Editor’s Note: This week we’re lucky to have film critic Joe Strike offers us his insights and first impressions of the films The Day the Earth Stood Still, Desperaux, and The Spirit.
I tell you, the synchronicity around here can really get to you sometimes. The other morning I went to see The Day the Earth Stood Still, or as us folks in a hurry like to call it, TDTESS (which is stupid since they’re all one-syllable words anyway). Weekend morning shows are $6.00 at my just-up-the-street cinema, I thank you from the bottom of my recession, AMC. Read more…
This is THE best unintentional anti-drug commercial I’ve ever seen hands down! In this clip Andy Warhol interviews Steven Spielberg while Bianca Jagger pretends that everything is “just normal”. What’s odd is that Spielberg seems so off the wall — this must have been what it was like to hang out at Studio 54 back in the day: Read more…
Recently I was talking about the topics of great films with a college bound liberal arts student and I made a shocking discovery: The student had never once seen Citizen Kane. It’s frankly shocking to me as an American citizen that in the United States of America that you can graduate from high school without having seen at least one viewing of this film. Read more…
How many comic book artists have been inspired by Bettie Page? Everyone knows what a Bettie Page haircut is. I think when folks look back at the film icons of the 20th century Bettie Page will rank up there with the likes of Marilyn Monroe: Read more…
It looks like today some lucky fanboy collector will be walking away with the model of the flying saucer from the 1956 classic science fiction film Forbidden Planet. The model was later used on several episodes of the Twilight Zone TV series as well:
I got a very bad feeling about this film about 57 seconds into this trailer when the Transformer styled vehicle appears. To me it looks like the film is taking itself a bit too seriously…
The trailer for this videogame looks like it’s very true to the 1984 film of the same name, but as a fanboy I’m asking if this is really a good thing? Yeah on a technical level I’m impressed that Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd look exactly like Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd, but does that mean it will make a good videogame? I think sometimes the best thing to do with a Hollywood based title is to have some fun with it (example: Batman Lego) but for a film that was a comedy this title seems a tad serious from this first glance.
I just spotted this gem, and man would I love this for Christmas: Going back to my childhood I’ve always noticed that Janus Films logo whenever I’d see a offbeat movie. The company was founded in 1956, and one of the co-founders ran the 55th Street Playhouse in New York City which was one of the first cinemas to specialize in art house films. Over the years they’ve distributed films from some of the best directors from Federico Fellini to Akira Kurosawa. In 2006 to celebrate their 50th anniversary the Criterion Collection put out a 50 set DVD collection titled Essential Art House - 50 Years of Janus Films. To me this would be the ultimate gift for any cinema fanboy, in fact I’d say owning the set would be like taking a college level course on film history. Here’s a trailer showing some of the goodies in the collection:
Cinema fanboys rejoice! The Criterion Collection has started putting their films online for viewing. Unlike YouTube this will cost you $5 a movie, but the quality and variety is high. To me this is an important first step as my prediction is a that over the next few years we’ll see traditional media not only embrace the likes of YouTube, but my gut feeling is that this may lead to something that may be the next golden age of a new medium. But for now I’d suggest checking out the vintage 1972 science fiction film Solaris before the revolution starts.
The BBC has announced that it will remake two new films based upon the the 1951 science fiction novel The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham. The best known adapatdation of the novel is the 1962 film directed by Steve Sekely, although the title is an old BBC favorite having inspired radio plays in 1953, 1957, 1968 and a TV series in 1981. The new version will be set in the year 2011 in a post-peak oil setting where mankind has turned to the biofuel Triffid to solve the world’s energy problems — and everything goes wrong when the plant creatures grow hungry for human flesh. You see I always knew that biofuels aren’t the way to go…Read more…
Being a Will Eisner fanboy I sort of have mixed feelings from what I’ve seen of the upcoming film The Spirit so far. The clips seems a bit better than I thought, but I still feel like the idea of turning The Spirit into some sort of superhero is misplaced as what makes him so special is that he’s so ordinary on a certain level.
Kamen Rider was a TV show from the early 70s in Japan, but there were in fact three low budget films also made at the same time. This is a silly clip from Kamen Rider versus Shocker which revolves around a plot dealing with the secret plans for a gravity machine that becomes stolen during a birthday party for Professor Daidōji’s daughter. The best part of this 1972 film is clearly the evil rubber suited character running about with the daughter’s teddy bear while engaging in combat action with Kamen Rider. Read more…
