MSN has a fun article titled "Pass the popcorn." They discuss some of the really great Summer movies of the 1970's and '80's. You know: Superman (the real Superman), Star Wars (the real Star Wars!), Jaws -- HEY! No remake of Jaws? -- Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders Of The Lost Ark (remember, don't look in the ark!), ET, Poltergeist, Ghost Busters, Back To The Future, The Goonies, Aliens, Rodger Rabbit.
Of course, the article is typical MSN -- so biased they can't even write about Summer movies without finding fault with Ronald Reagan! Seriously, MSN? However, who can really fault an article that has the insight to give Star Wars and the Empire Strikes Back their own spots.
The article includes Stand By Me. Here's the entry:
'Stand by Me' (1986)
Like "The Goonies," "Stand by Me" is a coming-of-age film that does not really have any sci-fi or horror elements in it. So what is it doing on this list? Well, it's based on a novella by Stephen King, and it features several sequences (the pond full of leeches, the discovery of the dead boy) that drift queasily toward more macabre territory. But it's the association with King that has made it a fan favorite after all these years, and deservedly so. "Stand by Me" is a wonderful, poetic and bittersweet rumination on friendship, loss of innocence, memory and mortality, and its four young leads all shine as the four boys who are all a little older when their journey is over.
Iconic scene: Gordie (Wil Wheaton), who wants to be a writer, tells his friends his story "The Revenge of Lard-Ass Hogan," about a pie-eating contest gone horribly wrong.
http://movies.msn.com/movie-guide-summer/pass-the-popcorn/photos/?GT1=28177&photoidx=13
Wow, what a great list of movies! I can honestly say that I love every single one of them.
ReplyDeleteNitpick time: even though the writer admits that "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" came out in the fall, and therefore it isn't technically a summer movie ... he (or was it she? -- I didn't notice) fails to note that "Superman," also was not a summer movie. It came out around Christmas, as I recall.
Nitpick time, continued: even though I'm 60% apolitical, 20% moderate, and 20% hardcore liberal, I couldn't agree with you more about that pointless anti-Reagan comment in the article. That's the sort of thing that just does not belong in an article about popcorn movies.
About the anti-reagan comment. . . it's the kind of thing that de-legetimizes MSNBC as a credible news source. If they can't even write a list of movies without it being a commentary on the horrors of the Reagan years, do they really have a level eye for news?
ReplyDeleteI like your equation. So we agree 80%. Becuase I would be 20% conservative. (But not "hardcore". . . who wants to be hardcore conservative? It just looks mean! Besides, I'm starting to want to give the tea party a wide brith.)
I like to think of myself as being pretty fair-minded when it comes to politics. Like I said, I'm liberal to the extent that I'm much of anything, but that doesn't mean that I'm not keenly aware that there most definitely IS such a thing as ill-placed liberal bias. And that comment in the MSNBC article positively reeks of it. (I had a few moments of that while reading "Under the Dome," by the way; loved the novel, but it leaned a bit too heavily in one direction for my tastes.)
ReplyDeleteOn the subject of great popcorn flicks ... I just got back from rewatching "The Fellowship of the Ring," which is an awesome movie and has not aged even the tiniest bit in the nearly ten years since its release. Still looks as if it could have been made and released this year.
The theatre I work at is running special one-night showings of the three extended editions of the movies over the course of the next three Tuesday nights. In order to make sure the digital files we were sent work properly, I am running my own version of this series: the trilogy, but one film per night after close for three consecutive nights. It's legitimate work (comes with the territory when you manage a projection booth), but it sure doesn't feel like work; it FEELS like I'm getting the privilege of my own enormous, private screening room for the next three nights to watch three of my all-time favorite movies.
Pretty cool stuff. Gonna make for some late nights, but that's okay by me.