So you're probably wondering — why Brainstorm . While I knew of Doug Trumbull's involvement in films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey , Silent Running and Close Encounters of the Third Kind — I came to understand his role as a visual effects pioneer when we worked with Ralph McQuarrie. Ralph had done design work for a number of Trumbull's Showscan projects — films designed to be presented at a high frame rate, providing a different look, almost a window into the world. While that's a very unsophisticated description, I knew that  Brainstorm  was Trumbull's attempt to use the technology in a feature film. While that didn't work out, he did use some amazing techniques to tell his story of a group of scientists' experiments to open up someone's mind's-eye to spectators.  It's hard to recommend the film for the story alone (Vonna felt that Natalie Wood, in her final screen role before her tragic and controversial death, was acting in a different film...

The first entry in my 52nd Birthday movie challenge was A*P*E — in 3-D! It's one of the many mid-70s King Kong  knock-offs (this one out of Korea) taking advantage of the publicity surrounding the Dino De Laurentiis remake. I've recently been checking out a number of those, so  A*P*E  (no, I have no idea why the asterisks are between the letters) seemed a perfect choice to kick things off with.  A*P*E 's love interest is played by Joanna DeVarona (later Kerns, of "Growing Pains" fame), whose sister Donna was am Olympic swimmer who trained right here in Santa Clara! So the most tenuous of local connections to this giant monkey film. Despite the less than stellar reputation, I always wanted to see it, in part due to the promised "Jaws vs Shark" scene. Well, you can't say that they don't make good on that promise in the opening moments of the film, during which our ape-suited actor wrestles with a clearly dead shark. This one definitely needs to be...