I basically quoted the above teaser trailer to a couple of guys sitting behind me at the recent screening of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". I overheard them asking each other, "What are the first and second encounters?" That I could remember the answer from way back in this 1977 trailer is a credit to my long term memory, now if only I could remember the three things I was going to pick up at the market, I'd be in much better shape.
This was a last minute commitment we made. Some other social engagement fell out, and we are Paramount Movie Pass holders, so this was available to us without an extra charge. It was a 70mm screening of a newly struck print of the film, and the Austin audience was among the first to see this print.
I wrote about the film after a screening eight years ago, and I will stand by my comments from that time here.. Every time I see this film, I am more impressed by what it accomplishes. The screening at the Paramount allowed me to be immersed in the sounds of the film very effectively. The opening musical note, sustained and then the jump to a loud retort was perfectly timed to the visual jump opening that the movie comes in with. The roar of the winds in Mexico as the survey team is arriving to discover the lost squadron of WWII planes is a terrific use of sound. The same can be said of the sequence in India, where the throngs of thousands are replicating the humming musical notes that came from the sky. The payoff of the thousands of hands simultaneously pointing towards the heavens was perfect and another indicator of the brilliance of writer/director Steven Spielberg. That this is the film that followed his masterpiece "Jaws", cements his place in the hierarchy of film giants.
Of course If we are going to spend time talking about the sound of the film, we can't ignore the score from the legendary John Williams. The five note motif is so deeply intertwined with the story of the film, that as I said before, Williams could easily have earned a screenwriting credit for the movie. The editing of the lights and the music in the final scene is one of those times where music can completely replace dialogue and you still understand what is going on.
I discovered that I did not have a CE3K shirt to wear down to the presentation. So I substituted a shirt that has a secret connection to the film. Those of you who know, will appreciate the joke, and those of you who are confused need to watch both movies. So many cultural references depend on understanding the timing of the events, and this is one of those. The 007 movie came out two years after "Close Encounters".
I have to admit that I get frustrated sometimes with young people who have no sense of film history. Amanda told me that when she mentioned that she was going to the screening, her co-workers had never heard of the movie. Yes it is forty-eight years old, but they all know "Star Wars" and have at least heard of "the Godfather". I'm just amazed that this classic from director Steven Spielberg is not imprinted on our collective memory as deeply as I think it should be. I'm probably just a grumpy old guy, but when they discover this film for themselves, I will be seen as a prophet.
Ok, I admit, I might have an addiction. It is not a problem however, since it never interferes with my life and it only enhances it. If I can see this movie on the big screen in a theater, I will do so, and conveniently, in celebration of it's 50th anniversary, it was widely re-released and I took advantage of the opportunity in all three of the subscription services I am enrolled in.
First up was an Cinemark showing on the first day of the re-release. It was a great presentation in a straight forward theater.
On Sunday, we went to a 3-D Screening at the AMC Theater, it was mid-day on a Sunday, and we were there with maybe five other people.
Finally, I went by myself at the Alamo Drafthouse, also for a mid-day screening, and Mondays are a lonely time at a movie theater in the middle of the day. Still I loved it. You can find plenty of Jaws Content on the site. Come on in the water.
A lot of people when asked what it is the best shark movie after Jaws, might choose Deep Blue Sea. I saw DBS a week or two ago and was once again impressed with how much fun the movie is. Genetically altered sharks, hunting humans, in the middle of a natural disaster, is obviously a lot of fun. The story is filled with mayhem related to the cumulative destruction of the Marine Research Center where the sharks are housed. As entertaining as this film is however, I must say that it pales in comparison in regard to tension, anxiety, and reality, to the shallows.
This is practically a one-woman show, as Blake Lively plays a surfer, confronting a shark in a shallow bay, somewhere on the Mexican Coast. The setup for the film is very strong, there's a reason that nobody will miss her for a night, and there's a reason that the shark lingers in the area, which doesn't require it to have any particular emotional Arc that it is following. Unlike Jaws the Revenge, it's not really personal it's instinct.
Our protagonist is Nancy, a medical student who is uncertain that she wants to continue and become a doctor. She's retracing the steps of her deceased mother, to locate an isolated beach in a bay that was her mother's favorite place. She caught a ride with a local, while her traveling companion has been rendered incapable of going with her by inebriation and infatuation with man that she met near their hotel. So Nancy is on her own except for a couple of other surfers with whom she shares the secret of the perfect waves in this idyllic location.
The shark who becomes her nemesis, is there feasting on a whale that it has killed and which is floating into the bay. Perhaps even more harrowing than the shark, which is a consistent threat, is the shallow reef and rock formations, which have rendered Nancy injured, bleeding, and trapped on. After an initial attack, Nancy looks for refuge as she tries to figure out how to reach the shore while the shark doggedly pursues her and lingers in the area attracted by both the whale and her blood in the water.
