The unforgivable crime: missing this film...

Every now and then you see something so fresh and well made that it manages to immediately sink its claws into you, leaving no doubt that you're seeing a modern classic. The last time that happened was with the sensational Let the Right One In. It just happened again with A Prophet (Un prophète), the best thing to happen to crime and gangsters since season one of The Sopranos.

A Prophet has the raw vigor of Scorsese's Mean Streets and is such a refreshing lesson in craft and economy, it puts most recent films to shame. The Grand Prix winner at Cannes, A Prophet follows Malik (Tahar Rahim, in virtually every scene) from his first day in a French prison, where survival draws him into the service of an aging Corsican mafia boss, learning all the while, often at extreme peril.

French director Jacques Audiard must be flooded with offers after his work here. While very much an old school tale of hard boiled crime, the movie feels completely fresh and inventive and new. Malik may remind you of young Michael Corleone at times, though it may ultimately be DeNiro's young Vito (from II) whose footsteps he follows the closest.

PLEASE don't let the French subtitles and any lack of familiarity with Arab/Corsican culture keep you from seeing the best mob picture in ages. Imagine a really raw episode of Oz or The Wire blended with Goodfellas and La Femme Nikita era Besson and you'll have an idea of what lies in store. No opportunity is wasted, a lesson that Malik and director Audiard have both clearly mastered. Highly recommended.

Khan-tacular! Trek in the Park 2010: Space Seed!

It's no exaggeration to say that in the middle of its second summer run, Trek in the Park has become a bona fide Portland phenomenon - a tradition that should have a long and happy life!

The brainchild of Atomic Arts and director/Captain Kirk, Adam Rosko, this year finds yet another classic Original Series Star Trek episode performed live and for free in the crowded-to-exploding outdoor setting of Portland's Woodlawn Park.

Kirk, Spock and McCoy are wonderfully played by the same three actors who originated the roles in last year's Amok Time. This year the cast has been joined for Space Seed by the phenomenal Ryan Castro as Khan Noonian Singh, who inhabits the role with exactly the right amounts of genetically superior superman ego and sly Montalban homage. Costumes and props are amazingly accurate, right down to the Botany Bay crew jumpsuits to the Starfleet dress uniforms.

Trek in the Park has a small army of sponsors now, including Bridge City Comics, The Portland Mercury and ...Pabst Blue Ribbon! This is wonderful to see, but be advised, the word is out and so are the crowds.

Make no mistake, miss this production at your own peril. The cast and crew are spectacular and completely embody the phrase "labor of love." The show continues for two more weekends through August 1st, Saturdays and Sundays at 5:00.

As the show is free (you can buy fantastic T-shirts!), you'll want to get your landing party planted in the amphitheater at least two hours before the show to have a prayer of seeing things from up close. My advice, pack up and get there early...and prepare for a fantastic experience.

Here are a few highlights...

More Cheese, Stewardess...

When shag was king, being an airline pilot was the coolest occupation a kid could aspire to. So it may be memories of that childhood icon of the pilot as hero that led us to recently revisit some of the Airport movies.

It might be hard, but if you can put your Airplane! parody goggles on the shelf, it’s fascinating to look at these movies as time-capsules of seventies culture and Hollywood’s endless appetite for sequels.

Little did they know, but Airport (1970) would become the template for the entire burgeoning disaster movie genre. It all began here with pilot Dean Martin, Jacqueline Bisset, Burt Lancaster and George Kennedy as cigar-chomping “Joe Patroni,” who appeared in all four films. Pilot Martin’s affair with Bisset’s stewardess has taken an unexpected turn (for them, if not the audience), someone on the plane has a bomb and Kennedy is determined to make anything mechanical do his bidding: “That's one nice thing about the 707. She can do everything but read." Airport is a classic of the era and was always an event when it aired on TV growing up. By far the classiest, least contrived of the series, it was wildly popular and holds up beautifully.

Things really get hopping in Airport 1975, with Charlton Heston in full-on Omega Man mode, aviator shades and leisure suit safari jacket as “Alan Murdock” – now that is a manly name! You’ve got a singing nun, Hare Krishnas and Linda Blair as a transplant patient. But the real reason to scream is when a mid-air collision requires stewardess Karen Black to fly the plane. “THE STEWARDESS IS FLYING THE PLANE!!!” One of the classic disaster movies, it’s over the top, contains a huge amount of the material mocked in Airplane! but really captures the era and never stops trying to entertain.

