Copious Notes

Elaborating on '80s movies

Several of the contributors to our celebrity lists of '80s classics commented on their choices. While the Gutenberg edition of the paper has its space limitations, we're in the blogosphere, baby, where word counts are not an object. So, here are the lists from some of our pickers with a little elaboration. Yes, it goes a while, but let's get you started on '80s movies and see if you're overcome with brevity. After Chuck, we have Anne Deck, Brad Riddell and a list from Top Gun scribe Jack Epps, Jr., whose comments are featured in our '80s movies story.

Charles Edward Pogue, screenwriter
The Georgetown resident’s screenplays include 1980s hits Psycho III, D.O.A. and The Fly.

1. Those Lips, Those Eyes -- The story of my life...I'm the starry-eyed kid (Thomas Hulce) and the jaded,cynical pro (Frank  Langella). A story about the seduction of theatre.  I watch this movie whenever I get depressed about the drama game to remind myself why I got in it.

 

2. Barbarosa -- Best western of the 80's. Willie Nelson & Gary Busey. Western legend transcends to western myth.

 

3. Excalibur -- King Arthur's story will always a dying fall. John Boorman's depiction is the best yet.

 

4. Flesh+Blood -- Paul Verhoeven's quirky epic about the Middle Ages slamming into the Renaissance.

 

5. Body Heat -- Kasdan's brings back Film Noir and gives us Kathleen Turner.

 

6. My Favorite Year -- Peter O'Toole ... another great performance; another missed Oscar. (Rich comments: Hard to compete with Gandhi.)

 

7. Bull Durham -- For my money, not a better baseball movie.

 

8. Blood Simple - just edges out Raising Arizona; but the Coen Bros. had to be on the list.

 

9. Crimes of Passion -- Enfant terrible Ken Russell at his mind-boggling loopiest with Tony Perkins and Kathleen Turner along for the outlandish ride.

 

10. The Fly -- A purely selfish choice, I know, but it would probably be on there anyway ... even if I hadn't co-written the screenplay with David Cronenberg.

 

A few near-misses: The Dead, The Dresser, Matewan, Blue Velvet and Airplane.

EW's New classics: Up for debate (of course)

John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. Is it really the No. 1 classic movie of the lat 25 years?

Last weekend, the editors of Entertainment Weekly dropped their annual summer double issue and gave  us a good two weeks of debating material.

Is Pulp Fiction really the best film of the last 25 years?

Does Amy Winehouse's year-old debut already deserve Top 10 classic status?

Public Enemy doesn't make the Top 50?

Yes, it's another set of lists. We say that with no derision, because hey, we're going to give you some lists on Sunday. Lists are fun, because they are always a matter of opinion, which means most everyone who reads one will have some modicum of disagreement with it.

EW's new lists are pretty ambitious: The New Classics is 1,000 of the best movies, TV shows, albums, books and other stuff over the past 25 years. My favorite list was actually the final one: Tech, where they named the, "top 25 innovations that changed entertainment."

Even there though, I'd argue against ranking the iPod at No. 4, below the DVD player, Napster and TiVo. Yes, the DVD is a cool advance in home video, but it still was just another method of delivering the videos in some tangible form. The iPod introduced the concept of owning a whole album without leaving your home, or even just picking and choosing the songs you want; singles, but you choose what's a single. It's the most radical change in the distribution of recorded music since the beginning of recorded music. How do you top that?

See, arguing it is almost inescapable.

Pulp Fiction, for me, was a good place to start. I've always considered it a bit overrated, over romanticized. Good movie, snappy dialog and engaging story structure, but not quite all that.

But if you want to argue towering influence, then its No. 1 seems a bit more legit. How many Pulp wannabes have we seen since 1994? Interestingly, Forrest Gump, the movie that beat Pulp Fiction for the Oscar for best picture, isn't even on EW's Top 100. (It's worth noting that EW has always been in love with Pulp.)

There are some nice picks on the movie list, such as Blue Velvet at No. 4, acknowledging the off-kilter brilliance of David Lynch, and giving Merchant Ivory's A Room with a View a nod at No. 24. The Helena Bonham Carter starmaker ushered in the chick-flick-as-literary-costume-drama era we're still in today.

 The music list had several nice visionary choices, such as Madonna's self-titled 1983 album at No. 5, OutKast's Stankonia at No. 12, and R.E.M.'s Life's Rich Pageant at No. 32. All were great albums, and all set the stage for the artists' subsequent chart toppers -- Like a Virgin, Speakerboxx/The Love Below and Document, respectively. But then, somehow, Nirvana's Nevermind is left off in favor of MTV Unplugged. ?!

See, debating is sooooo easy. And fun.

I will also give EW props for trying to limit the number of entries from any one artist to one or two. I seem to remember years ago when Rolling Stone dropped a list of the best rock albums ever, and half the Top 10 was by The Beatles. But then, that list also gave this young rock fan a lot of listening to go do.

And this list from Entertainment Weekly seems to come at a perfect time, right before the laziest days of summer. I'd write more, but I've got some watching and listening to do.

P.S.: A very cool thing about the Top 50 stage list is that four of the shows -- Angels in America (No. 1), Elaine Stritch at Liberty (17), Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk (24) and Topdog/Underdog (49) were all directed by Frankfort's own George C. Wolf. People, we don't revere this guy enough.