The film builds a lot of tension, as others enter into this scenario, unaware of the danger that faces them as they interact with Nancy from her perch on a rock outcropping. Actually, Nancy has had three locations from which she tries to stay away from the shark. The first is on the floating dead whale, but as that is like seeking sanctuary on a a dinner plate, that location is not secure for long. The high and low tides exposed part of the reef and shallow rock bottom, at least enough to give Nancy a safe spot to contemplate her woes. Her injuries are significant, including a bite wound that threatens to leach the life away from her. It is convenient that as a budding physician, Nancy understands how to apply a tourniquet and create a pressure bandage out of part of her wetsuit. The Third location that she seeks protection on is it nearby buoy, which becomes her final refuge in the extended confrontation with the shark.
They are desperate attempts to acquire materials that will help her in her fight, some of which work and some of which fail. Her hopes are raised by the arrival of others on the beach, but those hopes are often dashed by the motives of the beachcombers, or by the actions of the shark. As horrifying as a shark bite would be, the moments that caused me physical pain watching the film came from seeing her tumble on the rocks or crawl across the poisonous coral. There's also a painful interlude with jellyfish, all of which will give you plenty of reason to cringe in your seat.
Most shark movies have some goofy element to them , or a human conflict in the background. "The Shallows" takes an experience that is very serious, and treats it in a way that makes you share the pain and frustration of our protagonist. The only thing that might make this movie feel a little artificial, is the climax and the resolution with the shark. It is dramatically solid, although a little improbable. In the end though none of it matters because we've spent two hours living an incident completely through our senses, and hope never to have to share.
It seems like there were dozens of "Jaws" rip-offs in the late seventies. Killer Orcas, Grizzlies, and in this film, genetically modified piranha that can strip a man to the bone in minutes. This was an exploitation picture that launched the career of director Joe Dante. It has only a little of the sideways humor that characterizes his best films, but it does try to keep the audience engaged with frequent piranha victims every few minutes.
The formula is a clear set of beats stolen from "Jaws". We start with a titillating experience that results in death, followed up by a slow discovery of what is happening, and then a series of denials of reality by officials. One of the main differences is that the obnoxious character who is trying to dismiss the whole thing, gets a comeuppance, unlike the mayor in the shark movie.
Bradford Dillman was a seventies staple as a suspicious official or businessman, and he was in a ton of TV shows of the era. Here he plays a drunk hermit like loser, who hets turned into an action hero for no particular reason. Heather Menzies, who played one of the Von Trapp children in "The Sound of Music" and Strother Martin's daughter in Sssssss, is a bounty hunter who gets caught up in the action, and veteran horror icon Kevin McCarthy starts a long association with director Dante, playing a crazed scientist. Don't ask why there is a small lizard man walking around the laboratory in the early part of the film. It never becomes important and it is simply a loose thread.
"Piranha" is an efficient, low budget fright film. The film makers do the best they can with their resources and imaginations. Although many consider it a cult classic, it simply feels standard for the times. But of course those were my times so I loved it.
It was fifty years ago, this month, that "Jaws" the greatest film of the last eighty years, first dropped into our collective culture. Ever since that day, film makers have been striving to recapture the essence of the film. Some have stuck to the basic horror narrative, using the sharks as a monster to hook us into watching. A few films (especially TV movies) have tried to parody shark films into action comedies with varying degrees of success. Only occasionally, has a shark film created a aura that was reminiscent of the classic, "The Shallows" being the most recent example I can think of. This new film, "Dangerous Animals" tries a different approach and succeeds in getting the tension right, and the horror appropriate. It is not anything close to the quality of film that "Jaws" is, but it has some things going for it that make it my favorite film of the year so far.
If you watch the trailer, you will understand the premise very quickly. We have a serial killer whose method of murder is feeding his live victims to ravenous sharks while the victim is still alive. This is potentially a gruesome horror film that could be classified as exploitation, except for the fact that director, Sean Byrne, has learned his Spielberg lessons well. Instead of extended scenes of sharks dismembering the poor subjects of the killers plans, we see just enough to be terrified, but not enough to be revolted. There is blood in the violence, but it is not the over the top fountains of a horror film like "The Monkey". If ever a horror movie could claim to be in gory good taste, this one is probably it.
