Jaws (颌, 顎, 입 부분)

I recently got to watch "Jaws" at a live orchestral play-along of the classic summer blockbuster, first played in 1975 and still a classic today, its 50th Anniversary. It's just a summer classic: first released in the summer, the movie's set in the summer, right before July 4th weekend, it's in a summer resort locale of Amityville (somewhere near New York City, one of those beach cities), the main antagonist is a shark that only would cause problems in the summer (don't see many people going in the water during the icy winter), and the beaches evoke images of summer and long, endless days spent out at the beach under the sun. It's still got star power: the orchestral hall I attended, which normally does NOT seat that many people for a normal Friday night or Saturday night showing of a Mendelsohn or Bach concert, was pretty packed to the "gills" on a Sunday afternoon showing of Jaws. It reminded me of why I go to movies: the screen is big, the lights are dimmed, the audio is pumped up, you really get into teh movie, and also......for better or worse, the rest of the audience reacts to the movie, which can be great for a comedy when the laughter is timed correctly, horrible if someone is just not cognizant of others and yells out spoilers, coughs, sneezes, etc. Something about going to the theater, though, still retains its value and is a different experience than watching on my computer sitting no my couch: I can stop watching or pause the movie at any point, I can be on my phone, I can fall asleep, I can barely pay attention, I can be donating blood (!) but that's actually kind of the point now: theaters actually FORCE you to concentrate on the movie and get off your phone (the ushers made sure to remind those who still had them out) and thousands of people actually collectively did something together and shared in the collective community of the event, something that doesn't happen as often in a world where we're separted by our phones all the time. It doesn't hurt that Jaws was, is a good movie. Not MJ's cup of tea (although we did watch all 3 seasons of Squid Game together), with people being eaten by a shark and losing limbs and blood in the water (I've never liked diving into ocean water with all the salt and big waves, it just gives me even more reason not to now), but the tension is pretty high; the villian doesn't even show up in its full form (we finally get a glimpse of him) in the 2nd half of the movie (AFTER the intermission!) and of course the iconic line: "You're gonna need a bigger boat." People clapped at that utterance as well as Quint's speech about losing men to sharks during WWII. Luckily, Jaws isn't really a horror movie; the shark attacks are not scary necessarily, and watching it with orchestra allows you to know exactly when Jaws is going to reappear, soon after the conductor picks up the baton again and starts up the strings playing the daa-dum music again presaging certain doom. If and when civilizations devolve into machines and simulations, I'll remember experiences like watching Jaws with a room full of people and orchestra playing the score as one of the luxuries of real life, the epitome of the human experience. Nothing like sitting in an air-conditioned room watching a summer blockbuster shark movie during the dead of summer. Watching Jaws is somewhat similar to watching the newest Jeopardy superchamp no Jeopardy, Scott Riccardi, tear up the competition on Jeopardy. I recently learned that I have made it into the Jeopardy contestant pool (it's a dream come true) so I could be called anytime within the next 2 years to be on Jeopardy, so of course I've ramped up studying even more and gotten involved even more, and being a competitive person naturally but even more so with Jeopardy, compared myself to Scott. I'm not quite at his level yet, but I hope to be when I'm ready to be on the show. It's a little discouraging to find out that Scott is only 26, in a different generation than I am, and still getting all these questions right, but then I remember I'm a pandemic baby of Jeopardy, only really started watching every day in September 2020 soon after finishing less intellectually challenging shows like Tiger King and other Netflix shows. But boy would I be upset if I ran into a champion like Scott if I got onto Jeopardy.... he encourages me to study harder.