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RED BANK: SHARKS, DOGS, MOCKINGBIRDS

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We’re gonna need a bigger screen: forty years after JAWS redefined the summer movie, it’s safe to go back in the Count Basie (formerly Carlton) Theatre to catch an anniversary screening, first in a series of seasonal blockbuster film events.

Under its earlier incarnation as the Carlton, the Count Basie Theatre entertained generations of Red Bank area locals with first-run (later second-run) product from the Hollywood glitterdome, projected on a screen that laid claim to being the biggest in Monmouth County.

While these days the films are just one component of the Count’s cultural menu, the big screen remains — and beginning this Wednesday, June 24, the Basie hosts the first in a free series of “Summer Blockbusters” classics.

It’s a fairly eclectic collection that ranges from family-friendly vintage musicals to blood-drenched Tarantinos — to the thriller that started the whole modern summer-blockbuster industry as we know it. What else but Jaws, the 1975 phenomenon that put director Steven Spielberg on the map; spawned a whole fishy franchise (Middletown’s own Billy Van Zandt would have a featured role in the 1977 sequel), and drew inspiration from a real-life 1916 shark attack near Matawan. The game-changer that celebrates its 40th anniversary this summer screens free of charge at 7 pm, in the first of a slate sponsored by the Count Basie Theatre Cinema Society.

The series picks up on the afternoon of Tuesday, July 14 with a “Seniors Matinee” double feature, offering up Judy Garland and Margaret O’Brien in Meet Me in St. Louis — the MGM classic Americana that gave us “The Trolley Song” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” — at 1 pm. It’s followed at 4 pm with another goodie from the MGM vaults: High Society, with Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly and Louis Armstrong hobnobbing in the Hamptons with a set of Cole Porter songs both silly (“Well Did You Evah”) and sublime (“True Love”).

Later that evening on July 14, the series celebrates the release of Go Set a Watchman, the breathlessly anticipated “new” novel by Harper Lee, author of the monumental American classic To Kill a Mockingbird. The first book published by Lee in 55 years (it’s a sequel to Mockingbird that was actually written prior to that novel), Watchman will be available for sale in the Basie’s lobby, courtesy of Fair Haven’s River Road Books — while inside the auditorium, the 1962 film version of To Kill a Mockingbird presents Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch (and Robert Duvall in his screen debut as Boo Radley) at 7 pm.

The summer series wraps on Tuesday July 21, with a “grindhouse”-style twi-nighter spotlighting the first two features from indie writer-director Quentin Tarantino: the violent and darkly comic deconstructed caper film Reservoir Dogs (6:30 pm), and the Oscar winning rulebook-breaker Pulp Fiction (8:30 pm). Admission to all Summer Blockbuster events is absolutely free of charge, but tickets are required, and can be picked up at the Basie box office or reserved in advance here.

Remember: Nothing makes a Red Bank friend happier than to hear "I saw you on Red Bank Green!"
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