The big advantage that this movie has over other exploitation films is that it has two dynamic characters that are really interesting. The main character is Hassie Harrison, as Zephyr, an itinerant American, surfing the coast of Australia. She is emotionally damaged, we can see that, but she is not unreachable as her one night stand with a friendly local explores. She is also not a mere damsel in distress. She is smart, resilient, and relentless in trying to fight back against the antagonist. Zephyr is not simply going to resign herself to a fate that she becomes an eyewitness to, she is going to struggle in any way possible to keep living. She may not be the easiest character to love, but she is clearly one that we are happy to root for, time and time again.
One of the faults of some thrillers is the good luck that the victims sometimes run into, which allow them to escape and give us unearned hope. This movie turns that trope on it's head. It is the killer who ends up with all the good luck on his side as he repeatedly thwarts Zephyr in her escape plans. Jai Courtney is Tucker, the deranged serial killer who can mask his evil with an avuncular round of "Baby Shark" one moment, and then a knife in the throat the next. I have seen in in half a dozen other movies over the last few years and he always seemed to me to be a guy who was just missing it. An actor who would have occasional moments but never enough to be memorable. He was bland as you could get. This film however, gives him a part that is screaming for some charisma, and he delivers. Courtney has the glint in his eye of a maniac, and the physical form of a damaged brute. It is impossible to take your eyes off him when he is on screen and that says something because his counterpart is attractive as heck and in a bathing suit for most of the film.
The script allows us to believe a few things that are unbelievable. The brief fling that Zephyr has with local Moses, becomes for him an obsession, only in a good way. The fact that Moses and Zephyr are surfers and they are connected by a particular beachfront spot, becomes a key point in building up a chance that Tucker could somehow be derailed. Zephyr knows what is coming because she also meets Heather, a fellow pawn in Tucker's twisted game. If there is any heart in the film outside of the truncated love story, it is in the few minutes that Heather and Zephyr share as they await their fate.
Sharks are in the film, but first time screenwriter Nick Lepard and director Byrne, seem to know that the fish are the least dangerous animals in the food chain of this thriller. Their role is kept to a supporting part, which makes them all the more effective when they do come into play. For some reason, this film is not getting many screens or much publicity, which is really unfortunate because, like the mother of all shark films, it is really not a horror film as much as it is a thriller. I know it is produced in partnership with Shudder, which is a horror outlet, but you are selling the movie short if you keep it in that box. This is a great twist on the great white, and in spite of the fact that it is being promoted as from the producers of the excretable "Longlegs" you should seek it out.
There are plenty of posts about the movie Jaws on this site, and I'm going to be writing more in the near future because I'm seeing the film again at least twice this summer. So I'm going to digress a little bit on this post and just talk about the experience rather than the movie itself.
The screening was at the Alamo Drafthouse at the Mueller location on the east side of Austin . We have been to this theater several times before and frankly it's not our favorite. It requires that we park in a structure that requires us to login and pay in an online app. We do get validation for the time we're at the theater, so it's not the fact that we have to pay that is the problem, it's just the technical process that is a little annoying.
The theater is located about 30 miles from our house, and we left a good hour and a half early because we want to be at the theater well before the movie starts to take in the pre-show videos and trailers that Alamo curates for us. Also we usually order dinner so we want to get there so that our meal arrives before the movie actually starts. All of those plans went to hell when we got on the highway and the rain started coming down. We had a torrential downpour of biblical proportions, and it was complicated by high winds and hailstones that were usually golf ball sized but sometimes even bigger. I had to slow down on the drive, put on my hazard lights and struggled to see the cars in front of me on the road. We finally got a break in the rain and we got to the parking garage just in time for an even stronger deluge of hail, and rain that was mostly blowing sideways. We stood in the parking garage for about 15 minutes waiting for a break. When the hail stopped we made a run for it but we're careful not to run on the ice because it would have been easy to slip and fall. However that care meant that we were in the rain long enough to be completely soaked when we got into the theater.
The theater complex has individual bathrooms that are gender neutral and then sinks outside of the toilets that are available for everybody to use. They didn't have the hand blowers that would have been helpful in drying off our clothes before we went into the theater. I had to run a couple of paper towels through my hair to dry it enough to feel like I wasn't still swimming in the ocean.
This was a movie party, and as you've probably seen before the movie parties at Alamo include some props. We got a shark fin foam hat, we got a bath bomb in the shape of the Orca, and we got a small inflatable life preserver with a simulated bite taken out of it, maybe I can use it to float a drink in the pool. I also participated in a game before the show where two people competed for the prize shark head popcorn bucket. Unfortunately for me, the game consisted of a contest to draw on a chalkboard a shark. I need a ruler and a compass to draw a straight line or a circle, so I knew I wasn't going to be winning right from the beginning. I had fun anyway.
As usual the movie was great, and as I said before I'll write about it again a couple times this summer. I can say that when I'm looking for details that I didn't always pay attention to in my previous 137 screenings, I noticed that the kids on the beach at the start of the film did in fact have some crab legs that they were gnawing on.