Summer classic: 'The Wizard of Oz'

Idina Menzel as Elphaba and Kristen Chenoweth as Glinda perform Defying Gravity, the green witch's anthem from Wicked, at the 2004 Tony Awards.

For 64 years, we knew how to take The Wizard of Oz's Wicked Witch of the West: She was the green-skinned meanie who wanted to kill sweet Dorothy, and her little dog, too. She commanded the  Flying Monkeys and an iconic cackle. And she looked remarkably like mean old Elmira Gulch, who tried to take little Toto away from Dorothy, before the Kansas girl rode her tornado to Oz.

We hated the Wicked Witch of the West, and a remarkable performance by Margaret Hamilton only enhanced our loathing (ding).

What was that -- "loa-thing, pure and un-adulterated loa-thing."

It's that contempt anthem from Wicked, the hit Broadway musical that turned the whole Wizard of Oz story on its head.

Was the green witch actually wicked? Or was she merely suppressed by a conformist regime led by the Wizard himself? Were she and Glinda actually good friends whose bond was strained by the "good" witch's inability to break away from the establishment? Were they in fact in cahoots to stage the Wizard's banishment from Oz so Glinda could take over and Elphaba could escape with her true love, Fiyero, aka The Scarecrow?

Kinda casts a whole new light on the whole "Wicked" witch deal, eh?

Well, whether you adhere to the original story in L. Frank Baum's novel or the new take, based on Gregory Maguire's 1996 novel, there's no denying the 1939 film of The Wizard of Oz is a bona fide classic and well-worth seeing on a big screen. The transformation from black-and-white Kansas to color Oz is particularly stunning shown floor to ceiling, as it will be at 1:30 and 7:15 p.m. Wednesday at the Kentucky Theatre. The Wizard is this week's entry in the Kentucky's Summer Classics series. Admission is $3.

Appreciation: George Carlin

George Carlin performs in 2007 at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colo. Copyrighted Associated Press photo by E. Pablo Kosmicki.

George Carlin's legacy will be as a counter-culture figure who pushed boundaries along with folks like Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, ushering in an era of topical humor that now finds a home in living rooms across the country with works like The Daily Show.

His essence though, was in tamer skits such as the comparison of football and baseball (the following from Baseball Almanac):

In football the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.

In baseball the object is to go home!

Or, my personal favorites was A Place for My Stuff, where he observed that your stuff is stuff and other people's stuff is crap (sometimes, he used a different word).

That was Carlin's gift. He was an observer. Jerry Seinfeld was as much a inheritor of of his mantle as Jon Stewart or Bill Maher. Observation is one of the most basic elements of comedy. Carlin observed his life. He observed the world. He observed a lot of crap. And he spun all of that observation into routines that were side-splittingly funny, and he didn't worry a whole lot about who he offended along the way.

Carlin crossed the line on purpose.

Maybe most to his credit, he never stopped doing that. Yes, he mellowed with age. His Thomas the Tank Engine character was his loveliest creation. I remember watching it with one of my children and thinking, as many parents probably did, "I'm watching the guy who did the seven words you can't say on television on a kids show."

But he never took his eye off our world, and boiled it down into routines that would crack you up, make you think, maybe even offend you.

Carlin not only made us laugh, he made us observers, and he changed his art form. That's a legacy few people who pick up a microphone to tell jokes can claim.

Read: The New York Times thorough obituary of George Carlin.

What are the classic 1980's movies?

With Back to the Future (1985) set to be the offering at the Kentucky Theatre's Summer Classics series in just under two weeks, we want to ask you something: What other films of the 1980s should be considered classics?

Yes, it is hard for many of us in our late 30s and early 40s to fathom that films we saw in high school are now being regarded as "classic." But if they are, we might as well weigh in on what has stood the test of time.

Is it a big spectacle like E.T. (1982)?

Is it one of those John Hughes movies, like Pretty in Pink (1986)?

Or is it a highly regarded film not necessarily associated with the decade, like The Color Purple (1985)?

Could it be, like the Summer Classics Series shows us, it's a little bit of all those types of films. I want your thoughts, so please e-mail me or comment below and let's get a list going. I'll report back what I hear in a coupla weeks. 

Above: Is 1986's Ferris Bueller's Day Off a classic?

Summer classic: Psycho

Norman Bates' House is one of the many creepy presences in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.

The first time you see Psycho, it terrifies and shocks you with certain scenes, particularly the iconic shower scene and the unveiling of Norman's mother.

On subsequent screenings, it creeps you out.

It's one of the many masterstrokes of this movie and Alfred Hitchcock's whole career that he made a movie that operates on one level when you first see it and other levels on subsequent showings. The images that resonated with me the first time I saw it were the clotting blood running down the shower drain and Mother's face -- a scene that nearly sent 11-year-old me  through the wall when I first watched Psycho on our independent UHF station's regular Saturday night feature.

Now, I think of the scene of Norman eating dinner in the Bates Motel Office with all of the stuffed birds casting shadows on the ceiling. I think of the house on the hill that we don't enter until near the end, and we don't want to. I think of Janet Leigh's lonely, drowsy drive that ends at the Bates Motel.

And I think of this prophetic exchange between Norman and Marion:

Norman: We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven't you?
Marion: Yes. Sometimes just one time can be enough. 

