Hey folks, Harry here... I know we may not see eye to eye on many things, but we all love movies - and of those movies, there are THE movies we love - and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND is one of them. It happens to be my favorite Steven Spielberg film. This is its 40th Anniversary and Sony is going to rerelease it into movie theaters this September 1st. That's spectacular. This movie captures the world that received STAR WARS. They both came out around one another, but Dreyfus' family - very much like every family I knew, minus the shoveling dirt in the window. It made DEVIL'S TOWER a place I had to visit in my life - and not only that I married a couple in the shade of Devil's Tower - then enjoyed the Alamo Drafthouse's Rolling Roadshow screening of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND - with trailers for Spielberg's career playing before. It was a gorgeous night - you could see endless stars in the sky - and when it came time for the ship to arrive at Devil's Tower... it felt positively religious. It always has. At least to a film geek like me.
Years later when my family divorced and my mother took me from Austin and my father - I understood the family dynamic of the film even stronger - and seeing Dreyfus get on that ship. It makes me so grateful that the Aliens didn't take Dad, but at the same time - through a lot of that divorced period of my life - I saw Dad in Austin as being my metaphoric abduction of choice. Watching CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND as a 5 year old... a 5 year old that had all manners of battery powered toys that were in the film. A kid that dreamed of lights in the sky that came to play. One that played Williams theme on his xylophone. A film that made me fear Divorce, which was striking too many of my friends' families, but was still 6 years away for me.
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS is a truly brilliant film. A film that could introduce kids to PINNOCHIO, Spielberg & the dream of a grander universe. Check out this trailer - see if it gives you goosebumps. Watching this with an audience come to commune with cinema of the highest calibre.
Keep it cool,
Harry