Although I didn't win the shark head bucket, the hostess for the show did say that it was available for purchase at the concession or concierge stand. So when the movie was done we thought we would be able to finally get this prized addition to our popcorn bucket collection. Imagine our frustration however when the concierge station was closed and we looked at the buckets that were sitting across the counter on a Shelf and we're unable to purchase one. Another frustrating experience on this excursion.
2 days later we did make a trip down to the Lakeline Alamo, and Amanda dashed in in the hopes that she would be able to get one of those popcorn buckets. Lo and behold we scored.
It feels a little like sundowner syndrome when we arrive at the fourth day of the film festival. Everyone has had a wonderful time for 3 days but we all know that it's about to be over with, even though there are wonderful things still scheduled for the afternoon. Our fourth day at the film festival was really pretty simple, we had two films that we were going to see both of them were pretty long, and then we had the closing night film.
2001 A Space Odyssey
Amanda and I made the decision to split up for the first film of the day, she had never seen "Oklahoma" before and was anxious to catch it on the big screen. And as I've said in other posts, although I love my daughter she has disappointed me in her lack of appreciation for "2001 A Space Odyssey", that's the film I decided that I would go to see. I was especially interested in seeing 2001 again on the big screen, because the guest of the day was going to be the star of the film Keir Dullea. The festival programmers seem to be doing their best to get to important guests while they are still around. Mr Dullea, is maybe the 5th or 6th guest that I saw this weekend who is in their late 80s. All of us are due to leave this Mortal coil at some point, and I'm glad that so many of these guests chose to spend some time with us while they still could.
2001 on the big screen, at the Egyptian, is something I've done several times before. And once again seeing the movie in a theater with a rapt audience is thrilling. We were given the whole effect, including Overture, intermission, and exit music. They have also made sure to make these presentations authentic in another way, they closed the curtains and then open them again when it's time for the feature. To me, the sense of excitement as the curtains part and the credits begin to roll, is one of the things that makes me most love the movies. They should be an event, not just content.
The conversation with Keir Dullea, was quite interesting, including stories about how he was cast and about his working with Stanley Kubrick on the set. His wife accompanied him onto the stage to help keep him focused on particular questions. He was by no means senile, but he would wander off track occasionally or miss the meaning of the question and she assisted him quite ably without necessarily suggesting that there was anything wrong. Especially appreciated the prompt that she had at the end when she reminded him that he wanted to talk about a piece of dialogue that got cut from the film, but for which he had spent a great deal of time trying to memorize, and still has it in his head.
I did an audio recording several parts of the conversation, and I'm going to try to include them here.
"2001", along with "Jaws" is on my list of 10 favorite films of all time. So this is a pretty good weekend for me.
Apocalypse Now
When I met up with my daughter after her screening, we were queuing up to get numbers for this 1979 Francis Ford Coppola classic. She had been quite enamored of "Oklahoma", and I hate that I missed sitting through it with her, because I quite like the film. I really enjoyed her embrace of the songs and the story and the joy that she seemed to be having. I was a little worried that this next film would destroy some of the cheerfulness that surrounded the mornings experience for her. After all Apocalypse Now is not a happy film.
I'm not sure how she managed to get to her age without being exposed to this film more. She told me she's only seen a few clips and doesn't really know much about the movie. So that made our decision to see "Apocalypse Now", here at the film festival, really an appropriate one. The guest for this presentation was director Antoine Fuqua who has directed a ton of action films that I have loved over the last 20 years. He had nothing to do with the production of "Apocalypse Now", it just happens that it's his favorite film and inspired him to become a director and make movies that feature kind of grit and action that Coppola provided. His commentary on the film was mostly that of an enamored fan, which is not really a bad thing. It was certainly encouraging to hear his enthusiasm for the movie, as we tried to gird ourselves for the experience.
I mentioned that in the 2001 screening, the festival was trying to create an authentic experience included the ritual with the curtains. For this screening, the authenticity was enhanced by the distribution of a booklet, that contain the credits for the film. Back in 1979, the premier screening of this movie it Cannes, was done without any credits appearing on the screen, but rather in a Nifty little pocketbook with pictures. That item was reproduced and provided to all of us who attended this Sunday afternoon screening of a decidedly depressing War film.
There are variations of "Apocalypse Now" that have become quite popular in the last few years, but this presentation was the original theatrical cut. That's the only version of the film that I know. I've seen the film occasionally over the years, and I have bounced back and forth between disliking it and embracing it. Whenever I think of the distaste I might have had for the movie, it probably reflects the negativity that is such a huge part of the story.