Having seen it numerous times on the small screen, I'm anxious to see what the impact of these and other scenes will have in the theater when the Kentucky Theatre shows Psycho at 1:30 p.m. at 7:15 p.m. Wednesday as part of its summer classics series. Admission is $3.

Summer classic: 'Gone with the Wind'

Oscar winner Hattie McDaniel's Mammy (right) had the great lines to put Vivian Leigh's Scarlett O'Hara (left) in her place.

Gone with the Wind:

Gripping drama!

Torrid romance!

Comedy?

No, we don't normally associate the 1939 classic with a good laugh, but screening the movie for the first time in several years brought forth a steady stream of chuckles.

Yes, some of it was over cheese, beginning with the credits: "Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has the honor of presenting in Technicolor, Margaret Mitchell's story of the old South . . . " Oh, puh-leeze.

But some of it also was due to witty writing by a panel of scribes including Ben Hecht, portrayed penning the script in Actors Guild of Lexington's recent production of Ron Hutchinson's Moonlight and Magnolias.

Many of those great lines went to history maker Hattie McDaniel, the first African-American actor to win an Academy Award, as Mammy, drama queen Scarlett O'Hara's wise attendant:

~ "You know what trouble I's talkin' 'bout. Mr. Ashley be comin' to Atlanta when he gets his leave, and you sittin' there waitin' for him, just like a spider."

~ "You can always tell a lady by the way she eats in front of folks like a bird and I ain't aimin' for you to go to Mr. John Wilkes' and eat like a field hand and gobble like a hog!"

Of course, there was also Scarlett's contentious love, Rhett Butler:

~ "No, I don't think I will kiss you, although you need kissing, badly. That's what's wrong with you. You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how."

~ (After nearly getting hit in the head by Scarlett's thrown vase) "Has the war started?"

~ "Tell me, Scarlett, do you never shrink from marrying men you don't love?"

The beautiful thing about Mammy and Rhett was that they both had queen bee Scarlett's number and weren't afraid to let her know. It was fun and somewhat beautiful. Of course, Scarlett had her lines too.

"Fiddle-dee-dee."

Fiddle-dee-dee indeed. Catch GWTW at the Kentucky Theatre Classics series at 1:30 and 7:15 p.m. today. Enjoy the drama, the romance, and don't forget to laugh.

The quotes in this post were found at the Internet Movie Database.

Christian music update: Dave Barnes review

Dave Barnes | You + Me + The World

Though Dave Barnes is a somewhat atypical artist in the Christian market, he initially seems easy to categorize. You think of him in that Mat Kearney, Matt Wertz -- maybe he should be a Matt Barnes? -- group of singer-songwriters with a faith base and a mainstream audience, particularly in the college market.

Two successful independent releases have yielded a national label recording contract with Razor & Tie for Barnes. And with that national debut, You + Me + The World, he lays out a saucer of a dozen tunes that show him to be much more than a Christian John Mayer. 

 The initial single, Until You, is a perfect little piece of young adult summer breeze that introduces him as an amiable guy and probably a great catch if he weren't already taken.

But that personality takes us in a number of different directions and addresses global concerns is songs such as Good World Gone Bad as well as personal, committed love in  Since You Said I Do. Barnes is an artist who will frustrate some listeners who believe faith-based musicians should have more explicit, sustained Christian messages in their music. But others will find the mix of faith and temporal topics refreshing, particularly knowing they come from a faith perspective.

Regardless of the message, the music is consistently engaging, maybe drawing the best comparisons to Jonny Lang's 2006 hit Turn Around, as this also makes confident swings through gospel, soul, country and a variety of rhythms and textures, expertly guided by producer and sideman Ed Cash.

Really, the best category for this Dave Barnes album would be good music.

t-mac at the movies: If you're in Central Kentucky and you JUST CAN'T WAIT to see Tobymac play Ichthus on June 13, you can head over to Louisville Monday night and see Tobymac: Alive and Transported at the Showcase Stonybrook. The concert film, a la, a lot of concert films we're seeing lately is showing across the nation Monday night, and the reigning Dove Award winner for artist of the year is the first Christian market act I can recall doing this.

Speaking of Louisville: Southeast Christian Church, the mothership at Exit 17 off I-64, has a release on the new Great Worship Songs label from Brentwood-Benson Publishing, which has the largest Christian music publishing catalog in the world. Holy is the Lord, which drops July 1, will be the third disc on the label, and the first to focus on a specific church. The album features the Louisville church's band and choir presenting songs written in the Southeast Community. Chords and lead sheets of the songs will be available at the Great Worship Songs website.

Where was this?: Yes, we know we have regular visitors to the Christian music update on Tuesday and we were a tad late this week. For the duration of the summer, at least, this post is going to move back to Mondays, because this blog has a few other seasonal staples that make Tuesday a little crowded. And hey, if we preview an album you really like, that gives you time to go home and smash your piggy bank to go get it -- that's if you are still into buying tangible, physical, oh-so-20th Century CDs.

But Saturday, Copious Notes will flip a switch and go all-Ichthus -- with a couple of exceptions -- through the festival. We'll start by chatting with new Gotee artist Stephanie Smith, who will play several times during the fest and also get her hands dirty with some festival goers.

Summer classic: 'City Lights'

Charlie Chaplin as The Little Tramp meets Virginia Cherrill as the blind flower seller in City Lights.

