I haven’t yet seen the Jaws Bluray (8.14), but I gather it’s been nicely restored. Fine. The film itself is a decent-enough thing. But it has no undercurrents so it hasn’t aged all that well. Which is the mark of all hackwork — popular or unpopular in their day, but always diminished by time. The fact is that the two-hour “making of Jaws” doc, included on the disc, is much, much more entertaining.

I still think of Jaws as one of the two films (Star Wars being the other) that killed the ’70s and ushered in the infantilization of mainstream movies and murdered the idea of the gradual theatrical break, so no matter how much you might “like” this film, it’s nearly impossible to forget what it is, was and always will be in a metaphorical sense.

But God cherish the memory of the great David Zanuck, one of the smartest, most kindly and most perceptive producers you could ever hope to meet.

My favorite moment is still the zoom-in, track-back shot of Roy Scheider (borrowed from Vertigo) when he realizes, sitting on his beach towel, that the shark has eaten a little kid.

Explanation: Some guy has hacked into my staging software and is changing copy. No way did I mistype and call it Jews, twice. It’s always something.