Doug’s List of the Best of TV and Movies in 2010

I know you don’t care about my tastes but since my Mom refuses to read my stuff any more I have to post it some where. Here are my lists of the best TV and movies of 2010.

TV Shows

10. Rules of Engagement
9. Cougar Town
8. Parenthood
7. Sherlock
6. The Middle
5. Community
4. Modern Family
3. Big Bang Theory
2. The Good Wife
1. Mad Men

Movies (not in any particular preference)

The Crazies
The Kids Are All Right
Due Date
The Other Guys
Despicable Me
The Town
Easy A
McGuber
The Switch
Toy Story 3
All Good Things
Winter’s Bone

These picks are based on the TV and movies that I have actually seen. YMMV.

Growing up in movie theaters in Findlay Ohio

The day after Christmas, Turner Classic Movies had a Disney live action movie marathon. It included favorites of mine like “The Apple Dumpling Gang” (1975) and “The Love Bug” (1968). It got me remembering about my experiences at the movie theater when I was a kid back in Findlay. Many of the places I saw movies at are now long gone but I still remember them as if it were yesterday.

My earliest movie watching experiences involve two theaters that were in downtown Findlay. I saw “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” (1971) at the State Theater and months later I saw “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” (1971) at the Harris Theater which was across the street from the State. 

We were late to Willy Wonka and missed probably 30 minutes of the movie. What we did was decide not to leave at the end of the movie and we watched the first 30 minutes of the next showing.

The Harris Theater was, I think, the oldest and creepiest theater. I’m pretty sure it had a closed balcony which creeped me out during Bedknobs and Broomsticks. I swore I saw people up there.

The State later burned down and around the same time the Harris closed and was torn down. Both were gone before 1980.

The next focal point for my movie history was two theaters that opened in the Shopping center area on Tiffin Ave in Findlay. One was called Cinema World and the other opened as The Jerry Lewis Twin and then later renamed Twin Palace. Cinema World was located behind the Fort Findlay Mall and had six screens while the Twin Palace had two screens.

I saw classics like “Superman the Movie” (1978) and “The Empire Strikes Back” (1980) at Cinema World. The best time though was when Glenwood Junior High rented out a screen so all the English classes could see “The Dark Crystal” (1982). The movie was cool and getting out of school to watch a feature movie was great.

I had a couple of great memories of the Twin Palace. Once I went to the movies with a neighbor and her daughter. The Moms went to one screen to see “All the President’s Men” (1976) and us kids were sent to the other screen showing “The Outlaw Josey Wales” (1976). The adults thought a political movie would be too boring so we got see a western with a lot of violence. The best part was we were the only people watching Josey Wales at that showing and the usher hooked us up with a free bucket of popcorn and two small cokes.

The other Twin Palace memory was seeing “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981) with my Aunt and her kids. Even back then the concession prices were steep especially for our group of seven people. We decided to sneak in some snacks and pop. Back then we didn’t have those 20 oz plastic bottles of soda. We had 16 oz glass long neck bottles that you would take back to the store for a deposit toward another purchase. Well either me or my cousin finished our pop and had set the bottle on the floor. Then during a quiet moment of the film the whole theater hears *CLINK*. There is still some debate if I knocked it over or if he did but the bottle *clinked* on the floor and then rolled down towards the screen going *clink…clink…clink…clink…clink…clink…clink…clink…clink*. We both scrunched down in our seats to try to hide while the other kids laughed at us.

Carmike Theaters later bought both locations and closed Twin Palace while moving Cinema World into the mall and adding more screens. In the last ten years it built a stand alone 12 screen theater on the west side of town.

Another kid memory from the 70’s was when Findlay’s first McDonald’s on Tiffin Ave opened. It was before 1976 because the restaurant was the old white and yellow walk up style. In 1976 our second McDonald’s opened on Trenton Ave on the West side with the classic brown color scheme and the iconic mansard roof line.

The opening of the first restaurant was a city event. Tons of people were there and as a special event Ronald McDonald was flown in by helicopter! I’m pretty sure he was dropped off by a Sikorsky H-34 in what was then an empty field across the street from the new restaurant. The field was next to the old Frosty Mug root beer stand.

Summer movies I love

I got to see Spider-Man 3 this weekend and it was pretty good. There was a lot of “stuff” crammed into the 2 1/2 hours with many story threads. The part I liked best was several shots of Peter Parker tooling around the city on his beat-up scooter. And there were a few out loud funny bits involving J Jonah Jamison.

This weekend was Superhero weekend for me. I rented the DVD of Superman Returns which I saw last summer and I fell in love with the film all over again. I forgot I wrote a review on IMDB so here is a clip of that:

When an iconic film is remade you can go two ways – totally go down a different road and destroy what made the previous film iconic – think “Poseidon”, or you can do what Bryan Singer did and almost duplicate the feel and humanity from the previous Superman series of the late 70’s early 80’s.

This isn’t just a rehash but Singer tips his hat enough to the Donner directed films to satisfy this old fan and bring enough of current culture to satisfy new fans.

It starts with the return of the classic style for the opening credits and liberal amounts of the fantastic John Williams score. I did expect to hear some hip-hop or some bland pop music but luckily that wasn’t the case.