This time I was happy to embrace the film, and I was glad that Amanda was suitably impressed with it as well. Now if only I could get her to respond to 2001 the same way maybe I wouldn't feel like such a failure as a father.
Heat
The closing night film for the festival was Heat, in the TCL IMAX theater. We had originally planned on watching the silent version of Beau Jeste in the Egyptian Theater. When actor Al Pacino was added to the discussion of "Heat", we changed our minds and decided we could not miss out on the opportunity to hear one of the great actors of the 20th century talk about this movie.
The original guest was Michael Mann the director of the film, and Pacino joining him made the discussion feel a lot more complete. In fact even though there were questions, the situation felt more like a conversation with two old friends on the couch rather than an interview. Each of them remembered some things slightly differently, and they occasionally made the effort to correct a misstatement or a difference in memory.
Now I do have a confession to make, we chose not to stay for the screening of the film after the conversation. We had watched Heat last year and Amanda was not up for repeating it. It is a long film, and if we had stayed we wouldn't have gotten home until midnight at least. So we stayed for the conversation between Pacino and director Michael Mann, and then we made our way out of the theater is quietly as possible so that we can return to the Southern California house and my daughter and her husband are living in. We got to have dinner with them instead of sending down in the diner with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.
Our third day of the TCM Film Festival started off with a science fiction classic from the 1950s featuring Special Effects by the great Ray Harryhausen. I don't think I've ever seen this film before "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers". The morning's presentation was introduced by Joe Dante a director that I've admired for almost 50 years. Just as a side note that behind him at the screening of the Bruce Willis film "Sunset" in the Cinerama Dome.
Earth versus the flying saucers is a straightforward fifties sci-fi film, which means that it features military types who are hysterical about contact with new species, and weapons that we have not encountered before which will require a sudden development of Technology that we haven't used before. Many times the aliens in these movies are standings for communism, the idea that a totalitarian race wants to dominate us and control our resources and lives sounds like it's a pretty straightforward interpretation of the Soviet Union, only with cool space suits.
I'm sure I've seen actor Hugh Marlow in something else but at the moment I can't remember what it would be. Many of the actors portraying generals looked quite familiar, I suspect they probably worked regularly in the 1950s playing military types. The highlight of these films is usually the special effects and in this particular case it's the flying saucers and the Damage they cause Washington DC. Ray Harryhausen he's always been one of my favorite producers, who's specialty is stop motion animation, that he did mostly on his own. The effects look really cool on the screen, although in this particular film they were a little repetitive until we got to the attack on DC.
Colossus: The Forbin Project
Our second film of the day was one that I was looking forward to from the moment I first saw the schedule. In the decade Plus that I have attended the TCM Film Festival, I've made sure to see the presentations from Craig Barron and Ben Burtt. These two gentlemen have extensive background in sound and special effects, receiving multiple Academy Awards, and having a clear knowledge of the history of their own disciplines. The very first film I saw at one of these festivals was my favorite, "The Adventures of Robin Hood" with Errol Flynn. Barron and Burtt were the presenters for that screening and they had such interesting detail and background history on the movie that I resolved never to miss an opportunity when they were speaking again.
The film they were working on this day, was "Colossus: The Forbin Project", from 1970. While not the most well-known science fiction film of its ilk, Colossus is a forerunner of some of the most prescient films of the last 50 years. James Cameron was clearly influenced by exposure to this movie because the whole concept of Skynet is stolen from this film. The premise of the film is simple, we have created an artificial intelligence to run our defense systems, and the worst things that can happen do.
I was a little surprised that this was the film that these two gentlemen were working on for the festival, because I didn't remember that there were extensive effect shots. Of course I forget sometimes that matte paintings and sound design are a big part of how a movie like this manage to impress. The opening shots of Dr Forbin, walking through the Colossus computer as it is being booted up, require some difficult matte paintings that were done by the great Albert Whitlock. The descriptions that the speakers provided impressively explained why we should take note of this subtle work.
I also found it quite interesting, that the sound of colossus's voice in the television interface that originated at the World's Fair in 1939, was classified during World War II. The sound technology was used for the direct communication line between Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Winston Churchill. It was a nice simulation of what their call would have sounded like using the encryption sound technology that was later used for this movie. Once again one of my favorite things at the TCM Film Festival was a presentation by Craig Barron and Ben Bert. As an added bonus the star of the film Eric Braeden made an appearance. He did a brief introduction before the movie, and then participated in a little Q&A
Brigadoon
The third film for the day had us returning to the Egyptian Theater for the first time since last year. Although I love the Chinese IMAX I have to say that the Egyptian is my favorite venue for the festival. When I lived in Southern California I was a member of the American Cinematique, who operated the Egyptian. It is since traded hands and is now a Netflix venue, and while that may not be something I think is great, they have done a fantastic job updating the theater while still maintaining it's historical ambience. Such ambience seemed particularly important for this film, a 1950s Musical that I have never seen before Brigadoon.
