Downtown Tucsonan - July 2008 - (Page 24) Summer Film Guide Summer Stock! By Jim Lipson hile some people lament tucson’s lack of seasons, or timidly await the onslaught of our sonoran summer, I embrace the heat. “Bring it on!” I say. this is, after all, but a small price to pay for the illusion of freedom, generated through years of summer vacations. thanks to the Fox theatre and cinema La Placita, classic movies will again play a part of downtown’s summer magic. W (cLP) has been a thursday night fixture since 2000, featuring old and classic movies outdoors in La Placita Village. although the movies are free, cLP’s film czar Erika o’dowd will tell anyone within earshot this doesn’t work without the help of weekly donations, patrons, sponsorships and grants. the following are movies scheduled for thursdays in July. (show times are 7:30 pm, or slightly later this time of year when the days are longer.) Cinema La Placita July 17 - Double Indemnity (1944) – this is one of the great film noir efforts from the 1940s. Remember kindly old Fred MacMurray from tV’s My Three Sons? not so kindly here as, seduced by Barbara stanwyck, he co-conspires to murder stanwyck’s husband and then collect big on the insurance. Edward G. Robinson gives a great performance as the relentless insurance investigator. directed by Billy wilder, this film is rife with plot twists and deception. stanwyck, who also found tV success late in her career as a family matriarch (The Big Valley), is at the top of her game here as a femme fatale/seductress. they don’t make movies like this anymore, although in 1981 they certainly tried (with Body Heat). July 24 – Lilies of the Field (1963) - set in the arizona desert, this film is a part of cLP’s on-going “shot in tucson” film series. and indeed our desert provides a formidable set and setting that allows a relatively unknown sidney Poitier to shine. a traveling jack-of-all trades, Poitier comes across a group of East German nuns, recently transplanted following their escape through the Berlin wall. although they couldn’t appear to have less in common, the film traces the growing relationship and affection Poitier and the nuns share for each other as they come to discover some rich common ground. Filmed in black and white, this movie garnered several academy award nominations with Poitier winning the Best actor trophy. July 3 – Jaws (1975) – when this came out I was actually working as second mate on a lobster boat off the coast of Long Island. My boss, captain Bill, was a salty prototype from which steven spielberg’s captain Quint was based, and he LoVEd this movie. and he wasn’t the only one. In 1975 this film struck such a universal chord it became the first of the great summer blockbusters. Based on a Peter Benchley novel inspired by the 1916 shark attacks off the Jersey shore, the plot is somewhat irrelevant because it’s all about being out on the ocean on that small wooden boat. there, Roy scheider (cast as the town’s sheriff), Richard dreyfuss (an overeducated marine biologist), and Robert shaw (who won a posthumous oscar for his performance as the slightly psychotic captain), do battle with the Great white. the tension out on the water is the stuff from which great films are made. not for small kids or the faint of heart, Jaws cultivates that near-perfect balance between thriller and horror. July 31 – To Kill a Mockingbird – (1962) Gregory Peck was already a well-established star, but his portrayal of southern lawyer atticus Finch cemented his stature as a Hollywood icon. Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel was less than two years published when this movie was made. and while you couldn’t refer to 1962 as the “pre-civil rights era,” it was in fact before most people knew who Martin Luther King was and before equal rights for african-americans bore any mainstream support. the subject matter was anything but trendy. Peck, as Finch, defends a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman in the south. He is both understated and brilliant in the role, not only staking out the moral high ground but also documenting a loss of innocence both individual and collective. Presented here, the film is a part of the tucson International children’s Film Festival. My choices for August – Because cLP likes to be as spontaneous as possible, it has not yet booked its schedule for august. o’dowd however, does respond to surveys, requests, and people who give money and write stories! Hence, the following are my choices for cLP movies in august. July 10 – Tootsie (1982) – directed by the late sidney Pollack, and presented here to honor him and his work, this film disguises a temperamental dustin Hoffman in drag so he can find work as an actor on a soap opera as no one will hire him otherwise. what nobody counts on is how Hoffman’s female persona becomes a full fledged cult hero. My favorite scene is when he comes into his exasperated agent’s office, expertly played by Pollack, pleading for him to negotiate a deal for his own network tV special. Jessica Lange is sumptuous as his co-star and love interest but it’s a brilliant supporting cast including Bill Murray as the eccentric roommate/playwright, dabney coleman as the soap’s chauvinistic director, teri Garr as the neglected girlfriend, Pollack as the agent and charles durning as Lange’s old man who falls for Hoffman in drag, who collectively push this movie over the top. Mrs. doubtfire, eat your heart out! 24 downtown tucsonan.july/august.08
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