Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer - Chicago Sun-Times

Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer - Chicago Sun-Times

While his political commentary in the last few years has frayed the edges of my respect for him, the legacy he leaves is enormous.  A pivotal figure in the world of entertainment for a position that is truly unique.

A Few Things I Miss At the Modern Movie Theater.

I just finished watching "The Cowboys", the great John Wayne film from 1972. I saw it on a very nice Blu Ray disc with an excellent picture. The movie was just as good as I remembered, but there were a few things that I had not remembered. To begin with, there is an Overture. For those of you too young to know what that is, or if you are not a classical music aficionado, an overture is defined as " An instrumental composition intended especially as an introduction to an extended work, such as an opera or oratorio.". Movies in roadshow presentations frequently had overtures. The curtains opened, the previews played and when the trailers finished, the the curtains closed again and then announced on a title slide "Overture". We are then treated to three or four minutes of musical themes from the score as people settle into their seats and anticipate the movie.

This was the second day in a row that I watched a film that includes the "Overture: as part of the video presentation. Yesterday I got to enjoy  Miklos Rozsa's fantastic theme music while the title card stayed on the screen the whole time.



In this case the overture was more than six minutes in length. The John Williams overture from "The Cowboys" is equally lengthy. The mood is set very effectively by sitting in a darkened theater with no other distractions and letting the emotion of the music sweep over you. It always seemed portentous to me, but I suspect it seemed pretentious to others. The practice made the audience focus on the movie and the presentation. When films played in roadshow presentations there were often substantially higher ticket prices and unique features to make that price acceptable. Nowadays a theater needs to take advantage of the time between the screenings to advertise to the audience. Some theaters still have slide shows that list local businesses, others have elaborately packaged show reels for movies, tv shows and other products. All theaters usually sell upcoming films through the use of trailers.

I have nothing against trailers, in fact they are one of my favorite parts of the film going experience. The trouble is that trailers are now treated as part of the advertising process rather than the movie watching process. Some theaters do not separate the trailers from the ads, some do not lower the lights all the way during the trailers. Revenue sources have to be exploited, the theater owner margins are so thin that they squeeze every nickel they can for popcorn and soda. So of course the extra time for an overture is going to be money out of their pockets.

At drive in theaters and double features which were ubiquitous in my youth, the break between movies was thought of as the intermission. The screen would sometimes countdown  the minutes until the show started up again. Often there would be ads for the snack bar similar to this:



I have seen some nice computer graphic promotions for the snack bar before the movies, immediately after the trailers. I don't know how effective they are since they are usually the last thing we see before the film starts. It would make more sense to show them five minutes before the trailers.

The two films I just mentioned also had an intermission. There is a dramatic sequence that ends with a strong music cue and then a title card identifying the break as an intermission would come on the screen. An intermission could last anywhere from five to twenty minutes depending on the film. "Gods and Generals" and "Gettysburg" are two films that had intermissions because the run time of each was near four hours. "The Cowboys" is only two hours and fifteen minutes but it still had an intermission. Anyone who has sat through one of Peter Jackson's Tolkien films would almost certainly have appreciated an intermission. The big roadshow films had an entr'acte music cue. A briefer recap of the overture to announce the start of the last section of the film. Again both of the films I saw yesterday and today had that feature. One last musical feature was exit music, that played after the credits but allowed people time to enjoy sitting in the theater as the crowd thinned and then knowing that they had really overstayed their welcome when the music stopped.

While there may be intermissions in some parts of the world during film screenings, the last major motion picture (the two Civil War Dramas mentioned earlier being relatively cheap TV productions shown in theaters) to contained a planned intermission appears to have been "Gandhi" from 1982.

While it has been thirty years since these kinds of presentations have been typical, it is only in the last dozen years or so that the process of opening and closing the curtain as part of the presentation has disappeared. With the advent of the multiplex, it seems that this pleasing feature of the experience was determined to be unnecessary. As far as I can remember, AMC theaters never had curtains on their screens. When the Edwards Chain was consumed by Regal Entertainment Group, all of the old theaters that they kept were remodeled with stadium style seating. It was at this time that the ritual of raising the curtain for the trailers, lowering it again and then raising it for the feature came to an end. It's too bad because again it really enhanced the magical experience of the movies.