I'm a fan of musicals and of Gene Kelly, so it's a little surprising that I hadn't seen this for myself at some point in the past. I don't know that it has the best reputation in the world of musicals, after all I'm not sure there's a song in it that was a hit. The film however it does have a number of charms, and it's a good reminder of how the studio system of the golden age of Hollywood could produce a film on sound stages that made you feel like you were in Scotland. In case you are not aware Brigadoon is a village that is either cursed or blessed depending upon your point of view. It's residents appear to be living nearly forever, because the village is only active for a few days every hundred years. Of course when Gene Kelly and Van Johnson stumble upon the village, complications ensue, but so do some wonderful dance sequences. I was not aware that Van Johnson danced in any films, but he did a pretty credible job with one number in this movie.
The real dancers in the film however were represented at the screening today by two of their own, Barrie Chase and George Chakiris. Both of these actors/dancers are well into their 80s, and they occasionally scratch their heads trying to remember some details about the particular film. They certainly gave us some insight into the way that dancers in those days found jobs or auditioned. I got the definite impression that Barry Chase lost a few opportunities because she would not submit to Arthur Freed . The casting couch was alive and well in those days.
While most of the film looked pretty good there were some sequences that probably needed to be remastered. I was happy to catch up on this classic and enjoy the look of the film even if the story is a little slight, and inconsistent on its own world building. After all it's really a musical not a science fiction fantasy film interested in creating its own universe.
JAWS
When we left the theater after Brigadoon we immediately got a new cue card and got in line to get back into the Egyptian for the most important film of our at TCM. This year is the 50th anniversary of the greatest film of the second half of the 20th century. Jaws is influential, groundbreaking, and once again in my opinion the best film that Steven Spielberg has ever made.
I am not sure that there is another movie that I have seen in a theater as often as I have Jaws. It made me very nostalgic to be seeing it here at TCM in the Egyptian Theater, since at least a half dozen of my earlier screenings also took place at this iconic venue. Anybody reading this can find more than a dozen posts about the movie Jaws on this blog site. I'm not going to recap the story or the significance of the movie on this day. Instead, main thing I want to talk about is the guest Lorraine Gary, who played Ellen Brody in the film.
She was married to Sid Steinberg, who at the time was the chief at Universal Studios and Steven Spielberg's mentor. This is the part that she will be remembered for, all of her other roles were primarily supporting TV characters. Frankly she's terrific in the movie, although she disappears from the film entirely in the third Act. Advanced age of 88 she had No Reservations about being honest concerning her co-workers. She was dismissive of Richard Dreyfuss, without giving any details of why she didn't care for him. She also expressed the opinion that Roy Scheider was it somewhat mean co-star, and she didn't have any warm memories of working with him. She did however confess to having a crush on Robert Shaw, which I find completely Charming and ironic given their parts in the film.
The print of the film that was screened for us came from the British Film Institute, and had been preserved since a 1981 presentation on the BBC. The color dyes in this print are probably as close to the original version of the film from 1975, as we are likely to ever see. The film looked magnificent. It was surprising when Ben Mankowitz ask for a show of hands of people who had never seen the movie, that there were dozens of hands in the air. Listening to the audience during the film I had no trouble believing that those people were being honest, because you could hear the intake of breath, the shots of surprise, and the Applause of delight for all those little things that make Jaws the quintessential Blockbuster in one of my favorite films.
Blade Runner
We repeated the process at the end of this film walking out of the theater getting in line immediately to get a new cue card to go back in and see our final film for the evening. Although it was not a financial success in 1982 when it was first released, Blade Runner has been a critical success and a cult favorite for more than 40 years.
One of the first Criterion Collection laserdiscs that I purchased was Blade Runner, back in the 1990s. That version does not include the director's cut in the Final Cut, but there is discussion of some of the things that would later be included in revised editions of the film. The version we saw appears to have been the Final Cut, so there is no narration in the ending is slightly different, although to be honest we only stayed through the first hour of the film. As I've already mentioned we were staying at the house in Glendora so we had a 45 minute ride home, if we stayed for the whole film we would not have been in bed until 1: 30, and we needed to get up at 5: 30 to make Sunday.
