The Big Trail. (20th Century Fox; 122 minutes; unrated; widescreen; 1930). It was fairly common in the 1960s to see John Wayne in a widescreen western, but downright revolutionary to witness a much younger Duke romping about the rectangular frame in a 1930 horse opera. Director Raoul Walsh’s The Big Trail was indeed a Big Picture with a $2 million price tag, photographed in a 70mm process known as Grandeur. The Fox studio had similar grand plans for the widescreen technique—although in 1930 the flick could only be shown on two screens retrofitted for the occasion, in the industry markets of New York City and Los Angeles. 

A teen drug dealer experiences life lessons in The Wackness

The piquant coming-of-age comedy-drama The Wackness (Sony Classics; 99 minutes; R; widescreen; 2008) adheres to the time-honored tropes of the genre. You just know, for instance, that the storybook romance between the shlumpy nice guy and the seemingly unattainable popular gal ultimately won’t work out. Yet writer-director Jonathan Levine constantly keeps this indie flick fresh and funny, with sympathetic characters brought to life by a top-shelf cast.

 

Pixar animator Dylan Brown discusses the painstaking

computer process behind cartoon hits like Wall-E

By Meaghan Arbital Pixar Animation Studios continues to break new cartooning ground with its current crowd-pleaser Wall-E, which concerns the outer space antics of a lonely robot. Such a cutting-edge success story explains why the fifth annual Syracuse International Film Festival hosted a May 2 seminar on “New Technologies in Animation” at Armory Square’s Museum of Science and Technology. Area high school students learned plenty on the subject from someone in the know: Dylan Brown, a supervising animator for the Emeryville, Calif.-based company.

Be Kind Rewind. (New Line; 102 minutes; PG-13; widescreen; 2008). One of the last films released by New Line Cinema before parent company Warner Brothers absorbed the struggling mini-major earlier this year, this wacky comedy from writer-director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) is another self-valentine for the movies-about-movies genre. In other words, think of behind-the-scenes works like Francois Truffaut’s Day for Night and Peter Bogdonovich’s Nickelodeon, where the love of all things cinematic often transcends the boundaries between real life and reel magic.

Get Smart. (Warner Bros.; 110 minutes; PG-13; 2008). This summer’s comedy crop has been on the mild side, best typified by this big-screen revamping of the beloved 1960s-era TV spy spoof that asks one key question: Would you believe it’s easier to blow up buildings instead of creating funny one-liners? Yes, the old Don Adams sitcom created by yukmeisters Buck Henry and Mel Brooks, which treasured deadpan wit, repetitive catch-phrases (“Sorry about that, Chief!”) and silly sophomoric puns (one episode concerning a mad scientist named Rath and his killer gorillas was titled, naturally, “The Apes of Rath”), has been expanded millennial-style into the usual summertime blockbuster with lots of explosions, stunts and car chases.

 

Rome’s Capitol Theatre, 220 W. Dominick St., continues its yearlong 80th birthday with a drive-in-style double bill on Thursday, July 24, 7 p.m. Two 35mm movies will be screened: the 1961 monster mash Gorgo (pictured), as a mama dinosaur smashes London to find her baby (a plot borrowed for Steven Spielberg’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park) and 1964’s Face of the Screaming Werewolf, with Lon Chaney Jr. emoting within the confines of a badly dubbed Mexican horror flick. Admission is $1.50 for adults, 75 cents for children, with a concession stand that will also feature grilled hamburgers and hot dogs for the occasion. For information, call 337-6453.

Sydney Pollack is feted in the new interview series Under the Influence

By Bill DeLapp

Maybe the real reason that so many people were surprised by director Sydney Pollack’s May 26 death from cancer at age 73 was that he looked so damn good right up to the end. Judging from his appearance on the new interview series Under the Influence, a half-hour hosted by New York Times movie critic Elvis Mitchell that kicks off a four-week Monday night run during July on cable’s Turner Classic Movies, Pollack comes across as both spiritually vital and physically relaxed throughout the anecdote-spinning and bumper crop of old photos and film clips.

Dirty Harry. (Warner Bros.; 102 minutes; R; widescreen; 1971). A crazed sniper who calls himself Scorpio (chillingly played by Andy Robinson) terrorizes San Francisco, which happens to be the turf of police inspector Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood), who’s plenty perturbed anyway about how the broken justice system mollycoddles the perps and ignores the rights of innocent victims. Callahan violates numerous civil liberties to nail this unremorseful sicko-rapist, but when Scorpio gets freed by the courts on a technicality, Callahan predicts more mayhem because, as the inspector declares, “He likes it.” So goes the cat-and-mouse plotting for director Don Siegel’s police thriller, still memorably taut and played with style and conviction nearly 40 years later; the movie’s about justice and it gets plenty in this new double-disc DVD edition issued by Warner Home Video.

The Rape of Europa. (Menemesha Films; 116 minutes; unrated; 2006). Adolf Hitler had a master plan, all right, but you probably won’t know its sense of sweeping detail until you see this provocative documentary, based on the book of the same name by Lynn H. Nicholas, and adapted by the writer-producer-director triumvirate of Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen and Nicole Newnham. The madman had more on his mind than the ethnic cleansing of millions through extermination; Hitler’s drawing board consisted of which countries were ripe for takeover, but he also plotted the city-by-city plundering of priceless artworks from various museums and collections, which in turn provided more lasting culture shocks for the hapless folk who had to surrender to his military might.  

Gore galore dominates two scary evenings at Eastwood’s Palace Theatre

By Bill DeLapp

For those in the mood for old-school buckets of blood, Eastwood’s Palace Theatre, 2384 James St., fills that need with two fright nights this weekend. Friday, June 13, offers screenings of three features, while zombie costumes, hard rock and a quintet of creepshows will take over all day and into the night on Saturday, June 14, for the fourth annual Shaun Luu Horror Fest. (See Tom Kahley’s What’s Shakin’ item for price configurations or call 463-9240 for information.)