Silver Screen Awesomeness: Spielberg / Hitchcock Double Feature

Ever since I've watched Pulp Fiction at the cinema, I've kept my eyes open for other classics to appear on the big screen.  Recently, I've been fortunate enough to see two awesome films at Regal Cinemas:

Raiders of the Lost Ark:  To celebrate the release of Indiana Jones on Blu-Ray, Raiders was recently projected on the big screen.  Having only seen the "Cold War Era" of Indy at the movies, it was truly a privilege to see the original film the way it was meant to be seen.

The Birds:  As much as I love Indiana Jones, I've seen the film hundreds of times and know the story by heart.  However, for Alfred Hitchcock's thriller, I've never even seen the film on my TV.  With a brief discussion with Robert Osborne prior to the film, The Birds was presented by TCM and Fathom Events to Celebrate a 100 years of film making by Universal Pictures.  To continue this year-long celebration, other classics such as Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein will be shown later this year.

Although these two films are completely different from each other, they were both crafted by masters of the art form.  They are often discussed by fans and scholars alike.  Since so much analysis has already been performed on these films, I want to note some similarities that make these movies so fantastic:

• The Sound:  Maybe my audio system at home sucks, but I definitely noticed the sound effects at the movie theatre.  In Raiders, the gunshots cracked and whizzed across the entire theatre while the thud of a punch cracked pain into my lower jaw.  As for The Birds, the piercing screams of the feathery animals truly hurt my ears, making it hard to watch the chaos spawned across the town.  Especially in the final scene where Tippi Hedren is attacked in the attic, I literally had to cover my eyes and ears from a sensory overload of terror.

•  Fierce Women:  Harrison Ford and Rod Taylor play the stereotypical heroes of their films, however they are not accompanied by the typical damsel in distress.  Both Karen Allen and Tippi Hedren are strong willed  women who can carry their own (and who doesn't like a strong female character).  Just for fun, if I had my choice of either woman at their prime, I'd have to go with Karen Allen.  It's a hard decision, but Karen has the edge because I love seeing her in that white dress (and she's a brunette).

• Supernatural Sensibilities:  Raiders is definitely an adventure flick while The Birds is definitely a thriller.  However, they both deviate from their typical genre with some sci-fi twists.  Raiders contains Nazi's searching for supernatural power to speak to God.  While in the Birds, well... there's man-eating killer birds.