Happy Solstice:

Happy Solstice - wherever you are!

#WinterSolstice #SummerSolstice

On this day in movie history - Run Lola Run (1999)

Run Lola Run

directed and written by Tom Tykwer,

was released in Germany on June 20, 1999.

Narrated by Hans Paetsch.

Music by Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil.

Cast:

Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu, Herbert Knaup, Nina Petri, Armin Rohde, Joachim Król, Ludger Pistor, Suzanne von Borsody, Sebastian Schipper, Julia Lindig, Lars Rudolph, Ute Lubosch, Monica Bleibtreu, Heino Ferch, Hans Paetsch.

On this day in movie history - Stanley Kubrick: The Invisible Man (1996)

Stanley Kubrick: The Invisible Man

documentary directed and written by Paul Joyce,

was released in the United Kingdom on June 20, 1996.

Cast:

Ken Adam, Garrett Brown, Arthur C. Clarke, Shelley Duvall, R. Lee Ermey, James B. Harris, Michael Herr, Diane Johnson, Stanley Kubrick, Malcolm McDowell, Matthew Modine, Jonathan Pryce, Leonard Rosenman, Kate Sheldon, Bryan Singer, David Thomson.

Born on this day – Cheryl Holdridge:

Actress

June 20, 1944 – January 6, 2009

Credits:

77 Sunset Strip (1963); A Summer Place (1959); Annette (1958); Archie (1964); Bachelor Father (1959–1961); Bewitched (1964); Biography (2006); Bringing Up Buddy (1961); Carousel (1956); Dennis the Menace (1962); Dr. Kildare (1964); Hawaiian Eye (1963); Insight (1964); King of Diamonds (1962); Leave It to Beaver (1959–1963); Life with Archie (1962); Mr. Novak (1964); My Three Sons (1960–1964); Ripcord (1963); Take Me to Your Leader (1964); The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1961–1962); The Bob Hope Show (1961); The Dick Van Dyke Show (1964); The Donna Reed Show (1962); The Eleventh Hour (1963–1964); The Eve Arden Show (1958); The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas (2000); The Magical World of Disney (1957–1980); The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1962); The Mickey Mouse Club (1956–1958); The New Leave It to Beaver (1985–1987); The Rifleman (1962); Wagon Train (1964); Westinghouse Playhouse (1961); Westinghouse Preview Theatre (1961); Working with Walt (2006).

Born on this day – Danny Aiello:

 

Actor

June 20, 1933 – December 12, 2019

#JacobsLadder #Moonstruck #ThePurpleRoseOfCairo

Born on this day – Olympia Dukakis:

Actress

June 20, 1931 – May 1, 2021

#Moonstruck #SteelMagnolias

 

Born on this day – Martin Landau:

 

Actor

Producer

Cartoonist

June 20, 1928 – July 15, 2017

Born on this day – Lilian Jackson Braun:

 

Writer

June 20, 1913 – June 4, 2011

Born on this day – Gail Patrick:

 

Actress

Producer

June 20, 1911 – July 6, 1980

Credits:

A Dream Comes True (1935); Artist and Models (1937); Bicentennial Minutes (1975); Brewster's Millions (1945); Calendar Girl (1947); Claudia and David (1946); Cool and Lam (1958); Cradle Song (1933); Dangerous to Know (1938); Death Takes a Holiday (1934); Disbarred (1939); Doubting Thomas (1935); Early to Bed (1936); Gallant Sons (1940); Gambling Ship (1933); Grand Jury Secrets (1939); Hit Parade of 1943 (1943); If I Had a Million (1932); John Meade's Woman (1937); Kathleen (1941); King of Alcatraz (1938); King of the Wild Horses (1947); Land of Liberty (1939); Love Crazy (1941); Mad About Music (1938); Mama Loves Papa (1933); Man of Conquest (1939); Meet the Stars #3: Variety Reel #1 (1941); Meet the Stars #6: Stars at Play (1941); Mississippi (1935); Murder at the Vanities (1934); Murder with Pictures (1936); Murders in the Zoo (1933); My Favorite Wife (1940); My Man Godfrey (1936); No More Ladies (1935); One Hour Late (1934); Perry Mason (1957–1966); Pick-up (1933); Picture People No. 2: Hollywood Sports (1941); Plainsman and the Lady (1946); Quiet Please: Murder (1942); Rendezvous with Annie (1946); Reno (1939); Rumba (1935); Screen Actors (1950); Screen Snapshots Series 15, No. 12 (1936); Screen Snapshots Series 19, No 6: Hollywood Recreations (1940); Screen Snapshots Series 19, No. 7: Wardrobe Designers (1940); Smart Girl (1935); Soaring Stars (1942); Stage Door (1937); Svengoolie (2016); Take the Stand (1934); Tales of Manhattan (1942); The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935); The Big Parade of Comedy (1964); The Crime of Helen Stanley (1934); The Doctor Takes a Wife (1940); The Fashion Side of Hollywood (1935); The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939); The Inside Story (1948); The Lone Wolf Returns (1935); The Madonna's Secret (1946); The Merv Griffin Show (1972); The Mike Douglas Show (1970); The Mysterious Rider (1933); The New Perry Mason (1973–1974); The Phantom Broadcast (1933); The Preview Murder Mystery (1936); Threesome (2019); To the Last Man (1933); Twice Blessed (1945); Two Fisted (1935); Two in the Dark (1936); Unusual Occupations (1947); Up in Mabel's Room (1944); Voices in the Labyrinth (2019); Wagon Wheels (1934 / 1953); Wanderer of the Wasteland (1935); We Were Dancing (1942); White Hunter (1936); Wives Under Suspicion (1938); Women in Bondage (1943).

Julia Alvarez, on writing:

 

For me, the writing life doesn't just happen when I sit at the writing desk.

It is a life lived with a centering principle, and mine is this:
that I will pay close attention to this world I find myself in.
'My heart keeps open house,' was the way the poet Theodore Roethke put it in a poem.
And rendering in language what one sees through the opened windows and doors of that house
is a way of bearing witness to the mystery of what it is to be alive in this world.
 
– Julia Alvarez.

Jaws (1975) - the thing about a shark …

Review by Jack Kost

Movies, in general, are just movies – nothing more.
You see them – you forget them.
However, some movies are so good – you never forget them; they stay with you forever and get better every time you watch them.

Jaws (1975) has always had a special place in my heart.
It was the movie that made me fall in love with movies.
During my early teens, it was the first movie I saw on rental VHS video cassette.
When I was fifteen, I bought a four-hour video cassette and recorded Rollerball and Jaws when they were screened on TV.
Already a dyed in the wool movie fanatic, it felt great to have my own copies of two movies I love, and that video cassette was like gold to me – a treasure!
Both movies were released in 1975 – a great year for movies – and I will post a blog on Rollerball in the future.

I went through the usual precautions concerning prized video cassettes: broke the small, square plastic tab on the base of the cassette, preventing accidental erasure … affixed a label to the base of the cassette, on which I wrote ROLLERBALL & JAWS in bold, felt-tip-pen capitals … then hoarded it away in my bedroom.

Unless I was watching some other late-night movie on TV, then the double-feature of Rollerball and Jaws was my late-Saturday-night-into-the-early-hours-of-Sunday-morning treat.

During that period, settling to watch movies was something of a ceremony:
More coals on the fire to keep the room temperature comfortable … check!
Draft-excluder covering the gap at the bottom of the lounge door … check!
TV angle realigned, parallel with the rug in front of the fire … check!
Seat cushions banked with my bed pillow against the base of the couch … check!
Fresh mug of coffee … check!
Snacks … check!
Me laid on rug … check!
Cushions behind my shoulders … check!
Pillow behind my head … check!
TV screen perfectly positioned with my direct line of view … check!
TV remote strategically placed to the right of my coffee mug … check!
The ceiling light and corner lamps out; room lit only by the glowing coals and TV screen … check!
My German Shepherd dog stretched out asleep on the couch behind me … check!
Yep! You read that right! I was laid on the floor; my dog was on the couch. I spoil my pets.
Over the years, I’ve watched both those movies less frequently, but each new viewing has always felt like a special event and my appreciation for them has never waned.

I’ll focus on Jaws for this blog.