Movies started talking in 1927, but Charlie Chaplin wouldn't hear of that for his 1931 classic, City Lights.

And in that era, Chaplin wielded enough power to get his way. But we do hear Chaplin as the composer of the score to the film that plays at 1:30 and 7:15 p.m. Wednesday as part of the Kentucky Theatre's Summer Classics series. Admission is $3.

How could the Tramp talk? He was an icon of the silent film era, introduced in the 1914 feature Kid Auto Races in Venice. He was a poor, bumbling soul with a heroic streak and hope for a better life that appeared in a total of 15 films including The Kid (1921) and The Gold Rush (1925).

City Lights was the definitive film about the little guy. In it, he is a vagrant who falls in love with a blind flower seller. But upon their first meeting, she takes him for a millionaire, and the Tramp tries to keep up the charade, including trying to raise the money for the flower seller to have an operation that would restore her sight.

The scene where their eyes meet, and she discovers the truth, is one of the great tear-jerker moments in cinema history.

That's why it is somewhat surprising to find that Chaplin and Virginia Cherrill, who played the flower seller, did not like each other and were at odds the day that iconic scene was shot. Chaplin even attempted to reshoot City Lights with his Gold Rush co-star Georgia Hale, but it was not economically feasible. There is footage of Hale as the flower seller in the DVD release of City Lights.

Chaplin did give the film a voice through his score, including some effects in one moment that mimicked speech. He was ultimately successful in bringing the Tramp to the screen one more time in 1936 with Modern Times. It was a partially silent film, though in the end, the tramp does utter some gibberish and non-English phrases.

Summer classic: 'Citizen Kane'

The American Film Institute's piece on Citizen Kane as the greatest movie of all time, with commentary from numerous actors and directors, including the recently deceased Sydney Pollack. Below: Orson Welles as Charles Foster Kane.

Today, Citizen Kane seems almost synonymous with the phrase, "best film ever." When it was released in 1941, there weren't enough people who saw it for the movie to receive such universal acclaim.

In one way, it didn't pay to go toe to toe with a wealthy newspaperman.

Kane, which opens the Kentucky Theatre's Summer Classics series Wednesday (May 28), was widely recognized in its day as a scathingly unflattering portrait of publisher William Randolph Hearst. In an effort to suppress the film, Hearst banned mention of it, including advertising, from his papers and enlisted the support of allies, including many in the film industry, to squelch the movie and tarnish the reputation of its 24-year-old writer, director and star, Orson Welles.

And by all accounts, it worked, for a time.

Though many critics and non-Hearst publications recognized the movie as a ground-breaking piece of filmmaking, its distribution was limited and after it won only one Academy Award -- screenwriting for Welles and Herman J. Makiewicz -- the movie disappeared for nearly a quarter century. Welles' masterpiece was relegated to obscurity.

Then, it started circulating again. Re-emerged, it began to be recognized for the masterpiece it is, showing us styles and methods of story telling and filmmaking not often seen before, such as extreme closeups and depth of field, with everything from the foreground to the background in focus. With other touches such as an artistic use of shadows, it is truly a treat to see it on the big screen.

And while Hearst's efforts at suppression made the film an initial flop, it has now become a rich part of the movie's legend, including the fact that it makes it seem even more undeniable that Welles' Charles Foster Kane is a Hearst caricature. Now, biographies of Hearst often include at least a passing mention of Kane.

It doesn't seem like going toe to toe with a filmmaking genius worked out so well for him.

The movie shows at 1:30 and 7:15 p.m. Wednesday at the Kentucky. Admission is $3.

Appreciation: Sydney Pollack

Sydney Pollack discovers Dustin Hoffman's secret in Tootsie (1982), which Pollack also directed. Copyrighted photo courtesy of the Associated Press and Columbia Pictures. Below: Pollack in 2006. Copyrighted photo by Michael Spingler-AP.

The first time Sydney Pollack registered with me I was around 14 years old seeing the Dustin Hoffman cross-dressing classic Tootsie. Pollack was the exasperated agent of Hoffman's Michael Dorsey, a difficult actor who dresses up like a woman to land a role on a soap opera. He was the possessor of great lines such as, "I'm begging you to get some therapy."

Soon after that, when the Oscar nominations came out, I would learn to he was also the director of the movie -- wasn't the credit reader I am now -- and from that time forward, seeing his name on a movie usually held the promise of an engaging and literate couple of hours.

His death Monday seems somewhat symbolic of the passing of an era when big stars and studios made major motion pictures that were intelligent, wise and witty.

Pollack won an Oscar for directing Out of Africa with Robert Redford and Meryl Streep in 1985. It wasn't my favorite of his movies -- I liked his other two best director nominees, Tootsie and They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969) better -- but it was a time when great dramas had a place in the multiplex along with the big budget thrillers. That year, Africa, The Color Purple and Witness were in the year-end Top 10 along with Back to the Future. Last year, Michael Clayton, which Pollack co-produced and played a supporting role in, logged in at No. 55, according to Box Office Mojo. Clayton, starring George Clooney and directed by Tony Gilroy, seemed to be very much within Pollack's style of filmmaking. But there was no room for it at a box office topped by Transformers and Pirates of the Caribbean.

Yes, Pollack had his fumbles such as The Electric Horseman (1979). But looking at his filmography, there is much to appreciate, especially Three Days of the Condor (1975), featuring Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway in one of the most taut political thrillers ever, and Absence of Malice (1981), a wrenching drama about how journalism can be manipulated starring Paul Newman and Sally Field.

