of the greatest B features of all time!
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0035098/

Paul Schrader, tough guy writer, no doubt about it:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001707/

Dino, baby! DiLaurentiis, another great and powerful Producer of B:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0209569/

Roger Corman, King of Classic Cheese!
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000339/

The Great Hollywood Test Case is dead!

Dennis: I wondered for years what would take you out. Hard living? Drugs? Women? What? In the end it was something as prosaic and mundane as cancer. What a drag. No fiery ends, no explosions, no gunplay, no ruptured arteries, no massive heart attack from too much speed or broads or benders. Man, but what a ride it was, none the less.

You rocked my world in Rebel Without a Cause without me even knowing it. You were always there for me on my idle days, handling my Saturday afternoon matinee jones for a madman with your over the top madman roles like the frustrated bomber you played in Speed and that twisted leader of seagoing madmen in Waterworld. You challenged my date night sensitivities with the likes of your Photojournalist role in Apocalypse Now and when you played the coach's rummy assistant in Hoosiers and in the end I was glad for it.

You took me to end of the line and freaked me out in Blue Velvet and gave one masterfully vulgar cameo in True Romance, which had to made Christopher Walken crack up in spite of himself. God, man, you were always on, a benign drug addled fool, a philosophical crazed demon, an underappreciated artist, a man who took the proverbial candle and burned it at both ends while trying to find a way to set it on fire in the middle, too.

I looked at your face in the papers the other day when they laid down your star on Hollywood Blvd and said to myself "there goes one of the last of the old order". You outlived everyone's expectations, you blew up all the bets they had going on you in Vegas, you took the world by storm and the world treated you with indifference and it didn't seem to bother you a bit. You flipped one big finger at world and you kept right on going, living hard, spining your art, sharing your talent, showing the weasles that you were in for a penny, in for a pound of flesh. In the end you were whittled down by disease and an estranged wife who was just a bit too grasping. What a drag, what a way to go, to hell with it all.

So, tonight, for you, I'll dig out my battered VHS copy of Easy Rider, roll a pinner, play some Steppenwolf. You were the man, Dennis Hopper. Thanks for sharing that hell of a ride that was your life. Rest in peace.

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Great Allmovie post:
http://blog.allmovie.com/2010/6/2/crazy-man-crazy-dennis-hopper-1936-2010/
IMDB: Dennis Hopper Bio:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000454/

LA Times obit:

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-hopper-20100530,0,7084927,full.story

You Tube: True Romance: the "n-word" scene with Christopher Walken:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqccyUpnZwA

The opening credits to Easy Rider:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gVPxPdNLwA&NR=1&feature=fvwp

NY Times obit:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/movies/30hopper.html?hp

Tight, tight!

I'm a man who knows how to manipulate the power of the remote.

I can wield a remote with complete and total abandon, making for massive plot holes and abrupt and horrid continuity in any film, big or small. I try not to indulge in using it too often, as I had all too many years of movie watching ruined due to late starts (think popcorn and wide awake kids)and marred by all too many uncertain endings (thank you Bacchus and work related fatique). These days I just get, well, not bored, but restless. Dinner, or wine, or dessert or the net, something lures me downstairs, away from the set. It's odd because if I am watching a movie with a friend, or one of my kids, or with just about anyone it bugs me to no end to break a film in the middle, but since I am on my own to start or stop a movie whenever I want is a sort of freedom that you can't have in a theater or with company.

Tonight I bucked the trend. I found a VHS copy of Zinneman's The Day of the Jackal earlier in the week at Goodwill. Non-descript box, pan and scan. I thought that tonight would be a good night for a thriller, and I was more than pleasantly surprised at what I found. The print was crisp, the editing was so incredibly sharp I thought I would get papercuts from watching it. In a world still caught up post-MTV style the editing in tonights flick turned out to a textbook case for what the new generation of film students need to study and emulate. It was tale that unspooled at a rapid yet lanquid pace. You could follow the story of the cat and the mouse, of the assassin and the police commissioner, pursuing each other without needing to take on a neck brace by the end of the flick from rapid fire editing whiplash. Great acting, tight direction, wonderful location work, the whole ball of wax. Can't recommend it enough.

