I got chills. They’re multiplying. And it’s not because there’s a winter storm warning for Wednesday.
It’s because in April, Turner Classic Movies, in conjunction with Paramount, will be bringing the ultimate high school musical — “Grease” — back to theaters in honor of the film’s 40th anniversary.
For two days (April 8 and 11), fans will be able relive their glorious memories of Rydell High, and watch and listen while Sandy (Olivia Newton-John) and Danny (John Travolta), Rizzo (Stockard Channing) and Kenickie (Jeff Conaway) and the rest of the Pink Ladies and T-Birds sing about the trials and tribulations of 1950s adolescence. A simpler time of hair cream, summer crushes, auto shop and toothpaste commercials.
The film’s big stars have not been idle since the film’s 1978 release. Travolta had a solid film career, probably peaking with “Pulp Fiction” in 1994, although the last time the 64-year-old made a major splash at the theater was as Terl in 2000’s “Battlefield Earth,” a film regularly in contention for worst movie of all time.
Newton-John had a handful of film roles but these days mainly works on soundtracks for movies and TV. She and Travolta teamed up again in 1983’s “Two of a Kind,” but needless to say didn’t recapture the magic — prompting Roger Ebert to write “This movie should have been struck by a lightning bolt.”
The “Grease” rerelease is part of Turner Classic Movies’ yearlong series Big Screen Classics. Other films in the series include “Vertigo” and “Sunset Boulevard.”
Three NYC theaters — Union Square 14, Kips Bay 15 and Empire 25 — will be playing “Grease,” with two screens (at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.) on both April 8 and April 11.
