He wrote the book on the silver screen
If you’re looking for a great Christmas gift or stocking stuffer
for that movie fan in your family you can’t do any better than
Leonard Maltin’s movie guide. More than 18,000 mini reviews at your
fingertips and if you’re like many of my former video store
customers you will take it along when you’re not sure what you want
to rent. It is the bible for movie fans but like the Bible, should
be used as a reference. Just because Leonard gives a film four
stars but you hate kung fu movies, why bother?
He wrote the book on the silver screen
If you’re looking for a great Christmas gift or stocking stuffer for that movie fan in your family you can’t do any better than Leonard Maltin’s movie guide. More than 18,000 mini reviews at your fingertips and if you’re like many of my former video store customers you will take it along when you’re not sure what you want to rent. It is the bible for movie fans but like the Bible, should be used as a reference. Just because Leonard gives a film four stars but you hate kung fu movies, why bother?
I was lucky enough to chat with Leonard as we stood in line for a 3D marathon at the world-famous Egyptian Theater. Just the nicest guy with no pretense other than his passion for movies. Maltin, being a little too young for the 3D revolution of the 1950s, I was able to make suggestions of some of the better films on the month long program of some 40 films in dual projection, Polaroid glasses shown on a special screen just like the old days. I feel sorry for anyone who has only seen 3D in theaters with the blue/red type glasses, one projector and regular screen that washes out much of the already limited effect.
3D had a short-lived battle to offset television which had taken a big bite out of the box office. But it was the most fun a revolution could be when shown properly. I was lucky as the State Theater in Hollister was part of a big chain and did it right. And while “House of Wax” was probably the most successful 3D film with Vincent Price, my favorites were the Westerns like “The Stranger Wore a Gun” with Randolph Scott and “Fort Ti” without Randolph Scott. Even Alfred Hitchcock got into the 3D frenzy with “Dial M for Murder” with, of all people, Grace Kelly.
The worst 3D film surely has to be “Robot Monster” where the budget was so low that the robot monster was a guy in an ape costume but apparently not enough money for an ape had so they put a fishbowl looking object over his head with a cheap pair of rabbit ears. Not real rabbit ears but an old-fashioned TV antenna. The only 3D effect was from a bubble machine. Now while Lawrence Welk did scare the hell out of me when he appeared on television, the bubbles not so much in a horror flick.
Cinerama and CinemaScope, while not 3D, were the death of 2D plus one, much to the chagrin of doctors who made a fortune with movie fans complaining of headaches and double vision. I have been blessed as I am the only person who still sees the world in 3D and lifelike stereophonic sound.
But that blue haired little old lady wearing K mart tennis shoes doesn’t believe everything I say. She writes, “Mr. Venzykulu you did not coin the words ‘show business.’ Haven’t you heard the song ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’?” What? Now you’re telling me they also stole the song I wrote?
Love that story about our government building a fence to help keep illegals out of the country. Yep, many of the workers on the project were illegal aliens.
What always bothers me about our country is that they cannot define what is illegal or rather when is something illegal. Some poor schmuck from Transylvania without a green card is booted out because he is an illegal alien, but millions of others are not. Some loser sitting on his porch blowing a little loco weed is busted and worse yet, appears in the Free Lance as though he was America’s Most Wanted. But if tye same guy had joined thousands of others at the Rolling Stones concert the cops would look the other way. One person on his porch is illegal, thousands doing the same somehow not so illegal. That God I don’t do drugs. A fifth of Jack Daniels and when I’m feeling religious a bottle of Christian Brothers brandy and a pack of smokes and I’m happy and more important, drug free. Aye chee waa waa!
When director Robert Altman died a few weeks ago the critics couldn’t come up with many words to top genius. While I agree that the cinema world was lucky to have had a Robert Altman, he was far from the genius most would lead you to believe. Altman made “M*A*S*H,” “Nashville,” “Short Cuts” and “The Player which even I have to consider the works of a master. My favorite Altman film was “Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean” but to most it was an interesting failure. Unfortunately, Altman made scores of interesting failures like “Popeye” and “Buffalo Bill and the Indians” but worse, he made dozens of the most boring films ever made. I was in San Francisco at a screening of his “Mr. T. and the Women” with Richard Gere when the theater shook like nothing since the 1906 earthquake as the audience literally ran out of the theater not from act of God but an act of Altman. Did you see “Quintet” or “Ready to Wear”? Lucky you,. I did. Two of dozens of boring films he inflicted on this fragile planet. Most great directors have had an occasional dog but even Hitchcock at his worst (“Family Jewels”) or Spielberg with “Amistad” never made a string of bad films and by bad I mean boring – the only sin that God will not forgive of a director.
But for the handful of films that were truly mind blowing I am glad Robert Altman was here because no other director had his flair for the absurd with “M*A*S*H,” the cinematic anthem for those of us who not only flew over the cuckoo’s nest but decided to drop in for an extended visit.
Now when French actor Philippe Noiret passed away I did shed a tear and had to so something I seldom do – break out a bottle of brandy. Well, something I seldom do before 9 in the morning. A bottle of brandy and a viewing of the greatest foreign film ever made, “Cinema Paradiso.” Noiret with his hound dog jowls plays a projectionist in a small town who teaches a young man that real life can be more enchanting than reel life, a lesson I learned from the first time I entered the State Theater in Hollister with its intoxicating smell of week old bagged popcorn and butter “flavoring.” But it was what was on the screen that was important. Lessons of good and evil that were driven home to me like nothing I could ever hear in a thousand visits to church. Praise the Lord and pass the popcorn.
