Oh. Oh, PLEASE don't be true

This would be the worst movie news ever.

BSG Top 10

Saul Tigh, keeping it real.

The War for the Future Might Continue

Just saw this at Hollywood Reporter:

""Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles." Fans need not worry: Sources say that "Terminator" will be back. Fox executives like the creative product and thought the finale's performance last week was solid. The network also spent a considerable amount marketing the show, giving Season 2 some cost benefit. Also: The fourth "Terminator" movie comes out in 2009, and as "The Simpsons Movie" proved, there are promotional advantages to film-TV synergy."

Please?

(Yes, yes, yes, the finale review is written I just need to edit and post. Then BSG starts again.)

Dave Stevens 1955-2008

Dave Stevens, creator of the Rocketeer, passed away on March 10th. *sigh*

What the Frak is Going On

I was going to try and cut together my own one of these. This is better and WAY funnier. And I don't have to do it. Nice. "Sorry Boomer."

Tone deaf?

This reminds me of when Hillary played Billy Joel's Captain Jack at a campaign rally a few years ago. Someone picked these clips because they figured it was Jack Nicholson saying cool things. Except a lot of us know the rest of these lines. And I'm not posting ANY of them on my blog. Let alone in a national presidential campaign.

I don't think Hillary would want any of these characters associated with her run for presidency if they were real. Especially... Well, no there's not an especially in the group since Jake Gittes is the most well adjusted in the bunch. Otherwise we have quite the collection of murderers and sociopaths. I want to see Jack Torrance coming through the door with an axe saying "Vote for Hillary!"

But anyway, if Col. Jessep gets his wish (the rest of that clip) then I'd just have to say didn't we have enough of that in the first Clinton administration?

Gee, where was Jessep stationed again? Think he had much of a problem with waterboarding?

Sarah Connor: The Demon Hand

One episode to go. How do I feel about this? Tell 'em, Greg.

HIGH DEF! Whoooooo! Hey, was this the first week that we didn't see the high school jumper from "Gnothi Seauton"? I'm not sure why they hammered that in week after week after week if they're not going anywhere with it.

Ha! Just heard about a post from the show's creator. There was some question as to how Cromartie's head could travel through time with Sarah & Co. Well, the idea was that it was still covered in living tissue but that it was on fire. So it could time-travel, but it would very quickly be much more Terminator-y. BUT - you can't show a decapitated head with burning bubbling flesh flying through the air on TV (even now). So it looks like just a metal skull that travels through time. And we know from the movies that that's impossible. So just go with it.

Still awesome. These are kind of tough to review / recap the morning after. Things get twisty. So I'll just hit what sticks with me.

Silberman. Yeeeaahhhhhh! I wish they had cast someone a little more reminiscent of Earl Boen from the movies. (Hrmm. I didn't remember him from T3 at all...) I mean going from dark haired and bald to blond with a magnificent head of hair. Also, Silberman was SO much dweebier in the movies. BUT we got Bruce Davison. And he was terrific as always. And it's always nice to see that these people will figure things out when they see a T-1000 going all morphy on them. Enough that he got a nice cabin away from the coming war. I'm not sure I buy Ellison putting him in a rubber room. Sure, he's totally unhinged. Maybe I do buy it. I kind of would have liked Sarah to greet him by saying "How's the knee?"

But what does Ellison do next? She Who Is My Wife was a little surprised when I said Ellison was my favorite character. But he is. I like watching where they're going with him. And he's a Christian that actually attends some kind of service at an organized place of worship (and not just Sunday service either, by the looks of it) and he's not crazy. Does anyone really read King James anymore? But he was my favorite before we found all that out.

"She always did love to dance." Writers room: "Hey, how do we get Summer to be able to do ballet on this show?" Still interesting to watch where this character goes. She's really got her own agenda. I'm not sure if Cameron didn't tell Sarah that the Russian fellow was dead because she's smart enough to know what Sarah's reaction would be or if it's because she really wasn't aware. Not her mission. Brrr.

