Movie Promotions At The Comic Con In India
So clearly, there’s a lot of money to be made here. The comic conventions don’t just need to involve publishers, they need to go beyond that,” Jatin Verma, founder, Comic Con India. Delhi’s second Comic Convention once again saw a…
Review: ‘The Tunnel’ At Little Rock Horror Picture Show
“The Curtain,” the first opening short of Saturday night’s Little Rock Horror Picture Show Theater B feature, debuted at Austin’s annual Fantastic Fest film festival — known mostly for irreverent, indie horror, sci-fi, and other nerdy, niche-genre offerings. Upon discovering…
SF Indie Fest 2012:The taboo, The Wasted, The Awkward, And The Cute.
I feel like I picked a lot of sex at this year’s San Francisco Independent Film Festival. Maybe because it’s February, maybe because it’s leap year, maybe it’s because of my hormones, but there was so much perversity with over…
Oscar Voters’ Demographics Wacked
When the names of winners are revealed on Oscar night, months of suspense give way to tears, smiles and speeches. Yet when the curtain falls, one question remains: Who cast the votes? About 37 million people tuned in to the…
Eight Movies Hollywood Can’t Remake
Using a phrase like “Hollywood is shameless” is such an oft-repeated practice, that, as a professional critic, doing it can only mark you as gauche. But, at the risk of once again sounding like a whiner, I think we can…
SXSW Announces 2012 Shorts and Midnight Movies
Last week, SXSW announced the feature film lineup for the 2012 Film Festival, and today we’ve heard word about the short films and midnight screenings that will be headed our way this March. In recent years, some of my favorite…
My Brother the Devil
Welsh-Egyptian writer-director Sally El Hosaini’s crackling debut feature, My Brother the Devil, slyly deceives us into believing it’s a familiar street-gang story of fraternal bonds destined to be broken by crime. But midway through this propulsive, stylishly shot drama set…
Busting Barriers: Pam Grier
Film star Pam Grier says there’s still a lack of opportunities for African-American actors in Hollywood and it’s partly due to marginalized audiences. Film investors are looking to make the widest profit margins possible and build upon “brands” (such as…
Two Headed Shark Attack
Regular readers will be aware of my less-than-enthusiastic opinion of SyFy/Asylum monster movies, and this one looks like it might cause me another round of teeth-gritting and eye-rolling as I imagine the talented and worthwhile films that failed to snag…
Elyse Knox B-movie actress in the 1940s R.I.P.
As a B-movie actress in the 1940s, Elyse Knox was perhaps best known for the only horror film she ever made, “The Mummy’s Tomb,” with Lon Chaney Jr. as the monster who kidnaps her. She later recalled working through the…
Kill List
With a title like “Kill List,” you’re probably expecting a paint-by-numbers B-movie thriller that barely avoided a direct-to-DVD release to instead show up in theaters for a couple weeks, make a few million, and then instantly disappear from both cinemas…
The B-side of Tim Burton
For those who read this site regularly, you know I love B movies. There’s often times I feel like I’m part of a very exclusive club that gets this stuff, after all, when Quentin Tarantino did Grindhouse, nobody even knew…
The B Movie Sounds Of Henry Mancini
In a 1956 session for Capitol Records, Milt Bernhart blasted out one of the great trombone solos of all time, the roaring break in Frank Sinatra’s recording of the Cole Porter song “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” Twenty years…
Underworld 4 -B Movie Fun
This might be trollish to say, it might enrage some people, but if you hate the Underworld series and happily defend the Predator series then you madame or sir, might be a bit of a hypocrite. Both series are an…
Hollywood Has Image Issues
This is the Oscars’ year of nostalgia — or at least that has been the pronouncement among observers. There is, of course, “The Artist,” a silent film set in the silent film era. There is Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo,” which is…
In A South African Safe House
“Safe House” is an edgy, stylish, frenetic, please-do-not-stand-up-until-the-ride-is-over action movie. If “action” is the right descriptive word, seeming rather limp and a bit of a cliche when referencing this film. The best of the genre, such as “Safe House,” have…
Movies With ‘Atomic’ in Their Title
Some words become buzzworthy in Hollywood at a certain point in time, and filmmakers looking to make some quick cash are more than happy to do whatever it takes to exploit such hot topics. Hot buzzwords for movie titles today…
Exploits Of A Hollywood Rebel is a joyous tribute
True movie geeks will be in the queue for just one picture this week: Alex Stapleton’s joyous tribute to B-movie legend Roger Corman. With a career spanning six decades and more than 450 pictures, it’s amazing nobody has produced a…
The Atomic Submarine: Saving the World on a Shoestring Budget
Spencer Gordon Bennet’s The Atomic Submarine has always been a guilty pleasure of mine. It is easy enough to dismiss the film as kiddie matinee fare but, really, what science fiction–adventure movie from the 1950s wasn’t intended, at some level,…
The Blob
The horror and science fiction films of the 1950s were always in search of new monsters. A teenage werewolf was a compromise, targeting the new audience with a variation on an old idea. The original creations made their pictures unforgettable:…