Matinee Tagged Articles at Cinematical
The Exhibitionist: Movie Theater Movies
Filed under: Exhibition », Columns »
Each week, The Exhibitionist comments on the latest news, trends and innovations related to the theater industry, or it discusses long-continuing problems with and complaints against cinemas in general, or it simply relates a specific moviegoing experience of yours truly. But rarely does this column get into the subject of actual movies. Well, seeing as there's not much new in the industry this week, and seeing as I'm fortunately not being dragged to see Sex and the City and therefore have no experience to relate about being a sole male in an auditorium packed with women, I figure this is a perfect time to bring up actual movies. Not just any movies, though: I'm presently only interested in discussing movies about, set in or prominently featuring movie theaters.
The earliest movie that I'm familiar with that significantly involves a theater is Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. The silent comedian plays a projectionist who falls asleep on the job then has a dream in which he literally climbs through the movie screen and into a detective film. A similar idea of breaking the boundary between auditorium and screen is used in Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo and in John McTiernan's The Last Action Hero, both of which involve a movie character who manages to leave his respective film within the film. But nothing tops Keaton's screen-entering stunt, which utilizes special effects that still astonish more than 80 years later.
RvB's After Images: Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (1968)
Filed under: Horror », Fandom », After Image », Cinematical Indie »
They had faces back then, certainly. More importantly they had titles. You could tell a Hammer film came from the land of Churchill just from their strong titles, fit for a debating society, really: "Resolved: Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed." As it happens, the Shock It To Me! fest in San Francisco at the Castro Theater October 5-7 is showing both Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969) and Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (1968) with Hammer star Veronica Carlson flying in for a visit. They've also got three by the great Joe Dante (Matinee, The Howling, and the very witty Gremlins 2).
Bay Area horror movie luminary John Stanley will be visiting, and they'll be reviving the best movie made in Santa Cruz ever--and don't tell me about no Lost Boys!--Killer Klowns from Outer Space. Let us focus, though, on Hammer's third Dracula movie (not counting its 1960 The Brides of Dracula, which Dracula doesn't even bother to show up for). For the the third time, the tall and remote Christopher Lee fills the opera cape, in a horror adventure that deals with the rage of the Count; you could argue that Lee was one of the last people to take Dracula seriously.
Review: The Shaggy Dog
Filed under: Comedy », New Releases », Disney », New in Theaters », Family Films », Remakes and Sequels »
There is a moment in Joe Dante's neato kitsch comedy, Matinee, when Cold War kids Gene (Simon Fenton) and Dennis (Jesse Lee) are sitting in a movie theater, bored silly by the zany (and entirely fictional) body-switching family comedy, The Shook-Up Shopping Cart (a double bill with the equally non-existent The Bashful Bobcat). It was Dante's way of simultaneously mocking and paying tribute to the low-concept filler that Disney made in between what are now the company's enduring classics, and it was a hilarious moment.
While Disney's remake of their 1959 mega-hit, The Shaggy Dog, is not loaded with hilarious moments, it is, as they say, what it is, even if it is that same sort of self-congratulatory jape. Tim Allen plays a dog-hating lawyer who by convenient magic becomes one, makes a fun enough show of it, rolling together nicely the parts played by Tommy Kirk in the original and Dean Jones in the 1976 sequel, The Shaggy D.A. Like My Three Sons star Fred MacMurray in the original, Allen is a Disney contract player, and while he may not be the fatherly comfort that the MacMurray was, he can certainly sell a movie in the same way. People know Tim Allen from Home Improvement; they know him as the voice of Buzz Lightyear from the Toy Story movies; they know him from The Santa Clause, and that is all the selling/warning that most people need.
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