Tuesday
Nov082011
Nov 8 Super 8 - blu-ray Review #6
During the summer of 1979, a group of friends witness a train crash and investigate subsequent unexplained events in their small town. Buy Now $24.99
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Reader Comments (2)
Wow Rodney and Ara you guys were not kidding about the audio in this film! It's Blu-rays like this that re-affirm the reason we have spent so much money and time acquiring, setting up, and tuning our systems! The train crash scene, while admittedly over-the-top theatrically, is absolute surround sound nirvana for any home theater enthusiast. I haven't been so impressed with Foley effects since the über-realistic gunfire in Hurt Locker. Great review - thanks for bringing this outstanding Blu-ray to my attention!
*** Spoiler Alert - Do Not Read If You Don't Want to Ruin the Movie for Yourself ***
Now that I've seen the movie, I listened to your guys' podcast review. The discussion about nostalgia for the '70s was very interesting. I'm about Ara's age, so I did live through that era as a teenager growing up in central Virginia.
Some aspects I thought were pretty accurate, while others were not. For example, the kid who was directing the movie had very short hair. I can tell you: nobody had short hair in 1979. We all looked like the Brady Bunch kids. If somebody had hair that short, it was because their father was an old-school tyrant (which the kid's dad in the movie was not...he was a permissive wimp).
Also, pretty much everybody wore T-shirts and either Levis jeans or Levis corduroy pants, with striped white Adidas running shoes. I really can't remember anyone wearing the wild print button-up shirts with flared collars, especially not in junior high. If it was winter, we wore plaid flannel shirts with jeans and down vests. In summer we wore embarrassingly short shorts (mid-thigh) with tube socks.
I do not remember anybody in my neighborhood who had a BMX-type bike like the kids had in the film. Where I lived, everybody had ten-speeds. As you said Rodney, those were the days where kids got around on bikes and kids wanted a serious ten-speed for ease of pedaling uphill and speed going downhill. But I did feel a tinge of nostalgia when the kids were filming in the field and there was everybody's bike right beside them. However as I said, they would have been delicate ten speeds with kick stands, not thrown down on the ground. The first time I remember even seeing the little bikes was watching E.T. in 1982.
What rang really true was the homes and the kids' rooms. There was so much stuff in the lead character's room. That's how it was back then. Everybody had a lot of time on their hands to develop interests. My room was filled with plastic WWII models and model rockets. I restored antique clocks. I collected vacuum tubes. I had a collection of strategic board games, electric insulators from telephone poles, and turtle shells. I had a German bayonet. My room was just filled with all kinds of interesting things. My son is a gamer and his room literally has nothing in it except his Xbox 360, PS3, gaming PC, and some lacrosse gear for when he ventures out into the real world of sports.
I was blown away by the kid waching TV on the living room floor eating Pillsbury Food Sticks. Wow, putting that snack in the film was a stroke of pure genious! I think they were supposed to be high-tech, like NASA space food. I remember those so well...these days, whose health-conscious mom would ever let them in the house? No wonder that kid had a weight problem!
The prevalence of pot was very accurate. Pot was socially accepted in the '70s and it was everywhere. The prevalence of CB radios was also well depicted in the film.
Kids roaming around the town without supervision...yep, that's how it was. We used to leave early in the morning and go miles and miles from home with a bag lunch inside a tackle box strapped to rack on our bike with bungee cords. Which reminds me..I don't think anyone rode around on their bike with a backpack. Backpacks were used exclusively by Boy Scouts back then.
Some of the kids' dialog wasn't quite right. I'm pretty sure nobody in Ohio in 1979 said the word "gnarly" or phrases like "That is totally me". That kind of California lingo didn't make it to the rest of the country until Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Valley Girl in the early '80s. If something awesome, we said it was "tough". If we were hauling as fast as possible, we called it "booking". I'm pretty sure we cursed on occasion but it was not woven into our speech like it was in the movie. I'd say that is another anachronism.
The film had that E.T. sensibility were the kids were smarter and more pulled together than the adults, the alien has a good heart, and the authorities were cruel and stupid. Personally I am not drawn to that narrative...I tend to like the "Uh-oh the aliens are destroying the planet and the military is helpless" kind of movie like War of the Worlds and Independence Day. However this film often boldly strayed into '50s-style space invaders camp with moments like the army offcier shouting something into his walkie-talkie like "We've thrown everything we have at it!"
Overall if was a fun ride. Once I accepted that it had a strong campy vibe, I was able to go with it. In that sense, it reminded me so much of The Blob with Steve McQueen. Normalville, USA is suddenly turned upside down by a dangerous alien menace...great stuff!