I found out afterwords that the film is out there in widescreen. Something else to seek out at Hollywood Video, one more film to lay up and store away for a rainy day. Kind of pathetic, in a way, but hey, that film jones of mine just yielded another treasure tonight, a baubble for me and an excuse for you to bug your local librarian to lay in a copy of this stellar thriller. Old school, yes, seventies style paranoia, sure, but timeless and worth your while, believe me. And why should you, you might ask? Well, I never used my remote tonight to stop the film, not once.

Action!

Allmovie review: Day of the Jackal:
http://www.allmovie.com/work/the-day-of-the-jackal-61917

A lasting lacross moment

It was an epic moment, one that I only saw clearly my mind's eye the next morning when I awoke. That Saturday I was too caught up, enmeshed in the moment, standing there under the spreading whatever kind of tree it was, dark clouds heavy and horizontal over the field, cold rain coming down ceaselessly, snow spitting down lightly at first then relentlessly, watching that boy of mine along with teammates totally kicking their opponents collective asses in the final match of a weeklong tournament, tallying up a final win out of a long spring season fraught with few wins and many losses, I was a proud, wet, cold and soaked through papa, but not near as cold and soaked through as those young warriors were who were duking it out on the lacrosse field for honor and glory. I saw my boy for the first time as a young man that day, no longer the young lad on the floor playing with his toy soldiers but as a young hairy chested soon to be hombre who was more than happy to tell me all about his dreams about going airborne or being a Navy SEAL after graduation. Sigh.

I stood there watching the water come off the field in buckets as those kids hit the ground in pursuit of a win and a dream and thought, much later, of that final battle scene in The Seven Samurai. I will forever and always think of that day, of those boys in the midst of their very real and epic "battle", every time I go to watch that film from here on out. I have seen Kurosawa's masterpiece a couple dozen times or more but never have I seen that final scene reenacted or lived so purely or realistically as I did that day. No blood was shed but man, those kids had heart! Kurosawa would have been proud of their warrior spirit!

Action!

It runs in the family

Where did it start? Certainly not when films jumped ship in New York and shifted their operations to the sunny climes of So Cal but that didn't hurt. Did it start somehow when my Abuelita and her clan made their way to LA? How about Ernest, Mister Cop in the Closet case himself? I have to wonder, with that passal of boys already ahead of my pop, what was that old man thinking when he looked down on my father, fresh from the womb..why did he think of Wallace Beery, of all men? But the image struck him as reasonable and I suppose it was good with my Abuelita, too. So my Father was named after a popular movie star all because his faced was scrunched up. I suppose I could have been named after Clark Gable but that would have made my name a bit too plain and redundant.

So, my father goes on to be in the industry as a grip, his brother goes on to marry a horsewoman and the two of them go on to be major stunt people in a world filled with horse-loving stuntfolks. My aunt marries a man whose brother works for the Disney studios, my uncle's son follows in his father's footsteps and gets into stuntwork as well. My father, well, gawd bless his heart, turned me away from his line of work because he felt it was no way for a young married man to support his wife. He knew the way of the studios as far as grip work was concerned. Feast or famine. I remember all too well his stories of the off season, hitting up the back side of businesses with his Chevy Apache pick up, picking up scrap metal for sale. He weathered tough times but then again he was a tough SOB.

I think of the movie business and know that it's in the blood. Sure, we are not Copollas or big film families who have veritable empires in the industry, but we are the flesh and blood, blue collar, end of the credits kind of families who make movies, who hold them in high esteem, who know stars and don't fawn in their presence. As my father always told me, we all put our pants on the same way. "They're real folks, everyday people, just like you and me" he told me once while we were on location, "they just have a different job, that's all". Heck, his tales of hanging out with Nick Nolte on the set of North Dallas Forty are legendary.

Well, I never got into the business the way my kin did but my profession at least allows me to be an exhibitor of a kind. I have set up film series, I use my experience and expertise to help me collect films madly and knowledgeably, follow the latest in cinema in all the national papers, blogs and movie rags like Variety. I am an accumulator, alot like my mother and my grandmother were before me. They were both movie heads as well, both of which helped to shape my misspent youth, who turned me onto late night movies, matinees on school days and triple bills in the old seedy theaters along Broadway in downtown LA. It seems that we have always been movie people, with talk always circling back to what we watched last before we popped on or tuned into another feature on the tv.

