SUMMER 2007
JUNE 29 - JULY 1
SWASHBUCKLER MARATHON!
THE SEA HAWK, THE CRIMSON PIRATE, KING SOLOMON'S MINES
School's out and we can't think of a better way to mark the true beginning of summer than with a marathon of macho derring-do, hungry cannibals, and treacherous terrain from the deepest jungles to the highest seas. Move over, Captain Jack Sparrow and Indiana Jones! Not only do these films have superior star power -- Errol Flynn, Burt Lancaster and Stewart Granger -- but these were also the movies that inspired all the action and adventure films that followed. They have all the sword fighting, plank walking, animal stampeding, high-seas highjinks, and romance worthy of the adventure genre, and none of the digital effects! Free popcorn to anyone who comes to these films dressed as a pirate or British explorer. Free candy bars to all Deborah Kerr impersonators!
Sponsored by Broadway Market Video
Family-friendly community B-B-Q on Friday at 6 PM - Free for moviegoers!
JUNE 29 - JULY 1, Fri-Sun at 2 PM
THE SEA HAWK
(Michael Curtiz, USA, 1940, 35mm, 127 min)
This is it -- the ultimate Errol Flynn pirate movie! The film opens with a high-octane high-seas battle, as debonair English patriot and gentleman pirate Geoffrey Thorpe (Flynn) and his band of buccaneers overtake and sink a Spanish ship. Amidst the mayhem, the dashing Thorpe meets, rescues and falls in love with the beautiful but snobbish niece of the Spanish Ambassador (the lovely Brenda Marshall). Unrequited love leaves him temporarily tongue-tied, but he's soon back in fighting form sailing to the New World to steal more treasure from Spain and reroute it back to the English Crown. Of course, he must win the heart of the beautiful girl as well! THE SEAHAWK was nominated for four Academy Awards, including one for the majestic, soaring score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.
"Flynn's most sophisticated and startling film." -Jeffrey M. Anderson, Combustible Celluloid
JUNE 29 - JULY 1, Fri-Sun at 4:30 PM
THE CRIMSON PIRATE
(Robert Siodmak, USA, 1952, 35mm, 104 min)
See Burt Lancaster in his acrobatic glory in this lighthearted and lusty Technicolor adventure. Lancaster plays the dashing El Vallo (a.k.a. "The Crimson Pirate") who must persuade his merry band of buccaneers to venture into the gunrunning business after they overtake a Spanish galleon full of munitions. Of course, the Crimson Pirate needs to make sure that the arsenal finds its way into favorably rebellious hands as well! Lancaster, a circus acrobat before he became a movie star, performs all his own eye-popping stunts, as does his co-star and real-life circus buddy Nick Cravat. The beautiful Eva Bartok, looking and sounding like a young Geena Davis, plays Lancaster's love interest, Consuelo.
"Brave, vigorous, handsome, and an actor of great range, Lancaster never yielded in his immaculate splendor, proud to be a movie actor. He was one of the great stars. Perhaps the last." -David Thomson, film critic
JUNE 29 - JULY 1, Fri-Sun at 7 PM
KING SOLOMON'S MINES
(Compton Bennett and Andrew Marton, USA, 1950, DVD, 101 min)
This is the "Great White Hunter" tale to top all others, and by far the best screen adaptation of H. Rider Haggard's African adventure novels (there have been three). Stewart Granger gives an unforgettable performance as Allan Quatermain, a burnt out explorer who is reluctantly persuaded to accompany an Englishwoman (Deborah Kerr, never looking more beautiful) deep into uncharted Africa to search for her missing husband. Animal stampedes, magnificent Watusi dance scenes, gorgeous African scenery and, of course true love, ensue. Shot in Technicolor on magnificent locations, with a cast of hundreds of native performers and tribesmen, this film is equal parts ripping adventure yarn, love story, and indelible document of a vanished Africa. KING SOLOMON'S MINES won Academy Awards for Best Cinematography, Best Color, and Best Film Editing, and was nominated for Best Picture.
"In the end you begin to accept it all... You watch things hunting and being hunted, reproducing, killing and dying, it's all endless and pointless, except in the end one small pattern emerges from it all, the only certainty: one is born, one lives for a time then one dies, that is all...” -lead character Allan Quatermain.
"[KING SOLOMON’S MINES] is what hooked me on movies in my own childhood." -Jack Matthews, New York Daily News
