Jaws (1975) Directed by Steven Spielberg

Astrid:I did not swim in a lake for at least a whole summer as a kid because some boy in the daycare had mentioned the word killershark to me. As an 8-year-old I saw a couple of scenes from Jaws with my 18-year-old second cousin and was freaked out again. Then again, I used to be afraid of little fish too, not just sharks – I did not want to touch any fish skin. 

When ever I go on tour or somewhere, Nick watches Jaws – for him it's like Woody Allen for me, reliable and comfortable and you need the annual doses. But Jaws? Really darling?

What kind of a film maker spends the first half of the film developing tension with the main character's family in the picture but then chucks the whole story line and goes shark hunting? Are we supposed to experience a natural transition to the second half of the film through Richard Dreyfuss' shark expert? It's baffling. 

Whereas the part of Jaws that happens on the island at least has some entertaining 1970s New Hollywood appeal in the way it portrays people, once we are on the boat I am bored. I cannot get over the insulting way this picture does away with continuation in plot and replaces it with the shark.

Shark shark shark. A symbolic animal for the mindless garbage-eating monsters that Hollywood has churned out ever since.

Nick:
I have a special relationship with Jaws. When I was 9 I went to the cinema with my sister to watch Jaws. It was PG (parental guidance) at the time. Well, the film scared me stiff, and I had nightmares for quite a few months after.  But as I grew up, I kept going back to the film to see why it had such a profound effect on me as a child. I never really found the reason why, other than I was probably too young to take in some of the nowadays pretty tame violence. But Jaws is a film I've revisited many times now as an adult, and it keeps getting better.

What fascinates me now about Jaws is how this picture became so huge. It smashed box office records at the time. The film debuted at a time when the realist New Hollywood was beginning to fade, and a more populist cinema was about to take over and influence modern cinema forever (Spielberg's buddy George Lucas was two years away with Star Wars). In reality, no one has ever forgiven Spielberg for this influence. Yet Jaws is definitely a New Hollywood picture with a budget and a  heavy debt to Hitchcock's Psycho.

Spielberg shows very little in the first hour, with John Williams now legendary stabbing theme (Psycho again) giving us advance warning of a pending shark attack.  But believable turns from Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and the excellent Richard Dreyfuss give credence to a lot of the dumb plot turns on screen which in essence lead us to a very poor looking mechanical rubber shark! The last hour of the film is a three men in a boat play, with some great dialogue and interplay.

Spielberg never gets much critical credit, seemingly portrayed as a maker of kids movies and over sentimental rubbish. Yet as director Spielberg has made quite a few gems: Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Raiders Of the Lost Ark, E.T., Empire Of the Sun, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan and more than a few other good films. Jaws was where his personal style came through for the first time. That style has been founded on solid storytelling and a remit to entertain. And cinema does not get much more entertaining than the mechanical rubber shark picture.

Happy Hallowe'en!

I made a costume for my son when he was about 4 and obsessed with everything to do with dinosaurs.  I had a book called Sew a Dinosaur - 21 playful prehistoric beasts to follow you home, which included a pattern for a kid-sized Triceratops costume.

The problem is, my son REALLY wanted to be a Tyrannosaurus Rex. They look nothing whatsoever like Triceratops.

Somehow or other, I did it.

 

Details:  The head pieces were cut from cheap alligator-print knit over 1" foam backed with lining (bloody red for the inside of the head).  The teeth and claws were more of the foam.  I had to bone the head to keep the jaws out front, and to prevent the top one collapsing.  Even so it wasn't the easiest costume for him to see out of.

The body is made without the foam.  The tail was a cone of the alligator print sewn over foam.  The base of the tail is circular, sewn to the back of the shirt.  To keep the tail from dragging, I attached an elastic belt to the SAs on the inside, and it fit snugly around my son's hips.  The tail stayed straight out and wiggled as he walked.

It was extremely cute, if I say so myself, and it was worn many times by many kids.

Birdwatching online in the Panama Canal

One of the Panama Canal inhabitants had a cameo appearance in the Canal webcam which can be seen in the At Panama - Soluciones' Home Page to Panama links http://www.geocities.com/WallStreet/4245.

The webcam faces the ships crossing Miraflores locks and occasionally we get to see a gem such as a bird peeking into the camera lens. While Panama is known as the home of the harpy eagle which also crowns the national coat of arms, the harrier (or gavilan Circus buffoni) is very prevalent.