Jaws was released in the United States on June 20, 1975.
The plot, based on the novel by Peter Benchley, is simple: the locals in the summer resort of Amity Island have their livelihoods – along with their lives! – threatened when a Great White Shark makes a smorgasbord of the swimmers.
Police Chief, Brody (Roy Scheider), Oceanographic expert, Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), and shark fisherman, Quint (Robert Shaw), eventually team up and set out on Quint’s vessel, the Orca, to hunt down the shark and kill it.

There is so much to love and admire about this movie: superb script, beautiful cinematography, fully developed characters, suspense and humor.
I can’t choose one particular favorite scene – I love the entire movie and can’t find a fault with it.
From the classic opening, starting with those marine sounds, leading into John Williams’ now timeless and brilliant theme music:

Beach party tragedy:

Official report:

MAYOR VAUGHN:
Martin, it's all psychological. You yell barracuda, everybody says, "Huh? What?" You yell shark, we've got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July.

The moment of shock, zoom shot:

HOOPER:
This was no boat accident!

Dinner conversation:

Covert autopsy:

Sunken boat:

MAYOR VAUGHN:
(pointing to the billboard as he talks to BRODY):
Brody! Sick vandalism! That is a deliberate mutilation of a public service message. Now, I want those little paint-happy bastards caught and hung up by their Buster Browns!

Author, Peter Benchley’s cameo as the news reporter:

Estuary victim:

Working out differences and setting terms:

Gone fishing:

Keeping the chum line going:

False alarm:

BRODY:
"Slow ahead." I can go slow ahead. Come on down here and chum some of this shit.

BRODY:
You’re gonna need a bigger boat.

The first barrel:

Quint’s story:

HOOPER:
You were on the Indianapolis?

BRODY:
What happened?

QUINT:
Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, Chief. We was comin' back from the island of Tinian to Leyte. Just delivered the bomb – the Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen-footer. You know how you know that, when you're in the water, Chief? You tell by looking from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know, was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week.
Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin', so we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know, it was kinda like old squares in the battle, like you see in the calendar named: The Battle of Waterloo, and the idea was: shark comes to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin' and hollerin' and screamin' and sometimes the shark would go away... but sometimes he wouldn't go away.
Sometimes that shark he looks right into ya, right into your eyes. You know, the thing about a shark, he's got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be living ... until he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then ... ah, then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin', the ocean turns red, and despite all the poundin' and the hollerin', they all come in and they ... rip you to pieces.

You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don't know how many sharks, maybe a thousand. I know how many men, they averaged six an hour.
On Thursday morning, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Bosun’s mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up and down in the water just like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he'd been bitten in half below the waist.

Noon, the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us. He swung in low and he saw us ... he was a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper. Anyway, he saw us and he come in low and three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and starts to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened ... waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again.
So, eleven-hundred men went into the water; three-hundred-and-sixteen men come out and the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.

NOTE:
Although the story of Jaws is fiction, Quint’s story of the USS Indianapolis is rooted in fact.
Stacy Keach and Richard Thomas starred in a 1991 TV movie of the story: Mission of the Shark: The Saga of the U.S.S. Indianapolis.
Jack L. Chalker’s fictionalized novel of the event: The Devil’s Voyage, was published in 1981.
In 2016, Mario Van Peebles directed USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage, starring Nicolas Cage, Thomas Jane, Tom Sizemore, and James Remar.

Shark attack:

The shooting stars in this scene were real:

Man against shark:

Final battle:

BRODY:
Smile, you son of a bitch!

For me, Jaws remains the best of the genre.

The sequels to Jaws didn’t come near the magic of the original and sank (pun intended) into the depths of the cinematic pit of movies so bad – they are woefully BAD!

There have been numerous other shark-themed movies, not connected to the Jaws franchise: Open Water … Shark Night … Deep Blue Sea … Red Water … Bait … The Reef … The Shallows …

Oh … yeah … and let’s not forget the cinematic classic that is Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus … and I still can’t believe I actually sat through it!!!

… but I have yet to see another shark-themed movie as exciting or entertaining as Steven Spielberg’s 1975 original: Jaws.

If you’re ever thinking of buying a suitable vessel for a shark fishing trip … always opt for the bigger boat!