Cool subplot that the Russian (not to be confused with the Haitian) sabotaged The Turk for the chess match. Wonder how this went down before everyone started hopping timelines? It's interesting that Kyle says in The Terminator that he is from "one possible future" even though none of his or the T-800's actions change anything (and actually set the war in motion). Then in T2 they WERE able to change time. But the groundwork had been laid that time could be changed and that these future timelines might still exist.

Cameron and Derek have set up a nice adversarial relationship. I'm looking forward to more. You know, this is often movie-speak for falling in love. Hee.

John's hitting on all cylinders. For some reason I'd like to see more high school. (Aren't there a couple subplots festering there? Didn't John almost get a best friend / side-kick? Weird girl being locked up by her Dad?) But he's hitting the perfect balance between needy kid and future leader. He wants Derek to stay so bad it's almost subtitled. Wow, a show that actually says boys need fathers. Even boys with superheroes for mothers. The callback to his foster folks in T2 was good. This show is great when it echoes the movies and it's great when it goes out on it's own.

Derek's kind of a slippery character. Like that. It hadn't occurred to me that he flat out lied to Sarah about killing Andrew Goode. (Unless he doesn't know he did it?) But he didn't take The Turk. Which is still out there. And of course we're creating paradoxes like weeds. I liked the scene with Derek and the grass. This really should be paradise for our future warriors. He seems a little too calm about hanging around with young John. And apparently not everyone in the future holds Sarah in such high esteem. Or John.

Oh, and did the pilot say that Cameron is from 2027? So is anyone from 2029 anymore? Curious change...

So, nobody knows that Kyle Reese is John's father. But they've got how many hours of videotape of Sarah talking about it? Hrrmmmmm.

Sarah. This is the first time I've really compared Leana Heady with Linda Hamilton. Heady plays everything so cool. She's so resigned most of the time. Her life has sucked since 1984 and it won't get better anytime soon. But now she's re-playing the scenes that Hamilton did in T2. And I'm not sure she played it raving enough. But she got to say "It's what they do! It's all they do!" Ahhhh.

This is an interesting twist for a time travel story. Usually it's all about "You can't know because otherwise the future could change." But their whole mission is to change the future. Fun.

So The Hand is gone. But Cameron still has metal and a chip. Hrm.

Nothing with the FBI Terminator this week. Probably saving it for THE BIG FINALE. Maybe they'll just skip over that until next season. That might be neat. But maybe not. So I'm sure THE BIG (2 hour) FINALE will be quite the ride.

BTW, we watched last weeks ep on Fox's streaming broadcast. Bear McReary wrote end title music! It's cool. Still not Brad Fiedel's theme (how much does he get paid for the ten drum beats that they use every week?) but still nifty. Got to figure out how to capture that.

Next week: Huge cliff hanger so Fox can cancel us! Think positive!

Dodged Bullet!

Wow, did I get lucky! I saw the trailer for Jumper and thought it looked moderately cool. Then I read the reviews and found out it wasn't. All the while not knowing it was a Hayden Christensen flick! Arrrrgh!

Tigh in '08

Ok, seems I'm not the first to think of this. Good, I don't have to put it together then.

Terminator: Catchin up, part III

Dungeons & Dragons - Feb 18

Hey, it's the third Sarah review that I haven't published. If you're reading this, I've corrected the problem.

Still good. Maybe even great.

But they hit one really false note for me: They showed Kyle Reese. I know all of these actors are making the character's their own. For the most part that's terrific. But Kyle just seemed so peppy. It underlined a big difference between the people from the future in the movie and the ones in the show. In the movie these people were living at the end of the world. Kyle was so detached as to be off-putting. He had never lived in a world like today. He grew up in the "ashes of the nuclear fire". In the show they're just a bunch of guys in a bad situation. They don't seem "on the way out". They also don't seem all that taken aback by 2007. Heck, you'd think these guys would be amazed by running water! (I guess there's a deleted scene from Terminator where Kyle just about loses it looking at a park with trees.) Again, time travel is a lot less painful than in the films. It was cool that they had a fake looking Terminator. I'm sure that interrogation thing will come back. And they got all of the stuff right about Kyle's unit. I'm disappointed that nobody said they were "under Perry". But I'm a nerd.