Support by private individuals and businesses is crucial to keeping these and other animals alive when faced with the end of their environment from increased construction. The following NGOs are recognized by the Panama Ministry of Economy as non-profit organizations and donations to them are tax-deductible when listed in https://www.dgi.gob.pa/ttd_ong_fundaciones.asp :

8-NT-1-22532 2 PATRONATO PARQUE NATURAL METROPOLITANO http://www.parquemetropolitano.org/en/donaciones/index.html
4362-2-15019 74 PATRONATO AMIGOS DEL AGUILA ARPIA http://www.aguilaharpia.org/
541-25-2179 71 SOCIEDAD AUDOBON DE PANAMA http://www.panamaaudubon.org/
171473-1-16952 35 FUNDACION FONDO PEREGRINO PANAMA http://www.fondoperegrino.org/

3032-2-11346 26 FUNDACION HUMANITAS http://www.fundacionhumanitas.org/
536332-1-19943 5 FUNDACION SAN FRANCISCO DE ASIS http://www.facebook.com/pages/Panama-Panama/FUNDACION-SAN-FRANCISCO-DE-ASIS/39042932048 http://www.fundasis.org/

Soluciones Home Page is part of the Panama Webring http://www.webring.com/hub?ring=panama;id=15;prvw which also serves as a "collection of sites with information about Panama, everything from tourism, history, FAQs, photos, about our beautiful country in Central America."
Webring was bought back by its founders from the jaws of Yahoo! Geocities sites such as Soluciones are not so lucky, with Yahoo! deciding to turn off the sites on October 26, 2009.
More about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocities

Coming Home (1978) Directed by Hal Ashby

Nick:
Hal Ashby is often regarded as the good guy from the New Hollywood era. Much loved by actors, his modest hippie temperament ultimately turning to drug dependency; he is one of the casualties of  New Hollywood. Bruce Dern, who stars in Coming Home, said: "What happened to Hal Ashby, both what he did to himself and what they did to him, was as repulsive as anything I've seen in my forty years of the industry." Coming Home could be the last big hit from New Hollywood, its many problems as a film, a great example why the director-led New Hollywood era came to an end.

Coming Home feels like a rotting corpse. It's smug, indulgent, self-satisfied. By 1978 punk was happening and the 1960's reverence on show in Coming Home must have seemed like arch sentimentality. It really feels like that now. Sure, Coming Home is really well acted. Yes, it makes a comment on the wastefulness of the Vietnam War. But by this time, Hollywood and America itself had really discussed and considered the Vietnam War. As similar rallying calls and comment on this war, both the later Apocalypse Now! and the same year The Deer Hunter would show more ambition and edge. Offering no new perspective or insight, all Coming Home leaves us with is the romance. Jane Fonda and John Voight have chemistry for sure. But you never find it believable why Fonda's liberated nurse would stay with her Vietnam returning husband (an ever reliable Dern). It's also inconceivable that Voight's character would change so conveniently from bitter paralyzed war veteran to all round good guy and the sensitive spurned lover.

Coming Home has its great moments. Unfortunately, Ashby reduces the tension on screen with a soundtrack of great hits of the era (Stones, Beatles) constantly playing in the background like muzak, often unrelated to the scene. I'll remember Ashby for The Last Detail and Shampoo. Give me Jaws and Star Wars over this any day. Coming Home is well-meaning, but ultimately fails with its simplified and sentimental portrait of why America didn't deal with its war casualties with more empathy.

Astrid:
Coming Home is a film I wanted to see because it is a 70s movie, and it has Jane Fonda in it. The Director Hal Ashby is also interesting. I had forgotten that New Hollywood is not always a synonym for subversive or great. Coming Home turned out to be strangely conservative and coy. At times it reminded me of Forrest Gump (1994), which was my first cinematic encounter with the Vietnam War.

Yet, on entertainment level, I was quite content. I was well entertained actually: The angry and dangerous war veteran (John Voight) turns into an adorable lover and a campaigner for peace. The stifled and overly sweet Sally (Jane Fonda) is liberated from the constraints of a boring marriage. Sally's husband (Bruce Dern), returns from Vietnam the same arrogant and ignorant person he was when he went there, although now he is traumatized. When he finds out Sally has been seeing one of the veterans from the recovery hospital (where she had gone to volunteer), the husband threatens to murder someone or himself. A little tense, yes, but not really, because Hal Ashby has added a pop soundtrack on every scene of the film. Even while intimate dialogue is happening, there is always a Rolling Stones song or a Beatles tune playing in the background at a disturbing volume.

Jane Fonda had been vocally against the Vietnam War from the early 1970s onwards. After her visit to Vietnam in 1972 she was dubbed Hanoi Jane and deemed unpatriotic by the US press. In light of her activist past it is not surprising that she said yes to Coming Home, but it is baffling that the film handled the issue so lightly.