Movie critic Duncan Shepherd answers critics, Vincente Minnelli, Robert Rossellini visit UCSD

Squeezing Cinemascope into a TV screen, San Diego's movie theaters on the line

Author

By Duncan Shepherd

Publish Date

Nov. 30, 2020

Sound of Music — one star (low rating), a judgement criticized by readers.

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 | Read full article

Vincent Minnelli (left) in Copley Auditorium discussion: "It's all intuitive."

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.

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 | Read full article

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.

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 | Read full article

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)

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 | Read full article

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.

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 | Read full article