I think they nicely dodged a bullet by not showing "future John".

BTW, the people are NOT the same as the machines. They're not, so don't even go there.

It was a nice tie-in with the movie though that it was Derek getting captured that tipped off Skynet to where there was a shelter which was attacked in the movie (when Sarah's photo was burned). They're changing timelines around again (although maybe this is the "post-T2" timeline, so it's different). In The Terminator Kyle traveled back from 2029. Now it's 2027. And the war is going on for two years afterwards when Derek goes back. So much for the "final battle".

Also, no Ellison this week. (You know, I still laugh that the Terminator is named Cameron, but only just got that the FBI fella is named Ellison.) But I've decided I like Charlie (Sarah's ex) a lot. I hope they do interesting things with him. The "very scary robot" conversation was terrific.

This plot is reaching Angel levels of complexity. So now Cameron has extra metal and a chip. And "sometimes they go bad". THAT will all go well.

Random thought, I wonder if they'll ever mention that a Terminator killed John's grandmother? I like that the identity of Kyle as John's father is such a closely guarded secret that even Cameron doesn't know it. That might be good plot coming up there.

Sarah's repeating Kyle's litany about the machines was great. (Nerd.) And they will never, ever stop. And of course "there's a storm coming". Still think Sarah's awesome. Still like Cameron (and they're certainly keeping her from being boring). And I'm really digging John. So I call that a win.

Getting a nagging feeling they're going to get canceled though. It's Fox.

Terminator: Catchin up, part II

Queen's Gambit - Feb 4

Just. Loving. This. Show.

They're starting to pick up on some of the threads they've left dangling. Sarah's ex is a good example. (Good grief, how many father-figures is John going to have? Kyle. Arnold. The Ex. The new Reese.) And the FBI story keeps building and building. More Terminator parts lying around. Isn't that how this whole thing started?

I'm curious who and for what the South Americans that Sarah ran with were fighting. But it's good backstory for John. John gets a little more interesting every week. That's how it ought to be.

Kyle's brother showing up rocked my world. (I'm a geek. I'm not ashamed of that.) Does he not know what happened to his brother? Was the brother sent back first? Arnold was a T-800. But he's been chased by a T-888. Was Kyle completely lied to? Was Skynet (and Connor) sending people back in time before the end of the war and then an old T-800 was all it had left? I love the story, but it does seem to be taking a little bit away from the "final battle" of The Terminator. Maybe we'll learn more.

My only gripe is that the Terminators seem a little too easy to dismember. Arnold held together through some pretty severe stuff. But then, he also broke a little easier (he had to rip open his arm for a fix-up and lost his eye after one little tussle with Kyle). Oh, the "org" part of "cyborg" also died after a car crash and was a rotting corpse hung over his endo-skeleton. That was neat. And I've always thought that they were too hard to get away from. You never see them have to "track" anybody. Although it's very apparent that somebody forgot to set Arnold's sneaky bit to 1. These T's don't have that problem. Also, Cameron was really good at being a teenager when she met John.

Next week: THE FUTURE.

Terminator - catchin up part I

Yikes, got a lot to catch up on. So here we go. (Don't I have three more Fireflies to do?)

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Heavy Metal (Feb 4)

I continue to enjoy the heck out of The Sarah Connor Chronicles. One thing I'm really loving that the movies never got to do (because they were movies) is the time they can take. We're told that the Terminators are these inexorable machines that will NEVER EVER STOP. But we've never seen them have to go after something for more than a few days. We can finally see one of these things biding it's time waiting for it's prey to make a mistake.