If the above does not convince you, I don't know what would. I love seeing films at the El Capitan or the Chinese Theater because they continue to keep this tradition alive.

G.I. Joe Retaliation

I saw the first G.I Joe Movie a couple of years ago. I guess it was before I started the blog because I don't have a review posted. I do remember telling several people that it was "craptacular". It was loud, stupid, confusing and entertaining enough to fill a Saturday matinee and allow me to kill a bucket of butter popcorn. The sequel is just about the same. It is not a good movie but it is a good time. If you see it in 3D, it doesn't make it 3 times as good but it does make it more interesting and gives you some extra value for the effort that you made. Several scenes seem to have been planned with the express purpose of making cheesy use of stuff flying off the screen. Let's face it, this is a movie, based on a cartoon that was based on a toy line that was promoted on television. It has a lot pushing against it to begin with, if it manages to be enjoyable at all, that is something of an accomplishment.

My memory of G.I. Joe is completely different from all of the stuff that makes up this storyline. Check out this commercial from the toy line when I was growing up:



Somewhere in the early 1980s, the action figures got smaller, and the toy line got bigger. I remembered hearing speeches about how inappropriate it was that toy lines were creating cartoons that would serve as long form commercials for their products. "Transformers", "My Little Pony", "He-Man" and "G.I.Joe" were all cited as examples of this phenomena. It appears to have taken root in the consciousness of kids from that decade because they are now nostalgically returning to their youth and sharing it with their own kids. So now the commercials are not half hour television cartoons badly animated, but two hour motion pictures, almost animated and badly written. The cartoon like villains  in this movie put it in the same category as the "Transformers" films, they are action-fantasy films, and you can buy the toy. I still don't know why there are ninjas in the commando units but who am I to question the successful marketing of this product line?

The ninjas actually provide the best reason for the use of 3 D in the movie. There is a long sequence where two American Ninjas must fight against a whole squad of evil "Cobra" ninjas, and capture a duplicitous ninja who is somehow connected to the good guy ninjas. Read that sentence back, believe it or not that is an accurate description. Anyway, even though it makes very little sense, the ninjas repel down mountain sides, use zip lines and pitons to escape and fight on the side of the mountain.  This is all done in a way to allow the ninjas to fly off the screen, swoosh past our faces and then toss another bad guy off the mountain into the audience dimension. All that effort and the bad guy ninja, the cooperates with the good guys for no particular reason except some distant grudge that apparently is awakened by being kidnapped. At least we got to keep the cool customized 3D glasses.More collectible toys to keep the marketing gurus happy.

I did have a vague recollection from the first film that the President had been replaced with a "Cobra" agent. The best part of this continuity is that Jonathon Pryce returns to the film and lends it his dignity. How an English guy got elected President in the first place is a mystery, but I guess if we can have a President from Kenya, we can have one from England. (For those of you with no sense of humor, that is a joke, Do not take it as a belief in birtherism or Manchurian conspiracy theory). Channing Tatum was also in the first film, but it appears that the producer's did not realize how his career was going to take off. I heard that one of the reasons for the year long delay in releasing this was to put more of Mr. Tatum in the movie.  Joseph Gordon Levitt played the bad guy in the first film but I guess he didn't want to be back or was not going to get paid his current rate. He is replaced by a costume, and it is no great loss, he was almost not in the other movie either. Two stunt guy actors get pretty good parts, Rays Stevenson and Park. There is also a juicy part for Walton Goggins, Amanda's current crush. And the kid from Jurassic Park dies early.

The two biggest assets G.I.Joe Retaliation has going for it are Dwayne Johnson and Bruce Willis. These two guys are in nearly every movie coming out in the first eight months of 2013. Whatever they are not in stars Mark Wahlberg.  I have always enjoyed "The Rock" in movies, and I was never a wrestling fan. He has a good star presence, lifting even terrible material to at least mediocre. Bruce Willis is one of our favorites, but after the awful "Die Hard" sequel earlier this year, I was a little concerned. He seems to have awakened from that slumber (or given that the film was delayed, fallen into a slumber). Here his natural charisma adds to the film and he gets to punch in some energy without having to carry the film on his own.

