Monthly Archives: May 2008

A New Discovery: The Empress Theatre

Far out on the west side of the Salt Lake Valley — about as far west as you can go without piling into a mountain, actually — there’s a little town called Magna.

My local readers probably all just snickered; Magna doesn’t get a lot of respect around here. It began a century or so ago as a company town housing workers for a nearby mine and smelter, and it’s never managed to live down its humble roots or its rough-and-tumble reputation. It’s certainly not a place you’d think to go in search of an enjoyable night of live theater. But that’s exactly what The Girlfriend and I experienced Friday night at a charming little place called the Empress Theatre.

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Speed Racer: A Future Classic?

The weekend box office results are in, and The Wachowski Brothers’ live-action remake of the old Speed Racer cartoon is looking to be a total bomb. Doesn’t surprise me in the least, as the previews made it look (to this grumpy old curmudgeon, at least) like a blur of meaningless color and noise that nobody would remember five minutes after leaving the theater, let alone a year from now. Peter David, however, liked the film and has a different prediction of how Speed Racer will fare long-term:

…I realized a lot of this negativism was sounding familiar to me. Too long. Too loud. Too overwhelming visually with lots of mindless sound and fury signifying nothing. And I realized where and when I had heard it all before:

 

“Blade Runner.”

 

Critics and fans leveled many of the same complaints at “Blade Runner,” comparing it unfavorably to other then-popular SF films, and it was crushed at the box office by a powerhouse called “E.T.” “Blade Runner” tanked.

 

Yet over time it was seen as visionary, and its stylings le[f]t an indelible impression on fans and future filmmakers. Any number of dramatic endeavors have the visual stamp of “Blade Runner” upon them. …I suspect you’re going to see tricks from “Speed Racer” showing up in other films in the next years, and it’s going to be one of those movies in which, years from now, film students are going to be seeing the basis for many subsequent films.

Well, maybe. You never know what’s going to inspire today’s kids when they become tomorrow’s filmmakers, and it’s tough to predict how any given thing is going to look after 10 or 20 years of hindsight. Still, I can see one big difference between Speed Racer in the year 2008 and Blade Runner in the year 1981:

I wanted to see Blade Runner

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MEMO: RE: CLEAVAGE TATTOOS

TO: The young lady at the sandwich shop where I purchased lunch today

FROM: The poor schmuck whose only crime is having a pair of eyes and a Y chromosome

SUBJECT: Your impressive assets and the ornamentation thereof

Miss:

When you (a) have been generously endowed by nature; (b) accent said enhancement by wearing a form-fitting t-shirt with a deep scoop neckline; and (c) further call attention to the situation by getting tattoos in the shape of lightning bolts that plunge directly into the middle of your cleavage, please do not become alarmed when you actually receive admiring glances from any men you may encounter in your daily activities.

To wit, our brief encounter when you took my order for a BLT sandwich. I try really hard not to be that guy… you know, the skeezy dude who can carry on a conversation with a woman for ten minutes and never once make eye contact with her. Most of the time, I think I do reasonably well with that. But I am male, and I do like the female form, and, well… you have freakin’ lightning-bolt tattoos on your cleavage, so how is it that I can possibly deserve the dirty look you gave me when I actually had the temerity to follow my hardwired biological imperative and your body-art encouragement to take a little peek? Did you really think no one would check out your bolts this morning when you picked out that particular shirt? And it’s not like I was staring… sheesh. Either lighten up or or buy some regular crew necks, will you?

Regards,

An all-right guy who can’t help but appreciate what’s in the shop window… especially when the window is open…

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Remind You of Anyone?

I was listening to one of my old Jimmy Buffett CDs yesterday, and a couple of lines from the song “Pencil-Thin Mustache” grabbed my attention:

Now I’m gettin’ old, don’t wear underwear
I don’t go to church and I don’t cut my hair
But I can go to movies and see it all there
Just the way that it used to be

It’s weird when something seems to have been written exclusively for you, isn’t it? I mean… how did he know? Well, aside from the bit about the underwear. I’m not a fan of chafing…

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The Morning After: I Will Not Be Ashamed

I got a pretty good chuckle out of this:

Not enough of one to actually want to drink one of those yucky energy drinks, of course, but a laugh regardless…

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So I Guess I’m an Entertainment Writer Now…


Simple Tricks and Nonsense at Blogged

A couple days ago, I got an email from someone called Amy at something called Blogged.com, informing me that “[her] editors recently reviewed [my] blog and have given it an 8.1 score out of (10) in the Entertainment category of Blogged.com.” Suspicious, cynical man that I am, I naturally assumed that the message was some variety of spam or maybe even a highly targeted phishing scheme. However, the fact that everything in the message was spelled correctly gave me the sense that it might be for real, so I thought I’d do a little googling when I had a free moment and try to determine what this Blogged.com thing was all about. It turns out that it is indeed a legit operation. This site describes it as “an online directory for all the blogs in the world. …a catalog that offers information on the entire blog and its overall content.” Which is actually a pretty cool idea, if rather ambitious (all the blogs in the world? How many do you suppose that is? Would it really be possible to catalog them all?).

I must admit, I’m flattered that my humble little scribblings here (a) attracted the notice of this sort of organization, and (b) that I scored quite highly in the eyes of those mysterious editors, whoever they may be. It’s a nice pat on the head to have some maybe-professional say my stuff is “great.” However, I’m not sure what to think of Simple Tricks being pigeonholed as an “entertainment blog.” I know I write a lot about movies and TV, but I think of this place as my personal blog, not an entertainment blog in the sense of something like, say, ScreenRant or even Jaime Weinman’s Something Old, Nothing New. My purpose here is to write about whatever happens to be on my mind… which I suppose the evidence would show tends to be movies and television. I don’t know… maybe it’s just the idea of being so easily categorized that rubs me the wrong way, or perhaps it’s the notion that I might be somewhat single-minded (and hence, potentially, kinda boring). Anyone have any thoughts on this?