My children are wild for film as well, all with their own unique tastes and appetites. Toy Soldier Boy is into war film, Punkin loves her "scary movies" and anything with Audrey Hepburn and my son, the auteur, loves fantasy and animation of any kind. That boy is poised and ready to launch off into the industry. He's doing well in his classes, working with film and eating it alive, editing, sound tracking, acting, the whole shebang.

I like to think of that and gloat, not so much because so much of his family has been in or has been actively pursuing movies all these years but because my boy's mother always tried to make me pinch pennies in the film acquisition department. I squandered money on movies and gear, bought electronics when times were tight, expanded our film collection when it didn't make sense to do, always looking for movies that were good to share, always expanding my kids horizons and tastes, always making sure that those pesky youth of mine sat through the credits and absorbed the final details, the names of the workers, the titles of the jobs that made the movies. As I always told my boy the auteur, pay attention to the credits, that's where movies are made.

He took that lesson to heart, as he always sits and watches movies through to the end, always pays homage to the men and women who made the films he just watched unspool. Someday, with luck, I will be sitting there in the last part of the dark, in the quite of the emptied auditorium, waiting for the lights, waiting for the moment, THE MOMENT, when I first see his name up on the screen in something big, in something nationally released.

Hell, he already has his first credits under his belt. Those student films I just watched unspool in Boise? I saw his name and I weeped.

Wallace Berry and Wallace Senior would be proud. Wallace Jr was, that much is certain.

We are movie people.

Action!

IMDB: Wallace Beery, actor!
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000891/

Dark, campy, not nearly perfect

We are in the midst of Robin mania this weekend with the release of the latest swash and buckle epic from Ridley Scott. It was one thing for Sir Ridley to reteam with his old action buddy Russell Crowe in the saddle as the legendary outlaw, but it is another thing entirely to take Higgins boats, dude them up with wooden planks, pass them off as ancient landing craft and expect the audience to swallow that big fish tale whole.

But maybe we've always had a bit of the big fish tale to swallow whenever we take a bit of time out from our busy days to settle in for another round of Robin and his Merry Men. We never seem to tire of that bandit's noble shennangans up on the big screen. We can't really count Disney's cartoon version here, and his first major live action outting is largely forgotten, unless you are lucky enough to have stumbled upon it on VHS. Then there was that wonderful late in the life tale with Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn, but it was long on love and short on swash and could have used more than a bit of buckle. Kevin Reynold's 1991 tale was more like Dances with Woodsmen, with Kevin Costner playing around in Sherwood Forest with the rest of the gang, everyone dancing along merrily thanks to Friar Tuck's Famous Mead. I truly loved Morgan Freeman as The Moor, but what really made the film was not the stunt work or the costuming (both grand) but Alan Rickman's Sheriff of Nottingham. Camp, swishy, mad, one hell of a lot of fun.

So, I need to rummage around a bit and see if I can rustle up my remastered copy of Errol Flynn's Robin Hood, that grand old Warner Brother's Technicolor masterpiece. It may not have been historically accurate, but Robin Hood was a legendary guy so accuracy is what you make of it. I think of the film I just rewound this morning and then think of the one I want to unspool tonight and know that there is world of difference between the two. The latter was told to fulfill the audience's need for fantasy, action and adventure and more than just a little bit of romance. The former was there in place to sell an awful lot of products and toys and to massage that old Cal State Fullerton graduate's self focused ego. Oh, heck, I'll go light on the man. It had it's moments, no one likes to flash their backside like Kevin!

Meanwhile, I think once I land in Boise I'll have to grab the paper and see where and when the latest bow string and salmon epic is playing. "Salmon?" you might ask. Yes, looks to be another big, lead, dark and gloomy fish to swallow, albeit an action packed one. Gimme my popcorn, just can't wait!

Action!

Cinema upgrade!

