Disney live action movies have always been a curiosity to me.  In their heyday of the 1960’s and 1970’s, they always had a certain look them (usually vibrant and sunny) and had a stable of recurring actors (Hayley Mills, Kurt Russell).  They even seemed to operate within certain shared bounds, almost as if they were […]

I once read an interview with Michael Hutchence where he was jokingly asked if he thought INXS could take Guns’n’Roses in fight.  I seem to recall he described them as “fucking pushovers”.  He was asked the same about UB40, and he was like, “no way.”  This planted the seed in my mind that, in general, […]

In 1950, Bette Davis and Gary Merrill found not just box-office and critical success with All About Eve, but also love.  One year later, the now husband and wife starred in the feature Another Man’s Poison.  Lightning did not strike a second time in any regard. This is a deeply artificial movie, essentially a play […]

Adrienne Barbeau is standing in waist-high swamp water after having just been rescued by a half-man, half-vegetable hybrid that is really a man in a rubber suit.  Though monstrous in appearance, this gentle giant obviously wants to help her further.  Instead, she dismisses him with a terse “SHOO!”, which is probably among the reactions I […]

It’s hard to believe there was a time before Sean Connery was the fully fledged icon he would become.  The first James Bond film was just around the corner when he made 1961’s The Frightened City, and it is interesting to see how much progress he would make between the two pictures. The most notable […]

Nintendo’s Mario has long since inspired almost every form of media I can think of, though there does not seem to have been a Super Mario Bros. ballet.  Yet.  Still, I would like to find somebody unfamiliar with the character and the decades of games they have been in.  I want to sit down with […]

Edward Furlong should have gone on to great things following 1991’s T2.  Instead, that movie may have had a touch of the jinx of the Star Wars movies, as those largely did little for the actors in them that didn’t already have established careers.  In case you haven’t noticed it, nobody has been clamoring to […]

The documentary Vinyl Nation opens at Mills Record Company of Kansas City, before the doors open for another year’s observance of Record Store Day.  As a vinyl enthusiast myself, I have celebrated this, the highest of the High Vinyl Holy Days, most years.  I even camped out for 24 hours a couple of times, to […]

Atari had a hot tub in its headquarters back in the 1970’s.  It was openly available to employees and they were encouraged to use it.  Every time this topic surfaces in books or documentaries about the company, shenanigans are alluded to but are mercifully never detailed.  For whatever reason, I was reminded of this for […]

Isn’t it great how a movie, an album or a book can come along and completely subvert your expectations?  Going into 1948’s The Boy with Green Hair, I thought it would be incredibly goofy, or at least have a sci-fi element to it.  Instead, this sweetly good-natured tale is a plea for compassion and understanding.  […]

Remakes are always a dicey proposition, especially when you’re remaking 1997 sleeper cult title Cube, where the first person we saw was quickly and cleanly diced by a trap.  I wouldn’t have thought there would be any reason for a Japanese reworking of the material.  If anything, I thought a J-horror version would have a […]

The World Health Organization recently identified aspartame as a potential carcinogen.  It seems weird they may soon be trying to take away my wife’s Diet Coke.  I know I’m not going to try to intervene.  The ending of 1951’s Peking Express has Joseph Cotten’s WHO doctor mowing down Chinese counterrevolutionaries with a machine gun.  I […]