This past weekend I had the pleasure of seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark in a movie theatre for the first time in 38 years. And I watched it in the exact cinema where I saw it as a nine-year-old boy. It was a wonderful nostalgia trip, and a great opportunity to catch one of my favourites on the big screen. It was during the famous truck chase, where Indiana Jones crawls beneath a moving vehicle, that I was struck with a sense of wonder: what I was watching was real! That was Harrison Ford, and a stuntman, on the front of a moving vehicle, then sliding/crawling beneath it. No computer-aided effects; just real people risking it all to make a movie. There are special effects in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but a large part of it is old-fashioned moviemaking and stunt work. As was also the case with classics like Lethal Weapon, The Terminator and it's brilliant sequel, and countless others. Watching the faces of moviegoers as they lapped up Raiders (many were too young to have seen i...

News dropped late last night that Landmark Cinemas is closing the Paramount Theatre in our home town of Kamloops. The theatre is a landmark indeed, having entertained moviegoers since 1955. Landmark stated that closing the theatre is a business decision, meaning attendance at the old movie house has been on the decline for a while. The last movie I caught there was Overlord back in November, and it was not well attended.

The times they are a changing, as Warner Bros and Universal Studios look to shorten the length of time a film plays in theatres, in favour of a quicker jump to digital and the home market.  When I was a wee lad, it wasn't unusual for a movie to stick around our local cinema for weeks, even months. I remember Raiders of the Lost Ark playing in town for 30 to 40 weeks - that's seven or eight months! The last movie I remember getting such a long theatrical run was Titanic, which played for almost a year.

It's been too damn long since we've had an edition of Trailer Rewind. So I thought it might be wise to take a look back  . . . way back, at one of classics of the action/adventure genre, a movie that gave adventure a name -- Indiana Jones . That's right: Raiders of the Lost Ark ! The trailer: They don't make trailers like this anymore; simple, exciting, tells you everything you need to know about the movie without giving the whole damn thing away. All you need is to see Harrison Ford and have the names Steven Spielberg and George Lucas thrown at you (back in 1982 that is) and audiences are good to go. Plenty of shots of old-school action too. I think that's the voice of William Conrad . Sold. Actually, I want to watch this mother again! Right now! The movie: Like anything needs to be said. This is the first, and in my opinion, best Indian Jones adventure, although I have much love for Temple of Doom and Last Crusade . The less said about Crystal Skull...