Here’s a neat bit of recycling: filmmaker Ryan Dacko took a scene from his award-winning indie film “And I Lived” and fashioned it into “A Cinematic Valentine,” an eight-plus-minutes homage to movie love pairings.
The scene which Ryan Dacko involves two high school students (Lori Schaufelberger and Matt Clark) who meet on the steps outside of their school building. He is listening to music through earphones and looking out at the horizon. She inquires what he is doing and he explains he is saving the memory by linking the environment around him with the music coming through the earphones. He then demonstrates by sharing the earphones and his music.
The film then switches to the lilting song “Lonesome Sky” by the wonderful (and sadly underrated) band The Lost Patrol while a montage of memorable movie lovers flash by. Dacko has skillfully sliced and diced quite a selection, and the film is actually a fun name-that-title skein with lovers including Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr, Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn, Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint, James Stewart and Donna Reed, Sylvester Stallone and Talia Shire, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, and Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly.
At eight minutes, the aptly titled “A Cinematic Valentine” is heartfelt and heartwarming. And it is also quite fun.
