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Movie Planner: A new 'Vacation' and an old 'Gone With the Wind'

 
Gone With the Wind may be the by-product of an era when segregation was demanded and history was whitewashed, but it also is a towering film. Join Rhett (Clark Gable) and Scarlett (Vivien Leigh) at Tampa Theatre on Sunday.
Gone With the Wind may be the by-product of an era when segregation was demanded and history was whitewashed, but it also is a towering film. Join Rhett (Clark Gable) and Scarlett (Vivien Leigh) at Tampa Theatre on Sunday.
Published July 29, 2015

CLASSIC MOVIE: NOT JUST WHISTLIN' DIXIE

Debate over the Confederate Stars and Bars in the wake of the mass shooting in Charleston, S.C. resulted in retailers halting sales of the image, governments removing flags, and car-booting The Dukes of Hazzard's General Lee.

New York Post film critic Lou Lumenick recently raised hackles by suggesting a similar fate for Gone With the Wind, being shown at 3 p.m. Sunday at Tampa Theatre.

"If the Confederate flag is finally going to be consigned to museums as an ugly symbol of racism," Lumenick wrote, "what about the beloved film offering the most iconic glimpse of that flag in American culture?"

Lumenick refers to Gone With the Wind's signature post-Battle of Atlanta crane shot, pulling back to reveal thousands of injured Confederate soldiers, music swelling, and finally a tattered Confederate flag defiantly fluttering.

"Oh, fiddle-dee-dee," defenders of the 1939 classic will say (or some other f-word.) "Gone With the Wind isn't part of the racial divide issue. Look at how happy Scarlett O'Hara's slaves were to serve her, what a noble cause preserving a plantation economy was. Didn't Hattie McDaniel make history as the first African-American winner of an Academy Award?"

All true except historians agree that institutional slavery in real life was closer to 12 Years a Slave than Gone With the Wind, and such cruelty is what dashing Rhett Butler and Ashley Wilkes are then defending so honorably. Remember that McDaniel had a long walk to get her Oscar, from a back table near the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel, her co-stars sitting up front.

Gone With the Wind is the by-product of an era when segregation was demanded and history was whitewashed, romanticizing a lost Confederate cause with the newfound spectacle of color and sound. It was a perfect movie for its time and later generations but times change, and appreciation of some art with it. D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation is both a cinematic milestone and a racist valentine to the Ku Klux Klan, rightfully banished to museums and Film 101.

Gone With the Wind isn't as despicable but does require a heavy dose of doubt about its historical accuracy. There is no disputing, however, its sweeping drama and star performances by McDaniel, Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable. Flaws and all, a towering film.

Tickets for Tampa Theatre's screening of Gone With the Wind are $10, available at the box office and online at tampatheatre.org. See it, perhaps while you still can.

WALLEY WORLD REDUX: VACATION

The Griswold family hit the holiday road again Wednesday when Vacation (R) debuted in theaters. The next-generation franchise reboot stars Ed Helms as grownup Rusty Griswold, well past that awkward Anthony Michael Hall stage.

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Rusty decides to take his family on a cross country road trip to Walley World, like dear old dad Clark in 1983 only not as funny. Helms gamely inherits the Griswold tradition of vapid fatherhood from Chevy Chase, in a ruder, cruder comedy than the classic making it possible.

There was good and bad to report about Vacation, in a grade C+ review now available at tampabay.com/movies. Two sequences rise above the sewage baths and shock gags that likely will make it a hit: Charlie Day as a bummed-out river rapids guide, and a Four Corners sex fantasy gone wrong. Either might have fit into the late Harold Ramis' original, they're that good.

However, much of Vacation is devoted to easy shock jokes, some that work (Steele Stebbins as a bullying kid brother) and other that don't (Chris Hemsworth as a well-endowed weatherman). Extra credit for bringing Chase, Beverly D'Angelo and the Wagon Queen Family Truckster out of mothballs for the occasion.

For our full review of Vacation, click here.

FAST FLICKS: LIGHTS, CAMERA, SCRAMBLE

A lot of things can happen in 48 hours. Making a movie usually isn't one of them.

This weekend, dozens of aspiring Spielbergs will attempt to do just that. The 48 Hour Film Project returns to Tampa Bay, an exercise in speed-creating short movies bringing out the best (sometimes worst) in seat-of-your-pants cinema.

Teams of filmmakers get their marching orders Friday at the contest's 6 p.m. kickoff party at Joffrey's Coffee and Tea Co., 1811 N 15th St. in Ybor City. By 7:30, each team will be randomly assigned a genre (comedy, musical, romance, etc.) to produce, along with a character, prop and line of dialogue that must be included in the movie. Running times must range between four and seven minutes, not including credits.

Then the teams will be released into the night, beginning a two-day marathon of production from first draft to final cut. Their deadline is 7:30 p.m. Sunday, when everyone gathers again at Joffrey's for a caffeine boost. Both events are interesting to hang around, listening to filmmakers discuss what went right and wrong over the weekend.

On Aug. 9, all qualifying movies will be shown in the Main Stage theater at Hillsborough Community College's Ybor City campus. Movies selected by a panel of judges as best in show will be presented Aug. 23 at Falk Theater, 428 W Kennedy Blvd. in Tampa. Admission to each screening event is $10.

UPCOMING RELEASES

Aug. 7: The Fantastic Four; The Gift; Ricki and the Flash; Shaun the Sheep Movie; Irrational Man

Aug. 14: The Man From U.N.C.L.E; Straight Outta Compton; Underdogs

Aug. 21: The End of the Tour; Sinister 2; Hitman: Agent 47; American Ultra; Some Kind of Beautiful; Grandma

Aug. 28: Max Steel; We Are Your Friends; Regression

Sept. 2: A Walk in the Woods; No Escape