If I had played with the later toys, I probably would not need a score card to keep track of all the players. No one is invested with much of a character except Johnson and Tatum, and their character comes delivered via video game, so you can tell how thin it is going to be. Stuff blows up, guns go off, swords get crossed and characters live on to fight in another sequel. I don't really care about any of it, but it was fine while I was there. I'm sure I won't remember much about it in a couple of weeks. I am afraid I do want to see General Patton's Ivory Handled .45s being used on the bad guys, that might be enough to get me into the theater three years from now, but nothing in the story is going to last long enough to anticipate it.

Olympus Has Fallen

Gerard Butler has been in some terrible movies in the last few years. His roles in "Phantom of the Opera" and "300" are almost a decade old now. So how does a guy, stuck in crappy romantic comedy hell redeem himself and return to box office success? The answer appears to be produce your own film, choose something that emphasizes the things that made you a star in the first place, and surround yourself with talented people who know how to make a movie work. The result is "Olympus has Fallen" an entertaining as all get out throwback to the action films of twenty years ago. This is the movie that "A Good Day to Die Hard" should have been.

Every few years we get studios battling it out with dueling films on similar themes. Back in the 1980s, two studios combined to merge Diane Fossey movies into "Gorillas in the Mist". Four years later there were two Robin Hood projects, one studio blinked and sold their product to television. Then there were matching Volcano movies and battling Meteor destroying the Earth films. This year we have two action films about an attack on the White House. "Olympus has Fallen" hits theaters first and sets a pretty high standard for action movie mayhem. The set up is pretty straightforward although preposterous. North Korean terrorists seize the President in order to gain political and military advantages. I get the impression from the trailer for "White House Down" that we will be getting domestic terrorists seeking a similar objective. I don't know how that will play, but it appears that Kim Jung Un wants us to believe this is possible. The North Koreans are acting in a belligerent and bellicose manner at this very moment, and the film exploits that behavior pretty well to make the premise somewhat acceptable.

The degree of firepower used in the take over of the White House in this film is alarming. The violence is brutal and there is a good reason that this film is rated R. The Secret Service and the D.C. based military units committed to defending the President's house are out gunned and the level of brutality was somewhat reminiscent of the last "Rambo" movie. Killing is indiscriminate and there are no rules of war being observed. If you are not up for a violent film then you better skip this, but if this is the kind of action that you crave, this movie will fill your plate. While much of the battle is CGI enhanced, there are dozens of extras and actors who take the stunts to the limit, flying through the air or having squibs explode their bodies. A lot of modern technology has been focused on this film. I have mentioned in some past reviews that it appears that Eastern Europe is rapidly replacing Korea and Taiwan as the leader in animated and computer rendered effects. There were several sections in the credits where every name ended with a v, usually an ov. Those that did not end with a v ended with an a. Bulgaria must be swarming with computer animators looking for work.

Butler plays a Secret Service agent with a bit of a history. We are shown his heroic nature and the nature of his failure early in the movie. The purpose of this is to add to the drama with the President's family and to raise questions in the minds of those dependent on him later in the movie. His character however, never has any doubts about his own ability. He never hesitates to act when needed and he behaves in a very consistent and aggressive manner in the film. This is how people want to see Butler, kicking ass and taking names, not trading banter with a series of actresses who can't carry a picture on their own. There are some good "Die Hard" type exchanges with the bad guy, and he gets to argue with generals and the acting President. None of the dialogue reaches the comic heights that Bruce Willis manages in the first four Die Hard" films, but there are a couple of nasty comebacks that give us some satisfaction.

The movie that this should most be compared with is "Air Force One".  The plot is simple, there are insiders who betray the President, it is one against many and the outside leadership group often feels powerless to act. There are plot holes that you can ignore because what is happening in front of you is more fun than noticing that there are other choices and options that the protagonist and the temporary command structure are missing. The cast is loaded with good actors who make their scenes work more effectively. Angela Bassett, Robert Forester, and Melissa Leo bring some gravitas to the silly goings on. Any time you get Morgan Freeman playing the President (Acting or Elected), you get some sense that people want this to be seen as something more than a cartoon. Dylan McDermott gets to return to work for the secret service, a job he had twenty years ago in "In the Line of Fire". Rick Yune plays the lead terrorist, mimicking his role in the last Pierce Brosnon 007 film. The poor guy seems to be getting a little type cast, but his acting range appears to fit the type so it's probably just as well that he gets to work at all.  Gerard Butler has some early scenes where he gets a chance to emote a bit, but once the action starts, he basically turns into the action figure that a movie like this requires. He brings enough personality to the performance to raise it above the level of a straight to video programmer. Aaron Eckhart plays the President and he is believable but underwritten. There are some nice sequences with his son that set up some more emotional points but it is standard stuff.