A Great Homage to Donner and Reeve

One of my favorite scenes is actually the first time that Superman reveals to the world that he is back and comes about 40 minutes into the film. Lois is on an airplane covering the launch of a new version of the Space Shuttle when a blackout scrambles the computers and the Shuttle can’t detach from the jet she is on. The main engines come on and sends Lois flying to the back of the plane and as she is struggling to reach an oxygen mask she happens to look out the window and *blip* sees Superman streak by to save her and all those on the plane. The look on her face and the music cue just chokes me up every time. Real tears.

The last part of the sequence is also a hoot. After Superman sets the plane down on the ground, he rips the door off and goes inside. He asks if everyone is okay and he and Lois make eye contact. Then after a bit of a pause he says, in a homage to the first Christopher Reeves film, that he hopes the emergency doesn’t put people off flying and that statistically it is the safest way to travel. He then flies off. Lois stands at the door watching him leave then she faints and falls down the emergency slide.

Here is a clip from that sequence so you can see why I love it so much:

I hope the coming summer movie season has a few more favorite scenes that I can watch 50,000 times on DVD.

Thank You Kevin Smith

Back when I was wee lad I saw a Disney movie staring kid actor Johnny Whitaker (of Family Affair fame). It was called “Mystery in Dracula’s Castle”. In the film Whitaker and his friend use a Super 8 movie camera to film a horror movie at an old light house. They stumble on some jewel thieves and the high jinks starts.

What I loved about the movie was it sparked an interest in making my own movies. I went to the library and checked out any book I could find about filmmaking. I wrote some scripts and even did some crude story boards. My problem was that I didn’t own a Super 8 camera. Our family couldn’t afford one and one I did scrounge from my grandma didn’t work AND I couldn’t afford the film.

A few years later I got the bug again but this time I had some money and a local camera store rented movie cameras. It was like pulling teeth getting my mom to rent the camera for me. My first film was a simple 3 minute and 21 second story of a cola test that goes awry and Superman has to save the day. Having no editing equipment I shot the film in sequence at the end of one of my Boy Scout meetings using my troop as the cast. It took like 2 weeks to get the film back from processing and when I saw it for the first time my heart skipped a beat. The focus was a bit dodgy especially in zoom ins but it wasn’t bad.

When I got to Ohio State I found out they had a film department (this was in the mid 80’s). I took the beginning film class and we watched great films and planned to make our own 5 minute film as the final. By now I owned a Super 8 that I bought through a discount catalog so making my project was not a big deal. The film was about a killer issue of TV Guide and the cast had my friend Dave as the hero and girl I liked Heather who played the damsel in distress. The twist was she saved the day by setting the magazine on fire. Hearing my classmates applaud after showing the finished film to them filled me with joy. I knew it was something I had to do – be a filmmaker.

Life led me in another direction and while I continued to write my short stories and enjoy watching films and the process of filmmaking, I didn’t think I would get the bug again. That was until I met director Kevin Smith – again.

Smith wrote and directed the film Clerks. (1994) about a day in the life of a convenience store clerk and his slacker buddies. It was funny and crude. He shot it for $23,000 and change with one 16 mm camera and on black and white film. He sold it at the Sundance Film Festival for about $200,000 to Miramax Studio and it was one of the films that started the independent film craze of the 1990’s (along with Slacker and El Mariachi).

On a lark I bought the 10 year Anniversary DVD of Clerks a few months ago and the parts I loved is the behind the scenes stuff especially the commentary audio. I learned that Kevin was a lot like me growing up wanting to make movies for the passion of making them. He decided in 1993 to do it and he did.

Smith describes himself as a media whore and that is why I like him. He interacts on a daily basis with his fan base and tries to include them on his filmmaking journeys.

This year he started a blog called simply “My Boring Ass Life” where he details, as much as legally possible, his daily life. He writes of going to the bathroom, playing house with his young daughter, having sex with the wife, and the various goings on in Hollywood.

This week he has started filming the sequel to Clerks. called right now “The Passion of the Clerks”. Don’t think it will be a spoof on Mel Gibson’s “Passion of The Christ” but the title is a nice dig on that film.

As Smith says, Passion is a return to the well. I think he is at a point in his career where he wants to revisit the time when he had the most fun making movies. He gave up writing and directing two big films to do the sequel and he brought in the two main actors to reprise their roles from 1994.

He also started a blog detailing the “Train Wreck: The Making of The Passion of the Clerks” where in video entries he gives his fans a sneak look at the making of the film as it is being filmed. I’m sure a lot of the material will show up on the DVD but it is thrilling for me to come along for the ride as if I am on the crew. One entry showed Kevin being fitted for his Silent Bob mullet and another had Dave Klein, the Director of Photography telling about the 4 day camera prep the crew was doing last week to get ready for filming this week. Dave was also the DP on the first Clerks.

Of course being Kevin Smith, he has included a couple of funny fake trailers and spoofs of Hollywood.

The video blog, I’m sure will influence another future filmmaker just as Smith caused me to finally write and finish my first screenplay “Kindred Revision” and enter it in a contest.