It's sad to see Pollack go. He was a marvelous talent, a champion of storytelling and craftsmanship, and Hollywood could use more people like him.

Jason Epperson is coming home and likely making a movie

Jason Epperson acknowledged the crowd at Winchester's Calvary Christian Church at an August event to watch the final episode of On the Lot. Copyrighted photos by Pablo Alcala for the Lexington Herald-Leader.

See Jason Epperson's Blood Born at the bottom of this post.

It’s been a year since Jason Epperson stepped into the spotlight, and it still seems surreal.

“I still don’t know if it’s hit me,” the Winchester native says, “that I was on a reality show and I went through what I went through.”

The reality show was On the Lot, which bowed last Memorial Day weekend. It was a co-production of reality TV guru Mark Burnett and filmmaking deity Steven Spielberg. The aim was to find the next great film director, and Epperson wound up in the running up until the moment Texan Will Bigham was named the winner.

Though the show turned out to be a critical and ratings flop, Epperson’s runner-up status opened doors for him in Hollywood, where he, wife Cindi and son Isaiah moved after the show wrapped in August.

During a late-afternoon chat Tuesday, Epperson, 32, gave the move mixed reviews but said it was essential to getting his career in gear.

“I’ve made so many relationships in the business,” Epperson says. “Patience is the most important thing to have. You have to keep fighting. You have to keep going.”

Epperson says it was particularly frustrating for him and even Bigham to be trying to get their careers in gear during the writers strike last winter, which brought all production to a halt.
Now, Epperson is close to solidifying plans for his first feature film, a project that is bringing him home. He is planning to shoot The Phoenix, a film about Harold Dennis, a survivor of the 1988 Carroll County bus crash, which claimed 27 lives.

Early 'Prince Caspian' reviews

Most of the daily newspaper reviews of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian will have to wait until Friday, when the movie opens. But there are a few early notices out, and most of them are fairly positive.

• Christy Lemire of the Associated Press calls the film, "darker and funner, more substantive and more engaging, more violent and more technically accomplished."
• The Hollywood Reporter's Michael Rechtshaffen says, "the more somber Caspian also shares elements with the second Lord of the Rings installment, The Two Towers, as well as the later, moodier Harry Potter editions.
• Newsweek's Jennie Yabroff is less impressed saying: "There's a dull, bombastic sameness to the last two-thirds of Prince Caspian, as the characters progress from battle to battle, like players ascending the levels of Donkey Kong.

Across the board, critics seem to agree that Caspian is essentially a war film and that Eddie Izzard as Reepicheep steals the show, both of which are consistent with the book.

Christian pop update: Stephanie Smith review, Narnia and Ichthus

Newcomer Stephanie Smith will be a big presence at the Ichthus Festival in June. Photo courtesy of Gotee Records.

Stephanie Smith | Not Afraid

Christian music is almost a decade removed from an era where it seemed afraid to let women rock. From Jennifer Knapp (Where've you gone?) to Fireflight's Dawn Richardson and the BarlowGirls and Superchicks in between, the Christian market has gotten used to hearing a woman's voice in front of a hail of guitars, to the point that it doesn't make headlines.

So why is Stephanie Smith a headline?

First is the backstory is that she was spotted by Gotee Records impresario Toby McKeehan -- you may know him as TobyMac -- who was actually turned down by Smith when he first offered her a development deal.  In the past, the man has spotted acts such as Knapp, Family Force 5 and Grits, so if he's interested, you want to give it a listen. That would lead to second, which is that when he finally signed Smith, he put a lot of support behind her. At least, that's what her debut, Not Afraid, sounds like.

Jamie Moore's production is a collection of high energy anthems seemingly perfectly tailored to launch Smith into the summer festival season, where she'll be a big presence at events such June's Ichthus Festival in Wilmore. Smith sounds ready for it with a voice warm enough for the Miley Cyrus crowd but strong enough to draw in the fist-pumpers waiting for Skillet.

If there's a weakness here, it's in material. Some of the opening tracks such as Beauty and Superstar feel like they've been done before, both in title and execution. The album starts showing artistic maturity in grittier rockers such Over It and the reflective ballad, What if I Made a Mistake? With a winning first effort and clear label support, Smith should enjoy success this go-round and time to grow.

American Idols: We want to ruminate on Chris Sligh and Phil Stacey's albums one more week, so we'll have those reviews next week.

Also out today: With Arrows With Poise by new MTV stars The Myriad.

Dottie Rambo: Southern Gospel has never been my thing. But I certainly knew about Dottie Rambo (photo, right) and her music. The Queen of Gospel Music died Saturday en route to a concert in Texas and former Herald-Leader religion writer Frank Lockwood has an informative tribute to her at Bible Belt Blogger. And we have a guest book at Kentucky.com if you'd like to share your condolences. Walter Tunis also has an eloquent remembrance at his blog, the Musical Box.

Air1 & Ichthus: California-based Air1, heard locally at WVRB-95.3 FM, is giving away a trip for four to the Ichthus Festival, complete with backstage passes. The contest is kind of cute: You start to qualify by being the correct number caller when they ask you to call in. Then, you get to play That's Greek to Me -- Greek, Ichthus, get it -- a contest in which you are asked to correctly identify a non-English word or phrase. If you do, you qualify for a grand prize drawing of a trip for four, including airfare, to the Ichthus Festival, June 12-14 in Wilmore.