The action is staged energetically. Big fights and battles are mixed in with one on one combat. There are also several high tech operations and weapons that add to the suspense in the film. There are some good ploys by the bad guys to disguise some of their actions, but there are also several things that are left unexplained. It would be easy to knit pick the films plot and twists but why would you? If you paid your money to be entertained, you will be. If you wanted something that was logically sound, you will be disappointed, and you should have your head examined for wanting that from the film in the first place.  I also enjoyed the patriotic flourishes spread out through the movie. The Secretary of Defense defiantly shouts the pledge of allegiance, the American Flag is mistreated but ultimately restored, portraits of the Presidents are often shown in background shots and Abraham Lincoln makes a guest appearance and this time it's not vampires he is hunting.  This movie feels like it was made in the 1990s. The plot, action and tone recall the days of  the great action films of those times. This will be one of those movies in the future that are sometimes called "Black Hole" films. Their gravitational pull is so great that the viewer can't resist. (Thanks Dan for that term). If I don't see it again in theaters, I know I will experience it a hundred times on cable, and each time i will enjoy.

R.I.P. Uncle Vernon

Richard Griffiths, best known for the Harry Potter Films has passed at the age of 65. He doesn't look anything like Matt LeBlanc (Episodes Reference). I remember him doing an odd little dance in "Guarding Tess", it was a nice moment. Deadline Hollywood Obit.


And here he is in one of the Naked Gun films.

Wheelchair Mayhem



The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear
— MOVIECLIPS.com

W.W. and the Dixie Dance Kings.

This is a flashback to the original purpose of the blog. If you were unaware, I started this blog as a tribute to movies I saw in the summers of the 1970s, when I was in high school and college. This film was on my original list of movies that I could have posted on but it was not available anywhere. I looked on You Tube and found music clips but I could not find a trailer for the film. It's not some obscure film, it stars the biggest movie star of the 1970's, Burt Reynolds and it was directed by John Avildsen, whose next film won him the Academy Award, Rocky.

I saw this movie at the Century Theater in San Gabriel in the summer of 1975.

This is what it looked like in the late 1980s before it was torn down. As you can see after it closed as an Edwards Theater, it was re-purposed as a Chinese language theater. Most of the stand alone theaters in the area ended up in the same situation. The Monterey, and the Garfield, were both on the street that I lived on and they both showed Chinese language films until they were torn down or remodeled for something else. I know I saw this with my friend Don Hayes and his high school sweetheart and future ex-wife Cheryl Bolton. The movie featured car crashes and a special edition Oldsmobile 55, so that is probably why Don went, he liked cars. I know it must have been an evening show because matinees only ran on weekends and I distinctly remember going during the week since I did not have a job I had to show up to the next morning.

The movie is typical 1970s low budget fodder. Burt plays a good ole boy driving a fancy car, who takes a liking to a girl in a country western singing group. The movie is set in 1957, and there are some brief references to the rock and roll revolution that is taking place. The setting is the South, most of the time Nashville, because the goal of the group is to make it to the Grand Ole Opry. W.W. is a fast talking, small time crook who has managed to rob a series of gas stations without leaving much of a trace to follow. He accomplishes this by just being good natured and giving the employees a little kickback. Ultimately, it is his mode of operating that gets him and the band in trouble and high jinks occur. There are some car chases and crack ups, and a few songs by Jerry Reed and Don Williams.

