She Likes to Watch

The future of film is coming to the Fremont.
This week, San Luis Obispo’s historic movie house becomes one of the first theaters in the area to screen films using a state-of-the-art digital projector.
“It’s the way of the future,” said Sanborn Theatres Inc. spokesman Harold Taylor, whose company runs the Fremont Theatre and SLO’s Downtown Centre Cinemas. “Once the public hears about it and the word goes around, they’re going to go nuts over it.”
According to Taylor, the Barco projector will mean a “brighter, clearer, crisper picture” for new releases.
The new projector also opens the Fremont to digital 3-D movies such as Disney’s “Meet the Robinsons,” which opens Friday.
“It’s not like those green and red glasses you used to wear … It doesn’t tire your eyes out,” Taylor said, adding that the digital format “brings a new depth to the picture.”
As Taylor explains it, digital films are downloaded from the studios onto a Kodak computer server, then projected onto the Fremont’s massive screen. Plans for a digital projector have been in the works for about six months, he said.
Based on their experiences in San Luis Obispo, Sanborn Theatres hopes to implement the technology at its other movie theaters.
“After a while, you just have to admit that it’s an improvement,” Taylor said.

So, is it better? Check it out for yourself at The Fremont Theatre, 1025 Monterey St., in San Luis Obispo.

– Sarah L.

My friend Dan and I frequently gripe about the entertainment industry’s failure to adapt to new technology. In particular, the music business, which had grown accustomed to gouging us with exorbitant CD prices, failed to adapt to the Internet age and suddenly found its music being shared online — gasp — FOR FREE!

Instead of finding a way to use the Internet to everyone’s advantage, the Recording Industry Association of America (also known as the RIAA or, simply, “evil”) decided on a better solution: Threaten to sue every 15-year-old boy who’s ever downloaded a Green Day song and shared it with his buds.

That’ll make us feel better about high prices and crappy new artists!

Now that Junior is scared straight, TV is taking a similar approach, with Viacom and other organizations threatening to sue YouTube for posting copyrighted material. One of the great things about YouTube is that you can go there to see practically every music video ever shown on MTV and VH1. Trust me, you won’t see Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” on either of those channels today. But Viacom, which owns most MTV and VH1 content, doesn’t want you to see it anywhere else. So it has threatened to sue YouTube for $1 billion.

Sorry, Bonnie — we know you’d like the exposure after all these years. But it’s just (bad) business.

Fortunately, some in the entertainment industry — including a Los Osos celebrity — get it.

This week we learned that more than 200 episodes of “The Gumby Show” will be posted online at sites like YouTube, Google, and AOL/In2TV. The pilot, Gumby on the Moon, is already available for viewing.

Gumby is, of course, the little green — unless you can think of something else to call him — clay dude who embarks on a variety of adventures. He’s artsy, silly and more than a bit trippy. Gumby creator Art Clokey lives in Los Osos, as does his son Joe, who has taken over Gumby’s business ventures. Both have made it their mission to keep Gumby in the limelight, and this is yet another step in that direction.

This week, DMGI, a digital distributor of independently owned music, TV and video catalogs, announced that it was posting Gumby (which it licensed from Classic Media and Premavision) online. Joe Clokey helped prepare the episodes by remastering them.

The timing was no coincidence. Friday was the 50th anniversary of “The Gumby Show” premiere.

If you still want to see Gumby on your TV, “The Essential Gumby” DVD collection comes out in the fall.

In the meantime, check out Bonnie Tyler while you still can.

– Pat P.

A documentary billed as a “Mother Teresa meets Indiana Jones adventure” wooed judges at the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival enough to capture top honors in this year’s festival competition.

“Beyond the Call,” by Chicago native Adrian Belic, was named Best in Competition by the festival this week. The documentary features two men from different parts of the country who partake in self-financed humanitarian efforts in some of the most dangerous, war-torn countries in the world.

This year’s festival featured a record number of entries. Forty-two of those were screened and submitted to judges, who selected their favorites in six categories.

Other winners:
· Best feature film, “Hollywood Dreams”
· Best feature documentary, tie, “Our Land, our Life” and “Iraq in Fragments”
· Best short feature, “Rose”
· Best short documentary, “The Damndest, Finest Ruins”
· Best short film, tie, “Mute” and “Sadiq”
· Best student film, tie, “Sadiq” and “Gordo”
· Special jury award for best animation, “The Naked Hitchhiker”
· Special jury award for best foreign film, “Brod Ludaka (Ship of Fools)”
· Audience award – best short film (under 15 minutes), “The Frank Anderson”
· Audience award – best short feature/documentary (16-60 minutes), “The Damndest, Finest Ruins”
· Audience award – best feature-length film (over 60 minutes), “Beyond the Call”

***

Here’s something to do next time you’re buying frozen peas and pancake syrup at the grocery store: Count the number of teen magazine covers that feature Arroyo Grande’s Zac Efron. During one recent trip to Rite Aid, I counted seven — which was every teen magazine they had in stock. I even saw a special edition magazine dedicated solely to Efron, the ‘tween dream who once appeared in plays at the Unity Church in San Luis Obispo.

Efron attended last year’s film festival for a screening of the independent film “Derby Stallion.” But in just a year the 20-year-old’s career has skyrocketed, thanks to his role in the Disney Channel’s “High School Musical.” So he was simply too busy to return this time around.

In theaters now, you’ll see him in a preview for “Hairspray,” a summer release with with John Travolta, Queen Latifah and Christopher Walken. And a sequel to “High School Musical” is currently in the works.