Narnia alert: If you are getting geared up for the opening of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian on Friday, you could run down to the Tates Creek Branch of the Lexington Public Library at 7 tonight for a little preliminary event. Asbury College English professor Devin Brown will be discussing and signing copies of his latest book, Inside Prince Caspian: A Guide to Exploring the Return to Narnia, the follow up to his successful examination of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which came out before the last Narnia film. Brown is an internationally recognized expert on C.S. Lewis and the Narnia series.

Then go home and . . . watch Switchfoot perform This is Home, the band's contribution to the Caspian soundtrack, on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno at 11:35 p.m.

Speaking of faith-based film: You may remember Facing the Giants, a movie about a fledgling football coach who doesn't find success until he finds God, that went on to surprising success in the fall of 2006. It was surprising because the movie was essentially made as a fund-raiser by Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Ga. Well, the church's moviemaking ministry -- how many churches have one of those? -- is at it again with Fireproof, the story of a fireman looking to save his faltering marriage, which is due this fall. Fireproof already shows some signs of Sherwood's success with Giants and its predecessor, Flywheel. The trailer, below, shows advanced special effects and camera work, while there's still a down-homeyness about some of the acting. The film also has a Christian pop tie-in with Warren Barfield's Love is Not A Fight, off of his new disc, Worth Fighting For, which is out next week.

L.A. Times critic comes home to Lexington

The University of ­Kentucky College of Fine Arts distinguished alumni award has gone to such artists as sculptor John Henry, tenor Gregory Turay and Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche.

This year, it went to — I love this — a critic.

F. Kathleen Foley was a theater student at UK in the 1970s and has gone on to a career as a theater critic for the Los Angeles Times and several other publications in Southern California. Foley’s original intention was to act, which she did in New York, Kentucky and L.A.

“I became a critic by default,” Foley says from her home in Los Angeles. “I wanted the free tickets, so after acting didn’t work out, I kind of segued into this career.”

That’s one of two careers Foley has. By day, she works for Breakdown Services, a Los Angeles firm that reads scripts and ­disseminates information about the available roles to actors, directors, agents and other interested parties in the film trade. Foley and her colleagues read scripts, then distill them into quick information about the plots and characters to distribute to clients. For instance, a script might call for a 23-year-old blonde bimbo who roller skates, so when the information goes out, agents can send all of their clients who match that description.

“It’s really leveled the ­playing field,” Foley says.

And she and her ­colleagues have a lot of fun, including reading egregiously bad scripts out loud to one another.

“After Pulp Fiction came out, everything we got was really raw and awful,” Foley says. “But I read good scripts, too. I read The ­Departed,” which won the 2007 Oscar for best-picture.

By night, Foley loves to see good theater, filing an ­average of two reviews a week.

Above: F. Kathleen Foley accepts her distinguished alumni award at UK, May 4, 2008. Photo courtesy of F. Kathleen Foley.

The Hennegans are here

John Hennegan and Skip Koepnick share a laugh about The First Saturday in May. Photo by Rich Copley.

Equine auteurs John and Brad Hennegan are at the main entrance to Churchill Downs hawking the DVD of their documentary, The First Saturday in May, which opened two weeks ago at the Kentucky Theatre.

"Documentaries don't have a long theatrical life," John Hennegan said. "So getting the DVD out is a way to pay back investors and get the word out."

He said they felt good about the opening weekend for the movie, two weeks ago, as it's per-screen average gross doubled that of Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden, which was much more widely released and advertised.
The Hennegans were doing brisk business, selling DVDs by the handful at some points and even meeting some notable characters.

Skip Koepnick, "the hat man," had a notable moment in the film that's also in the trailer -- it's the sex line -- and John Hennegan asked to have his picture taken with him, like just about everyone else in the Downs.

"I spend the whole day having my picture taken with people," said Koepnick, of Wyoming, Mich., whose battery-powered horse features two horses running in a circle.

Kentucky Theatre Summer Classics 2008

The Kentucky Theatre's Summer Classics Series will truly live up to its name this summer with a lineup of 15 movies, most of which are indisputable classics. The list includes a strong reminder of what a banner year 1939 was for cinema and that 1960 wasn't bad either. There's also a movie I hate to say came out when I was in high school -- maybe we  children of the '80s are just becoming "classic."

The series runs May 28 to Sept. 3 with all showings at 1:30 and 7:15 p.m. each day and all seats $3. Here's the lineup:

May 28: Citizen Kane (1941) -- Is it, as many critics contend, the greatest movie ever?

June 4: City Lights (1931) -- Charlie Chaplin as his signature character, The Tramp, in a beautiful story with an ending many consider the best in film history.

June 11: Gone with the Wind (1939) -- Great timing. GWTW finally comes to the Summer Classics Series right after Actors Guild of Lexington's production of Moonlight and Magnolias, which is about the writing of the script for the movie.

June 18: Psycho (1960) -- Do you hear screeching violins now?

June 25: The Wizard of Oz (1939) -- I said it before: You have not seen the arrival in Oz until you've seen it on the big screen.

July 2: Back to the Future (1985) -- Honey! Fire up the Delorean.

