A gelatinous cube of fury

Breaking Away¹, Somewhere in Time², Dragonslayer³,and A Christmas Story⁴ are wating for me when I get home; between them, it's really surprising just how many of my happy pre-adolescent memories they comprise.

¹ Fun trivia fact: this movie was edited by Roy Scheider's ex-wife, Cynthia; it was her first film as a solo editor (she assisted on a few others, including The Missouri Breaks, if I recall), and she was nominated for an Oscar for it. Also, man, Dennis Quaid was a hunk (and still is.)

² I still can't believe that this was directed by Jeannot Szwarc, the guy who did Jaws 2 (speaking of Roy Scheider); that's directorial range, all right. (I also can't believe that whenever I think of this movie or Bid Time Return, the novel from which it was adapted, I'm surprised afresh to see that they were written by Richard Matheson, and not Jack Finney. Just goes to show how strongly I imprinted on Time and Again as a kid, I guess.

³ Another fun trivia fact: this movie and Alien are, too the best of my knowledge, the only two feature films ever shot by Derek Vanlint (although I think he directed something with Dennis Hopper in it a few years ago); he went on to shoot commercials for a living. Pity; he's brilliant. Not much else to say about this, other than that Matthew Robbins is an underrated director; he hasn't made a film in about fifteen years, more's the pity (although he let Peter MacNicol get away with being a shade *too* feckless in his part. Still, any director who shows us Ralph Richardson declaiming in Latin can be forgiven quite a bit, in my book.)

⁴ I can't seem to find the link right now, but some guy bought the house from this movie, and outfitted it as it appears in the film, leg-shaped-lamp-selling gift store and all. To think- this movie was directed by Bob Clark, who's best known for Porky's. Who knew?