When I interviewed him a year ago, Efron was considering a role in a Lifetime TV movie. You can bet he wouldn’t consider that today. In fact, once “Hairspray” hits, I’d expect a blitz of Efron movie roles.

We’ll have more on “Hairspray” in a future Ticket story.

– Pat P.

Ever wonder how they do it? The San Luis Obispo International Film Festival offers a series of workshops and panel discussions this weekend aimed at showing how filmmakers perfect their craft.

Today, start your day with “Hollywood Dreams,” a discussion about the challenges of acting and directing in Hollywood.
The panel discussion features Oscar-nominated actor James Cromwell and indie director Henry Jaglom, as well as “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” star Melissa Joan Hart, who directed the short film “Mute.”
It starts at 10 a.m. at the Oddfellows Hall, 520 Dana Street in San Luis Obispo.

Next at the Oddfellows Hall is “Meet the Filmmakers,” a panel discussion about the trials and thrills independent cinema. The talk, which features many of the filmmakers involved in this year’s festival, starts at 12:30 p.m.

“Behind the Scenes with CafeFX,” 3 p.m. at the Oddfellows Hall, highlights Santa Maria special effects firm CafeFX, which handles visual effects for some of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters.

On Sunday, Hollywood screenwriters Gregg Rosen, Brian Sawyer and David Garrett share their tips for writing a marketable script.

Garrett is the co-writer of such hits as “Deuce Bigalow: American Gigolo,” “First Pet” and “Corky Romano.” Rosen and Sawyer have collaborated on a number of television and film projects.

That workshop goes from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the San Luis Obispo City/County Library, 995 Palm St. in San Luis Obispo.

All workshops and panel discussions are $15 or $10 for students and film society members. For more information, call 543-3456 or visit www.slofilmfest.org.

On the phone, James Cromwell sounds like your favorite smart uncle.
The Oscar-nominated actor is warm and self-effacing, with just the slightest touch of gravel.
He chuckles. He raises his voice to discuss a lifetime of activism — animal rights, the anti-war movement, the Black Panthers — then moves to another room when his wife tells him he’s being too loud.
Cromwell appears Saturday at the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival when he accepts this year’s King Vidor Career Achievement Award for acting.
The ceremony is at 6 p.m. at the Fremont Theatre, 1025 Monterey St. in San Luis Obispo; tickets are $25 or $20 for students and film festival members. Call 546-3456 or visit www.slofilmfest.org for more information.
Before you go, we bring you some insights that didn’t make the print edition.

As the son of a Hollywood director and two theater pros, was it always expected that you would become an actor?
I was actually going to be a mechanical engineer (at Middlebury College in Vermont). That sounds a lot fancier than it really was: I wanted to design sports cars.
My father came to the Sunday morning after a Saturday night fraternity party at my fraternity house — I think this was what prompted him. It was probably my wonderful stepmother who said, “You know, we should really take Jamie to Sweden.”
So he was making a picture in Sweden and once I saw him working, in my quasi-adult state — I was not an adult but I had pretensions to maturity — I thought, “That looks like a lot of fun. Let’s do that.”

At 6-foot-5, you tower over a lot of actors. Has your height ever been an issue professionally?
It’s been an issue for two groups … Somebody at Fox said, “Y’know, I gotta tell you, it’s going to be a problem because I can tell you more than five big stars who refuse to work with anybody over 6 feet.” So I thought, “Oh well, I guess I won’t be doing films.”
And then Blake Edwards (on the set of “10”). I came in with a wonderful casting director who really liked me and Blake said to the casting director, “What am I supposed to do with that?”
And the casting director said, “Oh, I thought for the cop.” He said, “How tall is Dudley? How tall is he?” He was trying to figure how he was going to get Dudley (Moore) and me in the same shot without tilting the camera.

You’re definitely taller than most people we see in the movies.
When you’re 45 feet in the theaters, you realize that even if you’re small of stature, one way to appear big is to be the lead in a motion picture. That’s as big as you can get. So it attracts people who have issues and who have compensatory behaviors of the Napoleon variety.
The problem is — and it happens on stage as well — it tends to make the person who’s tallest the normal one and everybody else short. So when I appear on stage with a normal-sized actor, I look normal and everybody else looks like they’re Lilliputians.

Besides your Oscar-nominated role as the farmer in “Babe,” you’ve played a number of authority figures: presidents, police officers, military men.
Do you ever worry about being typecast?
When you said typecasting, it (used to mean) that you were given the kind of roles which were one-dimensional and they really only cast you because of the look. They didn’t have to go through any exposition.
I think the creativity as far as casting directors has shifted from their ability to appreciate an actor’s range to being able to very specifically match an individual actor with the qualities a director describes that he wants for a role.
We get established in the audience’s mind as having a particular quality. It is that quality that the casting director sells to the director: You will be getting this kind of performance from this actor. It’s a given.

Do you ever get tired of taking supporting roles?
When you’re a supporting actor, you know what your role is. Your role is to support them and to assist them in the scene so they can keep the level of their performance where they want it to be rather than having to compensate for your inadequacy.
I’m not a believer in, “Listen. As long as the camera’s on me, it’s my film and I’m going to do any damn thing.” … What happens is the story is not told.

You call yourself “a strong opponent of the Academy Awards system.” Why?
The fact that it is a choice between five superlative performances in which one person will win and four people will lose is obscene in my mind.
My solution is that the five nominees gather together in a room. No one is allowed to vote for themselves. And they discuss each of the films and they vote one of them as being the performance that they admired.
To compare what Kate Winslet did in “Little Children” to what Helen (Mirren) did in “The Queen” is an absurd thing to do.
– Sarah L.