The special guests for this film was the female co-star Sean Young, who was only 19 when the film was made and who was making her debut as a film actress with this movie. Miss Young has always been known as an outspoken and opinionated actress and nothing has changed even if she is aged the way I have. She spoke about working with Harrison Ford, the rigors of the makeup chair, and generally working in Hollywood. Her talk was not limited to Blade Runner though, as she made brief comments about several films and actors that she had worked with. She seemed fond of the late Gene Hackman when she worked with in no way out, but never seem to get very close to Kevin Costner who was her leading man. She did say that Blade Runner was the favorite film that she made, but the bigger reaction from the audience was to her second favorite film which was Ace Ventura.
Watching Blade Runner at home on Blu-ray, streaming, or even my beloved LaserDisc, cannot do it justice. Seeing it on the big screen and listening to the score and the sound design of the film in the theater like the Egyptian is one of those things that everybody should experience. We only stayed through the scene where James Hong meets his demise, but I can tell you everything up to that point looked and sounded spectacular on the big screen.
At one time it had been my hope to make a couple of the midnight movies, and "Wild at Heart" would have been another film at the Egyptian had we not been so tired. So we ended our day with the fun talk from Sean Young and the brilliant vision of Ridley Scott.
I quite liked "Smile" from two years ago. It was a horror film based on a contagion, very much like another horror film I enjoyed "It Follows". Because these are modern films and the audience is primed for on screen horror and not just psychological horror, we will see some traumatic and nasty death scenes. The violence and gore provides the opportunity for make-up professionals to indulge in their darkest nightmares and then share them with us. "Smile 2" provides plenty of those moments and carries on a somewhat suspect theme from the first film which will come up in a moment.
The conceit of this sequel is that the contagion. which finally manifested as a monster at the end of the previous film, has entered into the life of a highly visible subject, pop star Skye Riley. I did not re-watch the original film before venturing out to see this new iteration. I have some vague memories of what the rules are for the parasite to be able to infect someone. This may be important at the climax of the film, but the multiple steps and preconditions are mostly ignored here so we get immediately to the central problem. Skye, who is played by actress-singer Naomi Scott, is recovering from a car accident that physically mangled her and killed her actor boyfriend. During the film, we get flashback episodes that reveal what was going on in her life at the time of the accident. There was drug use, and a break with her longtime friend Gemma. Skye appears to be on the road to recovery when her need for painkillers that violate her sobriety, brings her into contact with someone already infected.
Horror movies can succeed for a lot of reason, and one of them is that they grip us from the beginning. Although I have always maintained that "Jaws" is not a true horror film, it did do that very thing with the opening death of Chrissie. "Smile 2" manages this feat by playing out an opening where we see how the previous film has connected the malevolent force to a new set of characters. The tense confrontation between the police officer from the first film, and a couple of drug dealers is graphic and frightening. The payoff is also gruesome, although mostly unrelated to the process of being infected. If you have not seen the first film, you might be confused as to what is going on. Even if you are, I still think you will be hooked.
Movies like this are often faulted for using jump scares to goose the audience, and sometimes that is a legitimate criticism. It is an easy way to get a rise out of the paying customers. When used effectively however, a jump scare can make the film feel so much more lively. "Smile 2" has about five of these jump scares, two of which make the film story more effective and they exist for more reasons than just a quick "boo". The most disturbing scenes however, play out a bit more slowly. There is a truly disturbing scene where Skye is threatened in her own apartment by someone she knows to be a deranged fan. The slow reveal of those moments contain some disgusting visual references that make the scenario even more horrifying.
[Warning] I try to avoid spoilers as much as possible in my posts, but there is something that I need to mention and it may reveal more about the plot than you want to know. I will not give away anything specific but I will remind people that you cannot trust what you see being played out on the screen. The characters may sometimes be visualizing their own nightmares, and those may not be the actual events. This is a key element in the ultimate plot, and it was one of the things that is both creative and frustrating about the movie. It is close to the "Wizard of Oz" than it is to "The Sixth Sense" and it may undermine your appreciation of the film, as it did for me.
The ultimate payoff in the movie is an interesting take of the premise, and it could lead to subsequent films that will be much broader in scope that the two films we have seen so far. Writer/Director Parker Finn has found a niche with this concept, I hope that it is nurtured and creative in subsequent films, but there are dangers as well. I was not expecting to enjoy this film as much as I did, and although I am a little nonplussed at the way the plot plays out, the movie did make me smile.
A year ago we went to a performance of the Austin Symphony Orchestra performing the score for the original "Star Wars" with the film being presented on the screen above the orchestra. I've attended several concerts using this approach including screenings of "The Godfather" and "Jaws". As long as the movie is compelling, it is hard to go wrong. Another thing that makes it hard to go wrong is performing the music of film maestro John Williams. "The Empire Strikes Back" is the original sequel to the continuing Star Wars franchise and it is especially vibrant when it comes to the music.