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The Greatest Bond Movie Never Made

One of the little games I enjoy is trying to imagine what iconic movie characters would’ve been like if they’d been played by someone other than whoever made them into icons. For example, I think everyone knows that Tom Selleck would’ve been Indiana Jones if CBS hadn’t held him to his Magnum contract, and that Ronald Reagan was once considered for Bogart’s signature role, Rick Blaine in Casablanca. (For the record, I think Selleck would’ve made a fine Indy, but nobody today would remember Casablanca if Reagan had played Rick. Just my opinion, of course…)

Somewhat lesser known is that Nick Nolte was considered for Han Solo, and that Luke and Leia could just as easily have been played by William Katt (of The Greatest American Hero fame) and Spielberg’s one-time girlfriend, Amy Irving, rather than Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher.

One of the most intriguing possibilities, however, is the notion that Cary Grant could’ve been the original James Bond. That seems startling at first, given the lightweight stuff that Grant is mostly remembered for, but I really think it might have worked. I’ve long thought that North by Northwest has much the same tone and style as Dr. No, and I believe Grant could’ve played brutality if the script had called for it. Someone else apparently thinks so, too. Here’s a video compilation that gives you a taste of what might have been:

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The Audience is Listening

thx_indy_poster.jpg

The image you see up there at the top of this entry is a poster I remember well from my younger days, when I was working at that infamous movie theater I’ve mentioned many times before. You see, back in the late ’80s, THX sound was still quite the novelty, at least in these parts, and my theater — the first in Utah to boast a THX-certified auditorium — used to heavily promote the system. This item, which the manager would occasionally throw up in one of the one-sheet cases when he didn’t have any interesting new movie posters to display, attempted to explain to average movie-goers why sound is a critical part of their viewing experience, and how a THX-certified system enhances that experience.

I was always weirdly fond of this poster. I was proud of that whole “first in Utah” thing and thrilled to be a booster for both my employer and a division of Lucasfilm, a company that at that time could do no wrong in my eyes. And of course it amused my inner fanboy that the little cartoon audience on the poster is watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

I don’t know what happened to that poster. A lot of one-sheets from the theater found their way into the hands of me and my co-workers, so I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that one of my buddies ended up with it, but if that’s the case, I don’t know about it. Whatever happened, it eventually stopped appearing in the one-sheet cases, and then I eventually left that job and now damn near 20 years have passed. I probably haven’t seen this particular poster since 1991 or thereabouts.

This morning, I happened to run across a source that is selling them. Not reproductions, but actual vintage posters. I was immediately tempted to pull out the credit card, but… it’s been a long time since I impulse-bought any collectible stuff with no practical value, and I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea or something I’d come to regret. Lately I’ve been thinking again that I ought to be liquidating some (most) of the crap down in the Bennion Archive (a.k.a., my basement), not adding to it. Unsure of what to do, I called The Girlfriend for advice. I told her what the item was and why it tempted me (i.e., it’s both a sentimental relic from my theater days and an Indiana Jones collectible). Here’s how our conversation went:

Her: So how much is it?

 

Me: Fifty bucks, including shipping.

 

Her: Oh, hell, I thought you were going to tell me it was a couple hundred or something.

 

Me: No, only fifty. Which isn’t really out of line for a one-sheet from this general time period. So what do you think?

 

Her: I think you should buy it.

 

Me: You don’t think it’s dumb?

 

Her: I just said, I think you should buy it.

 

Me: Why? Help me rationalize here…

 

Her: You’ve got a personal connection to it, it’s an Indy item, and it’s only fifty bucks. Just buy it.

 

Me: Really?

 

Her: Will you buy the damn thing already? We’ll eat in this weekend…

And that, my friends, is why I love this girl…

(For the record, the poster is on its way to me even as I type this…)

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Coming to Fruition

I learned long ago that, in politics, you don’t count your proverbial chickens until they hatch — which is my roundabout way of saying I’m not writing off Hillary Clinton until I hear from her own lips that she’s quitting — but after yesterday’s Democratic primary results in Indiana and North Carolina, the assumption across the blogosphere seems to be that her campaign is finished. On that note, Evanier makes a very interesting observation:

If all goes as expected, Barack Obama will accept the nomination of the Democratic party at their convention on August 28… 45 years to the day after Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

How cool would that be? Historic and poignant… almost cinematic, in fact. I can already see the “dream fulfilled” graphics on the television news coverage…

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This Makes Me Happy

You may have noticed that I’m not always the world’s cheeriest person. What can I say? I think too much and life has a tendency of getting me down. But every once in a while something comes along that wipes away all the gunge for a brief time and leaves me, to borrow a phrase some of you out there will easily identify, giddy as a schoolboy:

If you you look back through the archives of Simple Tricks, you’ll see quite an evolution regarding this movie. At first, I wanted nothing to do with a fourth Indiana Jones flick. I didn’t see any need for one and I had no confidence that G. Lucas could pull it off. My position gradually weakened as filming began and I started seeing stills from the new movie. And now… maybe it’s just simple Pavlovian conditioning keyed to a familiar theme song, but this trailer causes me to break out in a big ol’ grin every time I watch it… and I’ve watched it about a dozen times now since a crappy phone-cam bootleg of it surfaced on Friday night. Screw Iron Man, I’m ready for some Jones! Only 17 days to go…

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