My favorite thing continues to be the interplay between Sarah and Cameron. (Heh, that ended in divorce at the 1998 Oscars, didn't it? Oh, wrong Sarah and Cameron.) It's like Spock and McCoy with BIG GUNS and no Kirk to moderate. Maybe John will grow into that role. I think this might be an intentional gamble, holding John back like this, making him less interesting than he might be. I really hope it pays off. I think it just might. It will be really cool if they really manage to make John the leader of the gang.

My second favorite plot is the FBI. I don't know why. But it's a needed element to mix up the kinds of stories you can tell with Sarah's gang. I like that he's really not stupid. Smart people are a welcome addition to any show. Especially smart cops.

Nice touch not showing the fight between security guy and Cameron, just showing his reaction afterwards. If she can't be River then this part is just fine for Summer Glau.

Still wondering what they intend to do if the show runs for four seasons (the new Judgement Day). I'm not sure Smallville ever thought that far ahead.

Of course we continue to see that Kyle Reese couldn't have been more wrong when he said that "no one else gets through". There's armies from both sides flying through time on this show!

Not sure I really followed the "hijacking supplies for Skynet" plot. Maybe Skynet had the time displacement equipment set up early enough that it didn't see the resistance as a threat and was more concerned with shopping runs. I am curious what Cameron will do with her stash. Also, about trapping the terminator inside the bomb shelter: It's a terminator. Won't it be trying to get out? Even if it takes years?

I watched The Terminator this weekend. I had the year of the end of the war totally screwed up. 2029. Not 2017. So Kyle will be a baby or a little kid, if he's even born yet. And in the original timeline he would have been born well after Judgement day. Oh, and we have a date for when Terminator happens. May 12th, 1984. So John has to be born in early 1985. So there's no way he can be 15 in 1999. Close. I guess Sarah was rounding off.

BTW, Linda Hamilton was 27 when she made Terminator (born 1956 - same as Michael Biehn - so I guess Reese would be 6 or 7 in 2008). So she was 43 in 1999. Lena Headey is 34. Dialing back the seven years they skipped, she would have been born in 1965. So her Sarah would be 19 in 1984. Just in case y'all were wondering. While we're at it, Thomas Dekker is 20 and Summer Glau is 26. So neither of them have seen 15 for a while. (Not that it matters, but The Governator is 60.)

Oh! Here we go - from Wikipedia (so it MUST be true!):

According to the script for The Terminator (1984)—available on the Special Edition DVD—Sarah was 19 years old. The film was set from May 12th through May 14th of 1984, placing her birth date between May 11, 1964 and May 15, 1965.

In Terminator 2 Sarah's psychologist states that she is 29. The film itself shows on screen that it takes place when John (born 1985-02-28) is age 10 (between 1995-02-28 and 1996-02-27). This places Sarah's birth date between 1965-03-01 and 1967-02-27, making her 17, 18, or 19 during The Terminator.

The alternate ending for Terminator 2 (1991)—available on the Ultimate Edition DVD—shows Sarah alive and well on August 29, 2029. She is by then a grandmother (and John is a Senator) in a world where Skynet was never able to start its war on humanity.

The tombstone shown in Terminator 3 (2003) reads 1959–1997. The birth year would make her 24 or 25 during The Terminator. Her death was described as from leukemia sometime after the original "Judgment Day" (August 29, 1997).

The "Pilot" episode of The Sarah Connor Chronicles, picks up Sarah and John on the run in 1999. Her FBI file lists her age as 33 on August 24, 1999, placing her birth date between August 25, 1965 and August 24, 1966. This would make her 17 or 18 during The Terminator.

In the "Gnothi Seauton" episode, Cameron Phillips mentions that Sarah would have died from cancer, had they not jumped forward in time. Cameron also mentions that John Connor sent Cameron back in time to help leap over Sarah's death. At the end of the episode Sarah is at a doctor's office, where her forged drivers license shows her birthday as February 4th.

Still might be my favorite show. (House is a close second.)

If he's stayed a TransAm, we wouldn't have this problem!

