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Nashville, Tennessee

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Film
June 7, 2007


WATCH THE SKIES
Belcourt’s outdoor drive-in series spotlights sci-fi

by W.M. Akers


This Saturday at dusk, the Belcourt starts off its charmingly alliterative “Second Saturday Summer Sci-Fi Series at Sundown” with 1951’s The Day the Earth Stood Still. For the first time, the theater’s annual parking lot drive-in series has a theme, and Belcourt programmer Toby Leonard explains it was chosen with the season in mind. “A lot of it has to do with what genre feels like it belongs in the summer,” Leonard says, “and to me sci-fi is a summer type of genre.”

Although the free monthly series includes so-bad-they’re-good favorites such as Plan 9 From Outer Space (July 14) and Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster (Aug. 11), it also features acknowledged classics. Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still is a Cold War protest film embedded in sophisticated science fiction; Forbidden Planet (Sept. 8) and E.T. (which closes the series Oct. 13) are landmarks in the history of special effects, presented without an ironic wink. This mixture of good and bad was partly intentional, and partly a result of the limited number of 16 mm prints available.

“We’ve done this two or three years now, and it’s just been kind of off the cuff,” Leonard says. “This year we decided to pick a genre and go with it, and some of the things that were available jumped out at us.”

Coming from the same 16 mm inventory are the shorts to be shown before each feature, which Leonard says will include “cheesy clips from old TV shows and old commercials. Stuff like Ronald Reagan pitching some toothpaste.” Stay also for surprise episodes of a mid-’70s TV show filmed in Nashville, unseen for almost 30 years.

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This year the drive-in aspect is less important than the movies themselves. “People seem to prefer watching from their chairs, but if they want to sit in their car they can,” says Belcourt marketing chief Josh Hayes, the man behind that fabulous alliteration. “Mostly, I think it will be a walk-in thing, unless you have a convertible.” Teens coming for the heavy petting may have to wait until after the show.

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