Corner Video GoodBye
It’s unfortunately true what they say. You don’t really feel the nerve pinch of loss until it happens in your own neighborhood. And so it finally happened to me, with the death of my favorite Blockbuster video store (one of…
BioShock in Limbo
Universal Pictures remains undecided about a future film adaptation of Bioshock. After Gore Verbinski, who was on board and ready to do the film, dropped out, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (Intacto, and 28 weeks Later) took over and was ready to…
Taylor Kitsch, Carter One More Time
It is an old Hollywood maxim that everyone flees from failure. When a big movie bellyflops at the box office — like John Carter, which has pulled in a cringe-inducing $62 million in the U.S. in its first three weekends,…
Ode To The B’s
Two cult films will be revived on Columbia theater stages this week: “Satan in High Heels” at Trustus Theatre Monday and “ Plan 9 From Outer Space” at Tapp’s Arts Center Thursday through Saturday. The productions have different plots and…
FRANCO MICALIZZI
Like so many composers that wrote for the cinema in Italy during the decades of the 60’s and 70’s, Franco Micalizzi began his career in film music composition by writing a score for a western My first film score was…
The Farmer
Many movies unavailable on DVD are difficult to find, but if you beat the bushes with hard work and patience (online traders, DVD-Rs at collectibles shows, long out-of-print VHS tapes), most’rare’ movies can eventually be tracked down. Then there are…
Turkish Star Wars
Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (The Man Who Saves the World) is a 1982 Turkish-made adventure movie commonly known as Turkish Star Wars because of its notorious use of unauthorized footage from Star Wars worked into the film. Directed by Çetin İnanç…
Santa Claus
The producers packed every magical, wacky, and just plain weird, holiday oddity known to man in to this wild-n-wonderful, and strangely charming, children’s classic! It’s not enough that Santa must deal with the usual suspects – the good little boys…
Lloyd Kaufman
In the late 1960’s, Kaufman was enrolled at Yale University (where he would later teach multiple Filmmaking Master Classes), diligently working on a respectable degree in Chinese Studies. However, Kaufman was destined for other things. As he explains in his…
Looper
Until now, Rian Johnson was chiefly a purveyor of smart, niche-specific films that took established genres and generated new ideas from them. Although he’s outwardly doing the same thing in his new film, “Looper,” Johnson is aiming at a much…
Ebertfest
Never been to Champaign, Ill.? Well, now you have a reason to visit, thanks to Roger Ebert. The film critic has just announced the lineup for his 2012 Ebertfest, a festival that highlights some oft-overlooked flicks and brings in special…
Zombie Survival Kit
Whether they’re shambling like they did in the Romero originals or sprinting as in Zack Snyder’s “Dawn of the Dead” remake, zombies have consistently shown a deep aversion to bullets or blades to the brain! While you might not ever…
Gareth Evans
Growing up in Wales, Gareth Evans couldn’t wait for his father to go to the local video store every weekend and return home with a stack of martial arts action films starring the likes of Jackie Chan, Jet Li and…
Ulu Grosbard
Belgian-born Ulu Grosbard, who drew a Tony nomination for his direction of Frank Gilroy’s “The Subject Was Roses” in 1965 and then launched a feature helming career by directing an acclaimed 1968 adaptation of the play that starred Jack Albertson,…
B Movie Blues
When I was in Grade 10, there was a teachers’ strike that lasted seven weeks. I’d like to say that in that time I applied my 14-year-old mind to something creative or useful. But no: this girl watched every late-night…
Some People Liked John Carter
The first clue that Disney did not view “John Carter” as a top-flight action fantasy movie was its opening date: March, not May. Studios stake out prime summer-season weekends for their tentpole movies, which this year include “The Avengers” May…
The Raid
Imagine that you’re a child of thrill-kill videogames and other forms of pop culture gruesomeness, and you sit down to watch a classic kung fu movie — like, say, Enter the Dragon (1973). You behold Bruce Lee, with his switchblade…
Blind Man
A world-weary cop tracks a ruthless, visually handicapped killer in Blind Man (A l’aveugle), the latest serving of B-sized schmaltz from producer Luc Besson and his Paris-based mini-major EuropaCorp. Directed by Xavier Palud (Them, The Eye) and written by genre…
Creature
Straddling the thick line between SyFy Channel Original Movie and theatrical release quality comes Creature, a film perhaps best described as “the typical redneck cultist half-man/half-alligator movie.” Oh sure, it sounds kind of unique on paper (if “kind of unique”…
John Carter Flop
“John Carter” is now an official flop. The Walt Disney Co. on Monday acknowledged in a statement that the movie’s poor performance at the box office likely will force Disney to take a $200 million writedown. The company expects its…