This is too funny. (And when did Val Kilmer start looking fat?)

Superbowl Declaration

I missed this Sunday. I wish I hadn't. I'm glad I see it now.

Ohhh. Now that's BAD.

So you're going to be a villain in a James Bond movie. Who do you base your character on? Imadinnerjacket? Kim Jong-il? Heck, the Unabomber? OJ Simpson? Rick Berman?

Nooooo.

Amalric said he modeled his character to some extent on former Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. "I've been taking details, the smile of Tony Blair, the craziness of Sarkozy, he's the worst villain we've ever had," he said

Uh huh. Simple choice. Live in France under Sarkozy, live in Syria under Bashar al-Assad. Or Iraq under that cuddly old fellow Hussein. (Walk in the park, that was.) Give us your answer. Take your time...

Quantum of Solace, by the way, is a really depressing story. Bond's not even in it, really other than as a bookend. It's a story being told to him by some Brit official at a party in Jamaica or somewhere about this couple where the fellow was a nice guy and the wife ran around on him with the tennis pro. The fellow commits suicide out of shame and leaves her alone and penniless. See? The Bond books weren't all women and gadgets and car chases.

No fate but what we make...

Wow. Sarah Connor Chronicles is well worth your time. For the moment it's my new favorite show. I think the first two episodes (there are three) are freebies on-line right now. Tiny spoilers ahead.

They manage some great shout-outs to the original movies. I think the only really heavy-handed one (that still works) is "Come with me if you want to live." The fact that Summer Glau's terminator is named "Cameron" still makes me giggle. They used the ending of T2 (which is the first shot of the show, BTW) to muddy the waters enough so that even the stuff you "know" becomes a little uncertain. Judgment Day has moved around, but it's still going to happen. They even figured out a nod to Terminator 3!

I'm sure the folk that have seen the Terminator movies way more time than I have can find some bigger errors than I did. So far the only detail I think they missed was humans aren't hacking and wheezing and puking after time travel. The timeline seems fairly solid. I'm not sure I ever did the math that T2 happens not too long before Judgement Day - John is born in 1984/85 and he's twelvish. So it's 1997ish (even though the movie was in 1991.) I don't entirely buy that Sarah was supposed to be 18 in Terminator. Sure, ok, why not? (18 looked a lot older when I was 15.) The one thing they really threw out is the idea that there was no more time travel after Reese and Arnold made their first trip to 1984. T2 didn't worry about it too much either. Turns out there was a LOT of time traveling. Of course these people are from farther in the future, so who knows what happened THEN? (Seems like they didn't invent that FX intensive liquid metal.) And time is a lot less circular than it was in the first movie. Again, that also went out the window with the second movie.

This show is giving me some of the same vibe that BSG used to give me when they would pick the solutions that would WORK even if they didn't "feel good". (It all went to heck entertaining and still very watchable heck after Pegasus.) Sarah vs. Cameron is a great conflict. Talk about Tin Man.

The show addresses some of the issues that bugged me about T2 to the point where I didn't even enjoy it anymore (and almost all at the end). (Yes, I know there are deleted scenes that show that Arnold could learn. Don't care.) My favorite fix so far? Cameron is a lot less malleable than Arnold was in T2. She only listens to John. And according to her, John isn't John yet. (I love that.) She'll do the ruthless unthinkable things that future John and Kyle Reese would have done that Sarah might not. She's not nearly as cards-on-the-table as Arnold. There's some secrets to her mission she hasn't let on. And she was clearly devoted to future John. She looks at John with a little bit of wonder and disgust at why he isn't yet who he's going to be.

Sarah is a really terrific mix of the "girl next door" that she was in T1, a devoted mom, and trying to be the super-tough warrior of the future. She's not as accepting of that last role as she was in T2. More like she was in T1. And by this point she's really really really tired. They've also done some nice work with what kind of events would have been triggered after T2. And Sarah is still having some pretty vivid nightmares. (Interesting question: If nuclear Armageddon is a certainty and you have visitors from the future telling you about it's outcome, is it worth prolonging WW II by having the Los Alamos team retroactively whacked?)

