From the archives
Movie Reviews

Movie stories by Duncan Shepherd from the 1970s

Vincente Minnelli and Robert Rosselini in San Diego, what happens to Cinemascope on TV, San Diego movie houses, why stars and spots to rate movies

Author
By
Publish Date
From The Gambler. Anyone who has actually engaged in watching The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob, Deep Throat II, Wonder Women, and The Groove TubeLaw and Disorder or The Gambler.

  • Shoot If You Must This Old Grey Head

  • The complainer expects to be in agreement: he is certain that there is some chicanery afoot if his innate common sense clashes with some idea he encounters: and he is undoubtedly the one in Humanities classrooms across the country who declares out loud, citing the fusty wrong-headedness of their ideas, that Plato was an ostrich, Augustine a bat, Strindberg a pig, and Hemingway a lot of bull.
  • August 29, 1974
Sound of Music — one star (low rating), a judgement criticized by readers.

  • The Courtship of Liza's Father

  • When chased down by a question on his working methods — what does he try for in the way of color? In the way of camerawork? — Vincente Minnelli, showing as much wonderment as any onlooker, held up the durable deflection device, "It's all intuitive." In short, the billowy prestige due to movie directors, as a class, was hauled down and folded up, like a sail.
  • September 5, 1974
Vincent Minnelli (left) in Copley Auditorium discussion: "It's all intuitive."

  • Seeing Stars and Spots

  • I am convinced that the entire population will see The Sting, Chinatown, and The Exorcist regardless of anything I might print about them, and that is fine with me; I wish everyone saw more — or at least more varied — movies, and not fewer.
  • November 14, 1974

  • Crop Failure

  • The most obvious damage done to a movie that has been trimmed, cropped, to fit the TV space, is to the composition of the images. It is like a museum trying to fit a painting of The Last Supper into a tight squeeze space by knocking off three or four disciples from each end of the picture.
  • September 13, 1973
A Cinemascope image is in a considerably more extreme ratio (1 x 2.35). Hold up any of the rectangles to your square-ish TV screen and you can begin to whiff some awareness of what you are losing when you watch a movie on TV.

  • Old Movie Critics Never Die

  • I do not care if UCSD students ever get the chance to see Fists of Fury or The Eyes of Hell. Presumably, college students must sit still for enough froth and trivia during their classes all week long without needing to be bothered with more of it when they go to a movie.
  • November 1, 1973
Film director Robert Rossellini with Jonas Salk outside the Marine Room in La Jolla. Fruit salad lunch at the Marine Room, tour of the Salk Institute conducted by Jonas Salk himself, spaghetti dinner at the La Valencia. (Richard Pesin)

  • Movie Houses I Have Known

  • It was probably incorrect to expect anything from this quaint place, with its church-pew seats and windows at the back of the auditorium; one assumed a certain intellectual standing simply because its snack bar dispenses items like guava juice and oatmeal-date bars.
  • December 13, 1973
Sponsored
Sponsored
My private annoyance with Mann Theatres originated when the Loma Theatre, which would prefer to run a movie for all of eternity, held Fiddler on the Roof for a full year.
Related Stories