The heroes themes in the original film are the motifs that make that film so memorable. "The Empire Strikes Back" does not exactly subvert the importance of heroes, but it does make the theme of the main villain the most iconic piece of music from the film series next to the main theme. "The Imperial March" that accompanies Darth Vader through most of this film is found in commercials, at football games and being hummed by kids and adults, the same way the theme from "Jaws" is. It is an easily identifiable music riff which indicates the presence of the bad guys or something ominous happening.
Live music always makes the score feel more rich and full. Watching the violin bows sawing up and down or hearing the horns strike that right note are thrilling experiences. Even when you might be transfixed by the screen, an orchestra cannot be ignored when it is right there with you. The Austin Symphony is full and accomplished at playing these scores. The arrangements seem to give the individual instruments enough room to shine even in an ensemble performance.
I suspect that we will be getting "The Return of the Jedi" next year in the pop series that we subscribe to. That would be perfectly fine to me. However, instead of moving on to the prequel Star Wars Movies after that, I think a change up by covering Indiana Jones would be completely rad.
Hope Springs Eternal that seeing "Phantom of the Paradise" on the big screen will be an annual event. It has been for me for at least the last 2 years, now let's keep our fingers crossed and pray that the streak can continue. This particular screening was opening weekend at the 50th Anniversary of the Paramount Theater Classic Summer Film Series. Since I got to Austin in the middle of the pandemic, I've discovered that the Paramount Theater in downtown Austin is my true second home. The theater is busy most nights with comedy shows and concerts from a variety of artists. In the summer however, especially during the week, the theater is filled with film fans who get a chance to enjoy some old classics in the way they are meant to be seen, on a big screen in a beautiful Movie Palace.
I started coming to the Paramount Theater in 2020 at the end of the summer when the lockdowns and the theater closures were finally dissipating. As it happened, the first two films that I saw at the Paramount were two of my favorite films of all time, Jaws and Lawrence of Arabia. Ever since then I have looked at the schedule for the summer series with anticipation. Last year my daughter and I sprang for the annual Club membership that allowed us to attend almost all of the film screenings in the summer series, as well as the Halloween "Panic at the Paramount" and the Christmas season offerings. This year we had no problem in deciding to renew, because this is how we live, and it's how I roll.
Last year's screening of "Phantom of the Paradise" was at an Alamo Drafthouse with an edited edition of the film done according to the specifications of director Brian DePalma. This version is unofficial, and the studio probably doesn't really approve of it being shared. The version we saw this week was the one that played in theaters in 1974. It includes some of the bad floating matte work that was required to cover the "San Songs" logo, which was a copyright issue with the band Led Zeppelin. Steven Janice, the programmer at the Paramount, pointed out that the movie only made about $20,000 in its first week of release back in 1974. I'm pretty sure the $3.50 of that came from me, because I saw this film at the UA Theater in Pasadena in the fall that it came out.
It is hard for me to contain my enthusiasm for this movie. Brian DePalma was one of the most reliable directors in my formative years as a movie fan. This was the first of his films that I saw, and I loved it then as I do now. In addition to the outrageous premise the wild costumes and the over the top performances of some of the supporting cast, we have a fantastic score and a dozen songs from The Genius Paul Williams, who also happens to star as Swan, the villain of the movie.
I can never get "Goodbye Eddie" out of my head after hearing it in this movie. It's the opening song played under the titles, and if you look at the promo that I've posted here for the classic summer film series, you'll hear that it is the soundtrack for this ad. Winslow Leach may not approve of the "Juicy Fruits" but I was perfectly happy with their upbeat parody of a a 50s style lament about a rockstar who takes his life in order to increase his fame. Later on, the same band bastardizes Winslow's Faust score to present a Beach Boys Style parody song "Upholstery". This is another one of those Paul Williams tunes that gets hooked in your head and won't go away. This movie is full of earworms.
I was a little brought down by the opening weekend of the summer classic film series because our annual pass was only good for one of the three screenings. We could have bought tickets separately for Casablanca or for Star Wars, but we did have other films that we were seeing that weekend so we limited ourselves to the Phantom experience. It appeared that a lot of other film fans felt the same way we did because they were out in mass on Sunday for this movie. The reception to the film was enthusiastic, and frankly I was sad that it was over because I wanted to do it all again immediately.
I've written about the film in a couple other places here on this blog so I will give you the links for those posts, so if you are interested in knowing more about the movie and the things that make it so special you can visit those musings. For now let me just say at the summer season is off to a rousing start and I have the Paramount Theater, Brian DePalma, and Paul Williams to think for my elevated mood this week. I'll be seeing you regularly down on Congress Boulevard, if you see me say hi I'll be the guy with a big smile on his face wallowing in classic movies.
