filmland / By Charlie Myers

1-2-3 Thumbs Up!

Plus: A can’t-miss documentary on the old-school North Coast fly-fishing scene

(June 18, 2009) Previews

Sandra Bullock plays Margaret, a book editor who forces her young assistant Andrew (Ryan Reynolds) to marry her so she can avoid deportation to Canada in the comedy/romance The Proposal, opening Friday, June 19. Rated PG-13 for sexual content, nudity and language. 107m. At the Broadway, Fortuna and Mill Creek.

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Jack Black fans can presumably rejoice about Year One, a comedy in which Black and Michael Cera play rubes who wander around the ancient world. Boy, I really regret being out of town this coming weekend. Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content throughout, brief strong language and comic violence. 100m. At the Broadway, Mill Creek, Fortuna and Minor.

Michael Bay repeats as director for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the follow-up to the popular 2007 film Transformers. Shia LaBoeuf again stars as Sam Witwicky, who stumbles onto a piece of Allspark that reveals the origins of the Transformers. Megan Fox also reprises her role as Mikaela Banes. Let the battle begin. Midnight showings on Tuesday, June 23 at the Broadway, Fortuna and Minor. Opening Wednesday, June 24, at the Broadway, Mill Creek, Fortuna and Minor. Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi action violence, language, some crude and sexual material, and brief drug material. 147m.

Reviews

RIVERS OF A LOST COAST:Rivers Of A Lost Coast, narrated by Tom Skerritt, (A River Runs Through It), is a haunting, fresh take on the rise and fall of the steelhead and salmon fisheries in the Eel, Russian, Smith and other North Coast rivers. With zero preachiness, it illuminates the greater story of the 20th century’s often reckless, abundance-fed optimism as it follows a group of pioneering, obsessive fly fishermen who came to the north coast beginning in the 1920s to fish rivers choked with monster steelhead and Chinook. Their exploits eventually drew mobs of fly fishermen in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, and even led to innovations in fly fishing gear design. But by the 1980s, as the fisheries began to plummet, the fly fishing heyday was done.

The scene was dominated by the rivalry between two characters, the serious Ted Lindner and the eccentric Bill Schaadt. The film places Schaadt, especially, at the heart of things. He made his fishing gear out of litter scraps, bartered fish for gasoline, and played dirty — pouring oil on rocks to keep bank fishermen from his fishing hole; attaching razor blades to his flies to cut the lines of other fly fishermen. Many marveled at his obsession:

“I mean, here comes this heroic figure, 60 fucking miles an hour on a goddamn dirt road … jams on the brakes and the car skids around in a circle and ends up sideways like this,” recalls fly fisherman Russell Chatham in the film. “He literally rolls out of the car — and he threw a pair of waders on, took his rod and ran top-speed from the car towards the river, running like an athlete, just peeling line … and the minute he hits the water he drives that cast out there and he’s fishing.”

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