John is ok. I like him more than I did in T2. Way more than T3. (Ok, the very end of T3 still rocks.) It will be an interesting sub-plot (even if it's just hinted at) about how he gets from 1999 tech to learning 2008. (And computer geeks knew about browser history in 1999 too. It wasn't QUITE stone knives and bear skins.) What a seven year period to jump. Yikes. There are some historical details they're going to have to catch up on very quickly. And did you SEE who's governor of California?!?

Oh, the time jump. Very nice. Allows them to keep the movie continuity and still not have to deal with it being 1999 all the time. I'm sure we'll learn more about some of the details surrounding that later.

I like the FBI subplot. It always bugs me when the authorities are willfully stupid about the inexplicable. This guy seems convincible. He won't quite be the inspector Gerard of The Terminator. I'm betting he will be part of the team or dead by the end of the season.

I hope they continue to grow the resistance subplot slowly. And so far, no flash-forwards to the War. I hope they're holding those in reserve.

I wonder if they know where they're going with this? We've got three seasons till Judgment Day, right? To say nothing of Terminator 4 with Christian Bale as John waiting in the wings. Will this show really tell a whole story? Do they have a plan?

I wonder who or what they're holding in the wings? What about our friendly psychiatrist from T1 and T2? Will we see Kyle Reese as a kid? That's the biggest time-travel related "Huh"? If JD doesn't happen in ''97 and the resistance apparently gets shifted accordingly, isn't Kyle going to be quite a bit older when Skynet falls? Or is Sarah's Kyle from an "alternate future"? It's all so complicated.

And will Fox actually tolerate having a sci-fi hit? This could be ground breaking. Go writer's strike! (Until we need new eps, of course.)

God speed, Mr. Spock

Well, however the movie turns out, this just gets the blood pumping.

It's certainly not what I was expecting to see. But it looks cool. And it still feels like we'll boldly go. I've decided I don't give a hang what they do, so long as it feels as fun as old-school Trek. Go, J.J., go!

40 years ago... No, wait...

I had been anticipating this past Christmas Eve's blog post for some time now. It would be the FORTIETH anniversary of mankind's first ever excursion from the confines of Terran orbit. (Why is "Gaia" so cool and accepted? Terra has always been SO much cooler.) Apollo 8. Frank, Jim, and Bill. Out and about.

Then it hit me: That wasn't the year. You can tell because 2007 doesn't end with an 8. Then it hit me some more: I'm NOT going to be forty this month! Whooooo!

So anyway, forty years ago we were still a year out from the Apollo 1 fire. (I should have noted that last January, but I didn't.) Heck, forty years ago we were still almost a year away from Apollo 7, the first manned launch of the Apollo program, and the first time back into space since Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin splashed down in November of 1966. Put another way: There were no American spaceflights for almost the entire run of Star Trek.

Well, gives me plenty of time to write up THAT entry..

Cine Capri - a Followup

Here's a nice link with a TEENY picture of THE BIG GREEN WALL. Read the comments. Lot of info there.

The Cine Capri 1966-1998

Can anyone believe it's been ten years? Goodness.

The Cine Capri was THE movie theater in Phoenix, Arizona. It showed Star Wars exclusively for over a year in 1977 / 1978. Exclusively. One theater. One screen. Imagine that. If you saw Star Wars in the Valley first run, you saw it at the Capri. I did not. I saw it (at night) in Rocky Hill, Connecticut.

But I got to see the theatrical release of Battlestar Galactica. In SENSOROUND! If I'm remembering correctly, this was the cut where they actually killed Baltar. When they put it on TV they realized that 1) John Colicos was COOL and 2) that people are cheaper to film than robots. (Although they did introduce Lucifer - to an eight year old, this was a subtle and crafty name. But then so was Adam-a.)