The proprietor of the Futon Cinema has been craving a nice new flatscreen television ever since he purchased one for his kids last Thanksgiving but such things are not always meant to be, least ways, not in the time frame that we would like them to happen in. I can still remember rolling the box that contained the set out to my car with the help the electronics department floor manager. As we were lifting the set into my car I told him that it was for my Estranged One's house, not mine. I cracked up when I looked at his scrunchy face, but more when he said to me "that's just not right, man, not right at all!"

No matter, I bought a PS3 for my kids that christmas, too, so I have a reason to buy Blu-ray disks, even though I don't get to watch them here in my house.

No whining, though. My time to enjoy that Samsung will come later on, maybe next year after taxes. For the moment I am very happy. "And why is that?", you might ask, knowing that that forty inch flatscreen that I bought and paid for resides in Boise and not in my house. Well, let's just say that I got what I needed, and that the Futon Cinema got a mighty big upgrade yesterday, and taking into account all factors, including cashflow and the dynamics of available space upstairs, it was a mighty great deal for twelve bucks and change.

To put it mildly, I lucked out. It was the perfect positioning of time and place and plastic. I was already wandering around my local Goodwill in seach of music and movies (oh, and I scored a nice quantity of both, including a copy of Wim Wender's very hard to find The American Friend (!)) So, there I was, burning up a perfectly fine, sunny afternoon when I heard the announcement that all tvs were 50% off that day. WOW! So I made my way back up to the front of the store and got serious in evaluating the sets, checking out picture quality, name brands, jacks in the back of the sets, all that. One by one they were eliminated when out from the sorting area arrived one harried looking worker bee with a couple smaller sets in hand. I asked the man, after he finished fielding a few other questions, if he had any larger sets in the back. "Sure", he said, and came back with a massive 32 inch Panasonic. I knew Panasonic, had one at home and it worked just fine.

Didn't think twice about that set. Took it as soon as I saw it light up.

Getting it home and upstairs all by my lonesome was just part of the Thrift Store Zen religious program I will forever be enrolled in. Truly a massive beast, but it looks good in the place where my old faithful 19 inch Sony used to reside. I woke up this morning and realized I had an elephant in my room, but after watching Lucky # Sleven last night I discovered it was a kind, gentle elephant, the kind that a bachelor man needed to find in his bedroom after a long year of gazing at a wee screen from across the room. For health reasons alone it was a good purchase. "Health reasons?", you may ask. Yeah, it's better on the eyes!

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Seminal moments

It was just something that my grandparents did, didn't think anything of it, actually. Take the kid to the movies, never mind that movie content in the late sixties, early seventies was screaming along like a jet fighter at ground level. I don't think they ever read film reviews, or gave thought to how much movies were changing. They looked at the movie times in the paper to see what was playing, or maybe checked out the lobby cards. Marquees didn't matter much, what was in a title? If it looked good, looked to have lots of action, yeah, let's take the kid, fill up some time, grab some popcorn.

So, thanks to my mom's people I was exposed, at a tender young age, to a number of films that had nice bits of gratutious frontal nudity packed in to them, well, maybe not fully frontal, but to a straight arrow boy of thirteen or fourteen, packed with bodies and breasts that were about as fully exposed as they could possibly be. Gosh, thanks to my grandparents I was able to catch all manner of nubile breasts in Vanishing Point, Five Man Army and Play Misty For Me, all on very innocently planned summer vacation outtings. For a pubescent young guy those matinees were about as memorable as a trips to Disneyland or Tommy's! Probably even better!

What brought on this bit of nostalgia this evening? I was gifted last Christmas with a clean, widescreen print of Vanishing Point. It was really a two for the price of one kind of film pack, as it had both the US and the UK release of the film on the same disc. I had seen the US version during it's initial run and screened a beat pan and scan a few times over the years but never knew that there was a foreign print of the film floating around out there as well. It was great to see a clean print and to see the edited piece that contained a dreamy moment of dialogue between Barry Newman and Charlotte Rampling. It added a bit of dimension to the plot that was missing before, gave just a hint as to why Kowalski didn't turn himself in, rounded out that last truncated moment on the highway before the final wham bam finale.

