Pete's weekend movie roundup: '80s nostalgia, Star Trek geekdom, and indie fest in Livermore

Diablo's senior editor misses summers in the 1980s, but looks forward to next weekend, when he'll be interviewing the director of On Golden Pond in Livermore.

I saw two coming-of-age movies set in Pittsburgh in the 1980s this week. I've been nostalgic of late for the summers I spent in the mid-1980s, working for the city of Walnut Creek's summer recreation camps and playgrounds. I have many great friendships from those days—we would play Capture the Flag and Octopus all day with kids, then go to the movies at the Pleasant Hill Regency and hang out at Lippert's Ice Cream Parlor with in the evenings. So this '80s double feature brought back a lot of fond memories.

The first film I watched was the Mysteries of Pittsburgh, which opens today at the Embarcadero in San Francisco and the Shattuck in Berkeley. I've been looking forward to this film for awhile, because it was directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, an Orinda-raised guy who had huge success with his debut feature, Dodgeball, a few years ago. I interviewed Thurber last year and you can read that story here. Thurber's follow-up to Dodgeball is an efficient adaptation of Berkeley-author Michael Chabon's debut novel. Chabon is a wonderful writer, and puts so much eloquent description on the page, that apapting his prose to a 90-minute film narrative is a daunting task. Consequently, the Mysteries of Pittsburgh feels a bit punctuated and rushed, but is watchable without being particulalry memorable. The film is beautiful to look at—the city of Pittsburgh should screen it for the visitor's bureau—and features strong character roles from Peter Sarsgaard, Sienna Miller, and Nick Nolte.

Chabon fans might want to check it out just to compare the page to screen versions. And if they miss Mysteries of Pittsburgh, there's plenty of other opportunities to watch silver screen Chabon. He wrote the story for the best of the Spiderman films, Spiderman 2. Screenwriter Steve Kloves and director Curtis Hanson did a pretty amazing job adapting Wonder Boys back in 2000, and two other Chabon novels are in production by A-list directors. Stephen Daldry (The Hours, The Pianist) is working on The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, while the Coen Brothers (No Country For Old Men, Fargo) are teaming up for The Yiddish Policeman's Union. I'm excited about both projects.

Another 80's Pittsburgh movie in theaters is Adventureland, and it's a real gem. Director Greg Mottola's most recent feature was the outrageous smash Superbad, but Adventureland is less crass, and closer in tone to Mottola's outstanding, often overlooked debut, The Daytrippers. Based on the director's own experiences working in a Pittsburgh summer theme park in the late 1980s, Adventureland maintains a lovely balance between realism and nostalgia, and goes on the short list of great endless adolescent summer films, with Dazed and Confused and American Graffiti. The soundtrack is absolutley packed with killer music from the decade.

If you're up for a classic movie on the big screen, Vallejo's renovated Empress Theater is showing Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece, Rear Window, on Friday, April 10.

Star Trek fans should take note that the Alameda Theatre is going to be a fun place to get excited for the new Star Trek feature that comes out in May. Over the next few weeks, the Alameda will be screening the best of the Star Trek movies—Wrath of Khan (April 14), Voyage Home (April 21), and Undiscovered Country (April 28), on its ginormous screen. Meanwhile, I loved reading this story about how a group of unexpecting Trekkers got to watch the first screening of the new movie at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas. One audience member blogged, "I just saw the new Star Trek movie—and it melted my pants!"

Finally, I spent last night watching The Rose, the 1979 rock star melodrama that made Bette Midler into a huge star. I had always wanted to see this film, but had never gotten around to it until I found out that I will be interviewing The Rose's director, Mark Rydell, next Friday at the California Independent Film Festival in Livermore. Rydell will receive the festival's Golden Slate Award for career achievement in directing, before a screening of his beloved 1981 classic On Golden Pond. The California Independent Film Festival is one of my very favorite Bay Area film events of the year, so check out the website to find out about the many independent features, shorts, and filmmaker events happening April 16-19 in the Tr-Valley.

Posted at 12:07 PM in Pete's Popcorn Picks | Permalink