Airport ‘77 is a kitchen-sink plot explosion featuring Jack Lemmon, Jimmy Stewart, Christopher Lee (as an ineffectual cuckold! Say it ain’t so!), Brenda Vaccaro and Darren McGavin, blustering around like he just walked in from the set of The Night Stalker. Terrorist/robbers take over the plane, which crashes into an off shore oil rig (not another one!!!) sending the plane plunging into…the Bermuda Triangle!!! – which doesn’t really figure into the plot at all, but hey! The survivors are trapped in the sunken fuselage, à la The Poseidon Adventure, their rescue in the hands of a special group of short-shorts wearing Navy commandos who are evidently based out of Fire Island. Billionaire Stewart’s plane is like a private hotel lobby, with no expense spared – there’s even a blind piano player in the bar! Kept waiting for McGavin to suddenly go all Kolchak on Lee (“Wait a minute, you’re Dracula!!!”), but that never happened. Everything else pretty much did!

The series wraps up with The Concorde…Airport ’79, with Alain Delon, blink-and-you’ll-miss-her Charo, evil Robert Wagner and Jimmie Walker. A seemingly endless sight gag is Martha Raye’s charge for the bathroom, evidently gripped by the worst attack of diarrhea in movie history. Even more nausea inducing is John Davidson’s creepy “tongue-first” kissing style with his Soviet gymnast girlfriend. Shudder…The greatest thing about this movie is the footage of the actual Concorde supersonic plane in flight, which was a pretty spectacular piece of engineering, sadly no longer flying. Which is a shame, considering how amazing the plane apparently was at dodging jet fighters, missiles and performing barrel-roll evasive maneuvers. This time Kennedy takes the controls, because no Frenchman’s gonna out-fly an American! Petroni is all man, bedding hookers in Paris and making with such bon mots as, “They don’t call it the cockpit for nothing.”

If you haven’t seen an Airport movie in a while, and if you love the Seventies, they are pretty fascinating to behold and truly capture the flamboyance of the era. All four films are available in a reasonably priced Terminal pack for added convenience.

And if you ask me, pilots are still some of the coolest guys out there. Whenever I travel, I'm always reassured seeing the seasoned flightcrew up at the controls...so long as its not Karen Black!

When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the Earth...

Back in my February 6th posting I mentioned my unbridled glee at news of Robert Kirkman's killer cult comic The Walking Dead being turned into a new TV series on AMC (Mad Men, Breaking Bad) by none other than Frank freaking Darabont!!!

Well a week ago, this pipe dream began shooting on location. Here's a taste of the kind of mayhem that awaits when this sucker hits AMC in October. Thank you, Frank, thank you!!!

"Attorneys Assemble!!!"

If you've never seen some of the truly staggering, bald-faced overseas knock-offs of licensed American characters, prepare to be amazed!!! You have to travel far and wide to find these hysterically "inspired" gems...

Hot off the presses: The Passage!!!

This book comes out Tuesday and sounds astonishing. Justin Cronin has a literary pedigree that includes the Pen/Hemingway award, the Stephen Crane prize and in The Passage, he’s created an epic story about a virus that nearly destroys the world, turning the infected into ravenous, vampiric “Virals,” who have nothing in common with Stephanie Meyer’s undead.

The first of a three-novel saga about the quest to bring the world back from hell itself, reviews (including an enthusiastic Stephen King) suggest this is that rare work that combines both high literary craftsmanship and visceral, addictive storytelling.

Can’t wait for this one!

Blame the movies!!!

Can you say "Box office poison?" So can everyone else! The numbers are in (adjusted for inflation) and this was the worst Memorial Day at the U.S. box office since 1993 -- the summer of Cliffhanger, Super Mario Brothers, Free Willy and ultimately, Jurassic Park.

Putz (I mean Prince) of Persia and Sex in the City 2 (great title!) were the slim pickings Hollywood offered up this year and neither one could even take first place, losing out to the 4th (and poorest reviewed) chapter in the Shrek franchise. Maybe if you have silk scarves hanging up as window treatments, you might consider these two tentpole features. But in a season traditionally dominated by solid action and clever spectacle, these two turnips fell hard -- great news for the American public as evidently we're a bit more discriminating than we're given credit for! We were offered boring choices and we stayed away. Evidently in the post-Avatar world we're now going to insist on something fresh and interesting and exploding with action. We'll wait for the quality goods -- great news for Splice this weekend and also for next week's The A-Team, as there's very little else on deck as far as big scale action. Should make for a colossal Toy Story 3 opening later this month, as it's such a beloved brand. That box office (and 3-D prices) should help turn the lackluster tide.

What's the take-away lesson? Bad word of mouth kills. Good word of mouth rules.