Then The Empire Strikes Back opened. Imagine the coolest movie ever made having a sequel - that was ALSO the coolest movie ever made! I know there's been one since then. Ok, X2 is close. But seriously. And this was my first Cine Capri Line. There was this BIG GREEN TILED WALL (that I have NO pictures of). You'd get your tickets, then you'd stand in line next to this wall. There was a small misunderstanding of procedure (get tickets, THEN stand in line) so we didn't get in to see Empire on our first attempt. I apologize for any atrocities I committed or promised that night. I was eleven.

But when we DID get to see it... Oh, my. This was the second Star Wars. We didn't know how it would work. We didn't know that the beginning and ending would be the same for all NINE (NINE, George, you said NINE - not that we WANT three more movies now, thank you) movies. So when the crowd before us came out and I heard THE music... You think I'm excitable NOW?

We didn't see many movies at the Capri when I was a kid. Galactica, Empire, Fantasia (that I sadly walked out on and went to play Asteroids in the lobby. Uncultured twerp.)

The next movie I saw was Aliens (1986). AND we saw it immediately after watching Alien on videotape. I had never seen it. So I got to see them back to back. That was just cool.

Lotta movie over the next ten years. Probably the biggest event was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Lawrence of Arabia had played before that and it had gone long every night that it ran (it had an intermission - I've talked about this). The night Indy opened was no exception. So as we stood in the 100 degree heat at midnight, some over-caffeinated (or whatever) fanboy ran up to the lobby to MOON the camera crews inside. Well, he was running a LITTLE too fast. He wound up slamming into the window with his bare bottom, and cracking the glass! (Hrmmm, do I change the word choice? Noooo...) He then limped off into the night, bleeding a little, and was not heard from again.

Finally got to see the ORIGINAL Star Wars there in 1993. Drove down from Prescott a couple times for it. Ahhhhh. While I was in Ohio they ran all three. The only time the original Jedi played at the Capri.

We saw Independence Day at four in the morning on opening night. It was on, we were up.

Then there were the Star Wars Special Editions. (Little did we know...)

Which means I have to tell the Empire story. Some friends where sitting many rows in front of me. There was an altercation involving 1) my friends 2) a jerk 3) stupid kids and 4) a theater sized cup of Coke. There was flinging and shouting and dousing. But from many rows back, it played like this:

Luke: How am I to know the good side from the bad.
Yoda: You will KNOW. When you are calm. At peace...
Voice: F*** YOU! G**-D*** IT! AAAAARGH!

Gone to the dark side, had they.

A year later there would be a smoking hole there. And then an anonymous office complex. The land was too valuable. And the Powers That Be decided that they would take no chances. There was a night club at the site that nobody cared about. They were allowed to stay open until they actually needed the land. But TPB knew that every moment the Capri stood was another moment for some fool petition to succeed and keep the Capri open. So as the closing credits of Titanic rolled, ten years ago today, they started to dismantle the theater. Some of us got bits of the signature green tiling from the wall (I gave mine away as soon as I got it, but I know folks that have theirs). The next day it was gone.

There are several new "Cine Capri" Auditoriums. They're nice. I like them. But they don't even come close. Not even close.

Movies that I saw at the Cine Capri:

Battlestar Galactica
Fantasia
The Empire Strikes Back
Aliens
Tucker
Lawrence of Arabia
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
The Abyss
Back to the Future part II
Back to the Future part III (?)
Days of Thunder
Memphis Belle
The Godfather Part III
Batman Returns
Far and Away
Casablanca
Addams Family
Star Wars
Blade Runner (Director's Cut)
Jurassic Park
My Fair Lady (Added)
The Fugitive
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Belle de jour
Toy Story
Mr. Holland's Opus
Twister
Mission: Impossible
The Rock
Independence Day
Star Trek: First Contact
Evita
Star Wars SE
The Empire Strikes Back SE
Return of the Jedi SE
Contact
Das Boot
LA Confidential
Devil's Advocate
Starship Troopers
Titanic