OK, my fellow children of the Reagan decade, here's the question: What other movies of our youth can now be considered classics? Please comment.

July 9: Lost Horizon (1937) -- If you haven't seen a movie on this list, it's probably this one. Frank Capra's film about the lost world of Shangri-La is a wonderful journey.

July 16: Spartacus (1960) -- All together: "I'm Spartacus."

July 23: Casablanca (1942) --  Another great ending, and a movie that never gets old.

July 30: Funny Face (1957) -- You've seen the Gap commercial, now see Audrey Hepburn in the movie the "skinny black pants" footage originally appeared in.

Aug. 6: Swiss Family Robinson (1960) -- You've seen Nim's Island, now see one of its inspirations.

Aug. 13: The Magnificent Seven (1960) -- The American remake of Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai (1954) has tough guys Charles Bronson and Steve McQueen and others defending a  Mexican village against more than 100 marauders.

Aug. 20: The Philadelphia Story (1940) -- The witty repartee of this high society comedy inspired George Clooney in making Leatherheads.

Aug. 27: The War of the Worlds (1953) -- Can classic mid-20th Century sci-fi be more satisfying than Spielberg's 2005 spectacle?

Sept. 3: West Side Story (1961) -- Natalie Wood stars in one of the best screen adaptations of a musical ever.

Asbury's Highbridge Film Festival

Above: Asbury film fans arrive at the Highbridge Film Festival Saturday night. Below: Jeff Day and Greg Bandy open the festival. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.

WILMORE -- The red carpet was rolled down the steps of Asbury College’s Hughes Auditorium for Saturday Night’s Highbridge Film Festival. This was the fourth time around for the student film competition, and it felt like a strong taste of Hollywood glamour in small town Kentucky.

Students streamed toward the auditorium, many dressed in probably the best things they had in their closets, to watch 11 student productions competing for the top honors.

The star performer of the evening was Visceral by Brock Smith, which won six awards, including best drama and audience favorite.

The action-packed short, in a sort of 24-esque vein, portrayed a man racing against time to save his wife from a biological threat. While the plot was a tad fuzzy, the action and sound production were spot on.

But Smith’s was hardly the only strong production of the evening.

Pencil Me In, from the trio of Austin Brooks, Ben Corwin and Jack Brannen also dazzled with its story of a man and woman who live by their planners – she is shown brushing her teeth and then crossing off “brush teeth” in her precious book – who eventually meet because of their identical appointment books. The film, largely shot at the Wilmore IGA, won honors for best comedy and best script.

Lexington boosts Derby film

Filmmakers (L-R) John and Brad Hennegan.

Lexington had the second-highest grosses in the nation for The First Saturday in May, brothers John and Brad Hennegan’s documentary about the road to the Kentucky Derby. Only New York City had higher grosses, according to a spokesman for the Kentucky Theatre, where it's playing here in the Horse Capital of the World.

Overall, the movie made $54,553 playing on 20 screens across the nation, including the Kentucky Theatre, according to Box Office Mojo. That gave it a $2,727 per screen average, better than half of the films in the Top 10, though those films did play on several thousand more screens.
First Saturday, which follows six trainers in their quest to take a horse to the 2006 Kentucky Derby, checked in at No. 53 on the weekend box office charts. It is still playing at the Kentucky Theatre at least through May 1.

Even if you are not a horse racing fan, First Saturday is an intriguing, irreverent ride. And if you are, it'll still probably tell you a lot of things you don't know. Click here to read our review and here for our feature on the Hennegan Brothers.

Derby film coming to the Kentucky Theatre

The First Saturday in May has been making the film festival rounds and getting rave reviews around the country. April 18, the documentary following the run-up to the 2006 Kentucky Derby will open at -- appropriately -- the Kentucky Theatre.

Brothers John and Brad Hennegan spent 16 months traveling around the world to document the major races leading up to the Derby. The film reportedly includes footage of a young Barbaro, before his thrilling victory in the 2006 race and untimely death after breaking down in the Preakness Stakes. (After playing the trailer, above, you'll get a menu of clips from the movie in that window, including serveral Barbaro scenes.) Lexington will be among a select group of cities, including New York and Los Angeles, seeing the movie, which opens in limited release on the 18th.

First Saturday won Best Documentary at the Savannah Film Festival and reviews have included raves like this, from the Washington Post's Joe Heim:

"Indeed, the journey is nothing short of riveting. The Hennegans, sons of a horse racing official, used their vast knowledge of the sport and incredible access to paint vivid portraits of colorful characters. For fans who see this movie, the Derby will never again be just another excuse for a party."

Charlton Heston - movie star

Charlton Heston is one of the great scenes in film history: the chariot race from Ben Hur. Below: Heston in 2002, by Uwe Lein. Both photos from the Associated Press.

As I've written before, I felt lucky to have grown up at the end of an era where you could see classic cinema on a movie screen on a regular basis.

One of the crystalline silver screen memories I have as a boy was going to the Pembroke Mall Cinemas near my home in Virginia Beach, Va., where the screen went from the high ceiling to the floor and across the curved back wall. It was the place to see an epic, and I was in for one with Ben-Hur, the 1959 William Wyler classic of chariot races, amazing journeys, big emotions and Jesus Christ himself. At the center of it all was Charlton Heston, an actor who -- though I wasn't conscious of it at the time -- drew me in with an Oscar winning portrayal of a man wronged by his best friend who fights through the harshest of circumstances to regain his life and family and ultimately has a life-changing encounter. Prior to that afternoon, I had no idea a terrestrial tale could dazzle me as much as Star Wars, but Ben-Hur did it, and Heston was on my radar as a star to follow.