Art Carney is featured as a Bible Thumping lawman, asked to hunt down the robbers by the head of the Company that owns the chain of gas stations Burt victimizes. This was his first role after winning the Academy Award for Best Actor the year before. So there is another reason that is a little odd that the movie is not really available. There is a pretty good payoff set up early on in the movie that let's the confrontation between he an W.W. get somewhat resolved at the end of the movie. The film also features Ned Beatty as a country star that writes hit songs and the band wants his help. There is a scene where they meet him and his down home charm is turned sour in a pretty effective way. In the end he redeems himself and it probably is as his character says, just one of the hazards of success. Beatty worked with Reynolds pretty frequently over the years and is featured in "Gator" and "White Lightning" two other films from the original project.

I happened to catch this just after it started on the Fox Movie Channel this morning and it was quite entertaining. There were two or three good little touches in the movie, like the two toned car, the approach that Reynold's character uses in robbing the gas stations and the Art Carney role. It's not essential viewing but it is worth a couple hours of your time if you happen to see it playing somewhere. I just am trying to plug some holes from the original project and this was a nice one to get to fill.

Happy Birthday Strother Martin

The legendary character actor Strother Martin would have turned 94 today. He is one of the most recognizable faces and voices from movies in the middle part of the twentieth century. In 1969, he was in all three of the great westerns that year; Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, True Grit, and The Wild Bunch. Appearing in one of those films would be something to be proud of, being in all of them in the same year is amazing.

He worked as part of Paul Newman's troop of supporting actors repeatedly. You will see him in most of Newman's films of the 1960s and 1970s. He also worked in John Wayne films more than a half dozen times  in the same time frame. He frequently provided the comic relief in a western, or played an ineffectual businessman or crook. The parts he was known for on television and in the westerns was that of "Prairie Scum". If there was a call for a disgusting vermin from the plains or dirty desert or crawling out of the mountains, he probably played it or was looked at for it.

He was one of many Western Actors who would define the image of the old west on TV shows, but also bring home the unpleasantness of real prairie scum with a vengeance.  He starred with Raquel Welch, Ernest Borgnine, and Jack Elam in Hannie Caulder. The three villains were not just bank robbers who pulled their neckerchiefs over their faces, they were heartless, self centered cruel men who deserved the comeuppance that the will receive by the end of the movie.




His best known role was probably that of the Captain of the Chain Gang that Paul Newman serves on in "Cool Hand Luke". It is his voice that echoes the famous line that often defined the 1960's:



In my opinion, it was a great performance that should have been recognized with dozens of awards. It is however number 11 on the American Film Institutes list of greatest movie quotes.

Old-Time Hockey
Slap Shot at MOVIECLIPS.com

As you can see he was often the frustrated loser whol steals a scene and then moves on.

Below is an obituary from the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. Strother died the day before my wedding. He was my Mother's cousin and we expected him at the service. She knew why he did not come, and she did not tell me because she did not want it to overshadow the day. 1980 was not like today with a twenty four hour news cycle. I did not find out until Sunday Morning in the papers when we were on our honeymoon. This article was one of the ones my mother saved.

I can't say I knew him well. We visited he and his wife Helen several times out at their place out in the Agoura area of Southern California. I missed the funeral because I was on my honeymoon but we did go to see Helen a few days later and the house was filled with condolences from colleagues in the movie and TV business. I remember reading a very nice note from Lee Marvin that spoke fondly of the times they had worked together. My Grandmother's family had always called him Jay, I don't know if that was a nickname from childhood or if it was a shortened version of Junior. He was only 60 when he passed, and he was still an in demand actor with a pretty good cult following. One of the last things I saw him in while he was alive was the Cheech and Chong movie "Up in Smoke". He was only in it in the first five minutes but it was exactly the kind of film all my friends at the time would be going to.



A pretty good illustration of his cult status is the presence of a mural featuring his image in the Rampart section of Los Angeles. by world renown artist Kent Twitchell.

Last year I noticed it was his birthday by accident, this year I knew it was coming so I prepared this little salute for him. Actors are an interesting breed, we often feel like we know them when the only contact we have had with them is through the screen. Some actors manage to get under your skin and make an impression on you even if they are not the lead in the story. We know so many of them as "Oh yeah, that guy", it seems a shame that we don't get to know them better. Here's hoping that all the great character actors working today will be remembered fondly as well. I think Jay would have liked that.

Jay, my little brother Kirk, and me. Out in Agoura around 1966.