By Dave Montalbano
Wow! We made it to 2011 anno domini! Besides being the “Year of the Rabbit” on the Chinese Zodiac, 2011 will be the 30th anniversary of the Bucks’ Class of ’81, despite all the signs of the Apocalypse my classmates have faced.
However, studio executives have faced Armageddon at the box office as ticket sales dropped by 8 percent in 2010. Yet, the box office champion, Toy Story 3, blew away all competition with a deserved $415 million gross.
As a film columnist, the success of Toy Story 3 is pleasing, since it was my most recommended movie from my Top 10 list: Toy Story 3, Sherlock Holmes, The Runaways, Predators, The Millennium Trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who played with Fire, The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest), Inception, How to Train Your Dragon and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1.
Honorable mention goes to these flicks in no particular order, except reversed alphabetical: The Yellow Handkerchief, Up in the Air, Winter’s Bone, Suck, Mao’s Last Dancer, Lucky Streak and the Crime Fighters, Lost Angel, The Incubus, The Expendables, Cool It, Bran Nue Dae and Black Swan.
As good customer service and etiquette became extinct with big business, the South Florida community was blessed with these Backstage Angels who turned disaster into triumph: The volunteers of the Ft. Lauderdale International Film Festival, the Palm Beach Film Festival, the former Delray Beach Film Festival, Actor’s Playhouse’s Richard Bernard, Caldwell Playhouse’s Nedra Simpson, Charlie Cinnamon; The Incubus’ Anthony Espina, Ginger Ly; Andrew Sigman, Randy Waage and Charlotte Vermack.
The following people proved to be class acts, who made good events even better: Jane Russell, Ernesto & Diego Rimoch, Erika Portnoy, James Pitt, Millie Perkins, Michael Murphy, Meghan Colleen Moroney, Rob Davis, Michael Bryon, Ed Byrnes and Quinton Aaron.
So if it is the end of the motion picture world as we know it, we can embrace the new beginnings caused by this apocalypse. A greedy short-termed culture that relies on attention disorder editing, will give way to filmmakers who believe in story, characters and well-directed spectacle. Here’s to the year of the rabbit, the luckiest of all symbols of the Chinese Zodiac!