It was a trip over the years through more epics (El Cid), the bizarre (Soylent Green . . . is people!!!), great movies (Touch of Evil) and cheese whiz (Airport).

Heston's image has also undergone a transformation in the ensuing years. He went, in many circles, from being regarded as the great movie star that he was to a pariah and a punchline. Granted, he brought some of this on himself, primarily for his presidency of the National Riffle Association and outspoken advocacy for gun ownership rights, a divisive issue, no doubt. You have to accept when you make stands, some people will make a complete break with you and not be able to see anything but your politics, even when they are watching you in a great performance.

Give Heston credit: He stood up for something he believed in, just like he did in the 1960s, marching for civil rights. In this corner, we have never been against artists putting their names behind causes they believe in.

But let's not forget Heston's acting and his contributions to cinema. He was one of the 20th Century's great movie stars, and now that he's gone, he should definitely be remembered as such.

Click here for a list of Heston's major motion pictures.

Clooney's 'Leatherheads' upset at the box office

Fans in Maysville were wild about George Clooney and his new movie, Leatherheads, at a March 24 premier. But moviegoers across the country were cooler to the comedy about the early days of the National Football League. Copyrighted LexGo photo by Charles Bertram.

George Clooney's Leatherheads was all the rage here in Central and Northern Kentucky for a week when the star brought his movie back home for a little Hollywood on the Ohio River. But the film failed to generate the same excitement across the country as ticket buyers elected to see MIT students beat the system in Vegas, handing 21 its second consecutive weekend box office victory.

The ominous signs started gathering Friday for Leatherheads, Clooney's third directing effort and first bona fide comedy. Though Gorgeous George sat through a complimentary review from the Today show's Gene Shalit, most critics were tougher on the flick, calling it labored and a fumble.

Jim Emerson, writing for Roger Ebert's website, was a bit more complimentary, mainly of Clooney, essentially saying that the star kept Leatherheads in the game all by himself. And the Los Angeles Times' Carina Chocano called it charming and wondered why there aren't more movies like it. I was sort of in the same boat, appreciating the old-timey fun but thinking it was too long and comically out of sync.

Moviegoers just didn't seem interested in huge numbers, as the flick took in an estimated $13.5 million, just under a safety behind 21's $15.1 million, and a hair ahead of the Abigail Breslin-Jodie Foster family flick, Nim's Island. Yahoo Movies and other sources report that when official numbers are released today, Leatherheads could drop to third, behind Nim.

Industry experts seemed to attribute Leatherheads' fumble to its appeal to older moviegoers, who are often a bit harder to lure out of the house, while college-oriented 21 was right in the cinema strike zone -- wrong sport, I know.

UPDATE: When the official numbers came in, Leatherheads ($12.68 million) did indeed fall behind Nim's Island ($13.21 million), making the Clooney pic No. 3 for the weekend.

Clooneys live up to reputation

George Clooney gives 17-year-old Ariana Bowles the thrill of a lifetime by taking their picture together at the Maysville premier of Leatherheads. The resulting picture is below.  Copyrighted Herald-Leader photos by Charles Bertram.

My first encounter with Nick Clooney was when I called him out of the blue. I was up in the Maysville-Augusta area in 1998, trying to get a little sense of George Clooney's roots for a preview of Out of Sight. Some folks in Maysville told me I should give Nick a ring, and I dialed his number with some trepidation, expecting a gruff response.

Far from it, he invited me and photographer Janet Worne to come over. We sat in the living room of Nick and Nina Clooney's Augusta home and chatted about their son, who at the time was making the risky move of leaving the successful NBC drama ER for the uncertain world of cinema. Nick, who at the time was a host on American Movie Classics, knew his son had star quality, but also knew the movies are a tough business. Mom and dad hoped things would go well.

Fast forward 10 years, and they most certainly have. Gorgeous George is now an Oscar-winner, two-time sexiest man alive and one of the top movie stars on the planet, Janet.

But home has always remained a big deal for him, which he showed Monday night in bringing a premier of his new movie, Leatherheads, back to his family home of Maysville. His co-star, Renee Zellweger, said Clooney had been talking about a Maysville premier since the movie started filming.
It's the same thing his Aunt Rosemary did in 1953 when she came home with her movie The Stars are Singing in 1953 and again in  1997, when she came home to marry her longtime love Dante Di Paolo.

They brought their stars home and the accompanying glow.

With the Clooneys, there's never any sense this sort of thing is an act. Monday night on the red carpet, it was clear George loves his roots in Northern Kentucky, understands the impact he and his famous family have had on Maysville, and he wants to help that continue.

You could see that in the way he spent a solid hour on the red carpet with fans and media. And it was fun to see how his star could serve as inspiration for other Maysville kids who might want to follow in their footsteps -- from former Miss America Heather French Henry who seemed so tickled when George looked over and said, " . . . and there's Heather," to theater student Jessica Moulis, who was visiting home on spring break from California State at Northridge, where she's studying theater.

"It's pretty inspiring to see how it is possible to come from a small town and make it," she said, clutching a lottery ticket for the