The Naked Kiss and Michael Dante
Michael Dante has had a film and TV career that included acting alongside such legends as Edward G. Robinson and Elvis Presley and a starring role in one of the key cult movies of the 1960s, director Sam Fuller’s “The…
The Battered Bastards of Baseball
Bing Russell was a B-movie actor in the 50s and 60s who estimated he had been shot dead 127 times in Hollywood westerns and played the deputy sheriff through 13 seasons of Bonanza. But his most lasting legacy came thanks…
Zombie Burlesque
Tired of waiting for a “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” movie? There’s a Las Vegas show which at least offers a taste of how “Cabaret”-with-zombies would mash up. Enoch Scott’s emcee of “Zombie Burlesque” isn’t all that much more pasty-faced…
Turkish Star Wars or Dünyayi kurtaran adam
Two space cadets crash-land on a desert planet, where an evil wizard seeks the ultimate power to take over the world. Although the movie borrows some background footage from Star Wars, the plot is mostly unrelated. Directed by Çetin İnanç…
Mindscape
English-language thriller with sci-fi overtones from Spanish first-timer Jorge Dorado represents the first outing for Jaume Collet-Serra’s Ombra Films. “We’re playing those mind games together,” sang John Lennon, and on the evidence of Mindscape, its director, writers and characters must…
Enemies Closer
While his days as a big screen action hero seem to have passed, Jean-Claude Van Damme makes a damn fine villain, as illustrated in the new thriller Enemies Closer. While this reunion with director Peter Hyams will hardly match the…
An Afternoon with Wondercrust
How many dick mentions are in an interview with a comedy collective? Only three, surprisingly — at least when you interview Riley Morris and Naaman Rodges of Shut Up and Prance. Instead they lead with homicide and wiretapping. Morris was…
The Late Late Show
For a movie fan, nothing is juicier than lying in bed at night, afraid to fall asleep because you just watched a movie about people who were afraid to fall asleep. For me, my first encounter with this phenomenon was…
Tarantino Showdown
Gawker Media says it plans to fight the copyright infringement lawsuit Quentin Tarantino has filed against it in Los Angeles.The suit accuses the company of disseminating copies of Tarantino’s unproduced screenplay, “The Hateful Eight,” by offering readers a link to…
Best Surfing Flicks Ever
National Lampoon movies have long since fallen on B-movie, straight to Red Box hard times. The raunchy originality of “Animal House,” and “Vacation” are long gone, even the chuckle-worthy comedies like “Van Wilder,” “Last Resort” and “Class Reunion” are behind…
Sergio Leone
Sergio Leone, born in 1929 in Rome, son of silent film director Vincenzo Leone, is best known for the creation of the spaghetti westerns. After making and writing several sword and sandal epics Leone decided to adapt Yojimbo, a samurai…
Claudia Cardinale
Claudia Cardinale was born Claude Joséphine Rose Cardinale in La Goulette, a neighborhood of Tunis, French Tunisia. Her mother, Yolande Greco, was born in Tunisia to Sicilian emigrants from Trapani. Her father was a Sicilian railway worker, born in Gela….
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad
As far as family-oriented fantasy kitsch goes, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad is pretty ridiculous stuff. But those with a soft spot for this ‘70s relic will be thrilled with boutique label Twilight Time’s limited edition Blu-ray release. Directed on…
I, Frankenstein’ Dead on Arrival with $7.7 Million
It looks as though “I, Frankenstein” is deteriorating before our very eyes. Pre-weekend projections had Lionsgate’s horror-inspired actioner in the mid-teens this weekend. That was reigned back to $10 million midday Friday, and now its total looks even grimmer: about…
The Late Great Gordon Hessler
http://www.dvddrive-in.com/hessler.htm Gordon Hessler was born in Germany, the son of a Danish mother and an English father. Educated in England, he moved to the US while in his late teens and spent several years working in documentaries. At Universal, “I…
Composer Riz Ortolani Dead At 87
Italian soundtrack composer Riz Ortolani, who won a Grammy for his “Mondo Cane” theme “More,” and whose wide range of music for movies was featured in three Quentin Tarantino films and on the Dino Risi-directed classic “The Easy Life” (Il…
Bitch Planet
By her own account, its title wasn’t what she led with in proposing new projects to Image Comics or her artist collaborator. But, Kelly Sue DeConnick told the laughing, applauding crowd at Image Expo earlier this month, of the potential…
Big Bad Wolves
The publicity campaign for Big Bad Wolves, a nasty little revenge thriller from Israeli filmmakers Navot Papushado and Aharon Keshales, quotes Quentin Tarantino’s decree that it’s the “best film of the year.” Tarantino saw Big Bad Wolves at last year’s…
I, Frankenstein
Frankly quite silly, I, Frankenstein parades its grim atmosphere as a badge of coolness, apparently unaware how little fun or excitement there is in this dull corpse of a film. Starring Aaron Eckhart in a fantasy-action update of Mary Shelley’s…
CGI and The Big Bucks Of Cinema
The 2000s was the decade when movie special effects really came into their own. Thanks to the pioneering work of companies like Industrial Light and Magic and directors like James Cameron and Peter Jackson, new techniques like CGI and advanced…