Two-Minute Warning

Two-Minute Warning (dir. Larry Peerce, 1976).

This was the apotheosis of seventies disaster films, the one whose concept freaked out prospective viewers so much they didn't go see it: a sniper at a football game in the LA Memorial Coliseum. I know, go figure. But maybe what did it in was early word of mouth that the violence in the film was a little too realistic: it's kind of like watching TV news footage. Actually, the look and texture of the film is a lot like George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, from roughly the same era. The least compelling parts are the parts that are exactly like every other disaster flick--the parts where the various members of the all-star cast play out their little subplots interminably until all hell breaks loose and those subplots become irrelevant. Gena Rowlands has some photogenic moments as the underappreciated girlfriend of car salesman David Jansen, and John Cassavetes badasses through his role as a SWAT team commander. Walter Pidgeon as a dapper old pickpocket is onscreen hardly at all.

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Addendum:

Lanny Quarles writes:

thinking about
the possibilities of the
stadium is endlessly diverting

call method | stadium
call tag | retort
call subtag | social alchemy

the stadium retort locates
a vision of molarity / granularity
which is consonant with a mythic
reality

from the shape of the stadium itself recapitulating the limbic system. From wikipedia's entry on hypergraphia:

Several different regions of the brain govern the act of writing. The physical movement of the hand is controlled by the cerebral cortex which comprises part of the outer layer of the brain. The drive to write, on the other hand, is controlled by the limbic system, a ring-shaped cluster of cells deeply buried in the cortex which governs emotion, affiliated instincts and inspiration and is said to regulate the human being's need for communication. Words and ideas are cognized and understood by the temporal lobes behind the ears, and these temporal lobes are connected to the limbic system. Ideas are organized and edited in the frontal lobe of the brain.

So desu ka...