Yeah, it was a time trip, catching that flick again in wide screen. But boy, let me tell you, films have changed quite a bit since those days, when a gal riding nude on a motorcycle in the California desert (no tans lines in sight!) could make such a impression on an impressionable young Catholic school lad. Sideways shots of breasts, yeah, no big deal these days, especially when compared to flicks like, say, Abel Ferrers' Bad Lieutanant with Harvey Keitel giving us full frontal anatomical shots of his package. Man, that flick even made me blush, and I'm a full grown man.

Yeah, thanks Mama and thanks Grandfather Manuel for taking me to the flicks, for providing those long lasting, sideways bits of tittilation...no pun intended.

Action!

Will this herring do?

“First you must find... another shrubbery! (dramatic chord) Then, when you have found the shrubbery, you must place it here, beside this shrubbery, only slightly higher so you get a two layer effect with a little path running down the middle. ("A path! A path!") Then, you must cut down the mightiest tree in the forrest... with... a herring!”
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

A Giant 12 Foot Dead Herring makes the news!
http://www.csmonitor.com/From-the-news-wires/2010/0512/Enormous-12-foot-giant-herring-found-off-coast-of-Sweden

Wine, fatigue and sub-titles, oh my!

First, I must say that I highly recommend the film Il Divo, and not just because Roger Ebert says it's good. It was truly a gripping bio pic, a story about the much feared Senator for Life Giulio Andreotti. It was grand stylish bit of insight into Italian politics, the interconnections between parliament, the Vatican and the Costa Nostra, a camera eye's view of a closed, power-mad world that no one in their right mind would want to venture in.

Secondly, I have to say that while the picture was gripping, fearless and artsy-fartsy, all of which make for a good foreign film experience, I must admit I am happy at this time that I didn't shell the big bucks out in town to see it out in town and that, instead, I caught it upstairs in the luxurious comfort of the Futon Cinema.

"Why's that?" you might be aski, if you ever bothered to come by to inquire, asking as if you care while you sip your cooling latte and scan the latest reviews in Variety. Well, if only because it was one of those films where stylishness was at odds with historical complexity, where fatigue went to battle with the speed and complexity of the Italian language (and resultant sub titles that go along with it). I wasn't built for speed last night, I needed mindless entertainment. I seriously messed up as far as movie choices were concerned.

See, I have this belief that on the most part Americans want their movies served up like the chow they get at McDonalds. Go to Micky D's and the food is practically predigested for you. Eat, fill up, feel lousy afterwards but you can pretend, for a moment or two, that you had a meal of sorts. Same with an awful lot of movies that pass for entertainment these days. Pop one in or blow high dough at the local movie house, sit down, crack open the top your head and drop in the pre-viewed, edited to hell, focus group trimmed pablum that passes for art. Sometimes that works for me, too, especially after a hard day. Last night I wanted more and overdosed on a good thing. Pity.

See, that's what I'm saying about Il Divo. It was a grand masterwork, an incredible piece of cinema, but man, I needed to have my wits about me to follow it. The layering of characters, the swapping out of lies, details and fact, the fast and fancy editing, the speed of the language, the subtly of the acting, it was all too much to handle in the dark recesses of my room, a room overheated from a generous days' worth of sunshine. It didn't help that I was emotionally blown out from just having put a phone interview to bed, that I helped hump numerous pallets of food at Helpline, that I had just finished up a nice big heavy fried fish dinner that was breaking down in my belly and had about two thirds of a bottle of a delicious Australian Merlot under my belt as well.

Face it, it had nothing to do with the quality of the movie, it was a perfect storm of warmth, food and alcohol that pushed my ability to concentrate over the cliff. The more the details and facts stacked up to make the film interesting and thrilling, the less my anesthetizied brain wanted to deal with it. What it REALLY wanted was explosions, titilating sex and potty joke humor. It couldn't handle class, it wanted crass. Damn, foiled again by my own sense of wanting the best for myself!

So, now I know better. NO more fancy pants foreign films for me after a big supper, no sirree. I just can't wait to put on Il Divo again, but this time after a restful night's sleep and pot full of hot black coffee. Definitely a Sunday morning movie.

Now, where did I stash that copy of The Hangover?

Action!

Allmovie review: Il Divo:

http://www.allmovie.com/work/il-divo-449944

NY Times article: pairing drinks with films, yes indeed!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/dining/12movies.html