The Screengrab

We've featured a lot of different types of movies here at the Screengrab during our excting Summerfest '08 feature, in which we endeavour to review a movie a week with the word "summer" in the title that you can watch while you're putting off trying on your new bikini.  We've featured Summer School, a movie that has made people inappropriately nostalgic for the 1980s; we've featured Summer of Sam, a movie in which it is revealed that Satan speaks through us in the voice of dogs, and sounds an amazing amount like John Tuturro; and we've featured Suddenly Last Summer, a movie in which a homosexual predator and his pimp sister wreak havoc on a small European town before he is eaten by the townsfolk.  No, really.  We've featured not one, but two movies starring Freddie Prinze, Jr., which, believe me, was just as painful for me as it was for you.  But while many of these films have inspired us to do a wide variety of things -- become nostalgic for the sight of Kirstie Alley in a bathing suit; go back in time and put Tennessee Williams on anti-depressants; avoid watching any future films starring Freddie Prinze, Jr. -- none of them have actually inspired us to get up off our duffs, get out of the house, and do something other than watch movies all summer.  But that changes today as we take a look at the greatest surfing documentary ever made.  

So grab your board, hop in your woodie, and join us on a search for the perfect wave as we enjoy The Endless Summer!

THE ACTION: Mike Hynson and Robert August are surfers.  That's what they do:  surf.  Bruce Brown, who wrote and directed the movie, is a filmmaker, but he's a surfer too.  Surfers are an uncomplicated lot, and they really want nothing more than to bum around all day waiting for the best wave they can possibly get, and then they want to get out there and shoot that son of a bitch for all it's worth.  That's essentially all that happens in this movie:  Hynson and August trek from one end of Africa to another, then to Australia, the South Pacific, and anywhere else they can possibly get to, just looking for a really good curl.  Brown follows them, training his 16mm camera at them for some blurry nature shots and some absolutely gorgeous filmwork out on the water.  The two engage in wacky hijinks, doing very little to dispel the notion that surfers are overgrown, doofy man-children, and Brown provides amiable frat-boy narration, often meandering and nonsensical, to cover the silence of the action scenes (most of the shots had no soundman and hence, no sound).  Then they trudge off in search of another wave, and when they find one, they ride it until they just can't ride it no more.  That's it, in its entirety:  90 minute of three goofy guys bumming around the globe looking for waves to ride.  It's exactly that bad -- and that great.

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Hey, remember Kevin WIlliamson?  Sure you do!  He was the highly paid screenwriter who was going to revolutionize the horror cinema for a new generation with his 'smart' thrillers, starting with Scream in 1996.  Unfortunately, it turned out that by 'smart' he meant 'marginally rewarding for those who had spent as much time watching crappy horror movies as I did'.  His moment quickly passed, and in the 2000s, torture porn and J-horror have become the new touchstones of Fangoria fans, while Williamson went on to a whole 'nother kind of showbiz glory as the creator of the slasher-deficient Dawson's Creek.  Still, he meant well, and about ten years ago, his movies were about the only evidence that could be found that the genre had any life left in it at all.  So why not give the guy a break and make one of his most famous films the subject of an entry in Summerfest '08, the weekly Screengrab feature where we review movies with the word 'summer' in the title to give you something to do for a couple of hours while you're waiting for the potato salad to cool?  If nothing else, we can guarantee you that this week's installment is going to be a bit more fun than the gloomy 1950s psychodramas we've featured for the last couple of weeks.   

So strap on your fisherman's slicker, polish up your favorite boat hook, and join us for a look at 1997's I Know What You Did Last Summer!

THE ACTION: Julie, Helen, Barry and Ray are a quartet of remarkably photogenic North Carolina teenagers who happily correspond to some of our very favorite big-screen stereotypes (respectively, the good girl, the wannabe starlet, the party boy, and the jock).  On the Fourth of July weekend just after their graduation, they're cruising around one nigher after a fun trip to the beach, and wouldn't you know it, their car just happens to plow into a shambolic wino whom they are forced to leave for dead.  Hey, it's happened to all of us, right?  Let those who have not accidentally run over a wino cast the first stone, that's all I'm saying.  A year later, they find themselves wracked with guilt and unable to fulfill any of their teenage dreams, except the dreams that involve staying drunk all the time.  That's when they get a mysterious missive reading "I know what you did last summer", and a number of their friends start to turn up dead, the victims of sharpened implements wielded by a dead ringer for the Gorton's fisherman.  Which one of them has turned on his or her friends?  Or is it some phantom stranger who has it in for them?  And which horror movie cliches will Kevin Williamson take pokes at while pretending he's above them in his own screenplay?  Only time will tell, or looking at any number of movie spoiler websites.

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