Mud Honey Jones
The names “Mudhoney” and “Norah Jones” represent pretty distant points on the musical spectrum. One is a classic Seattle grunge band whose corrosive sound and squalid look helped define an era. The other is a beautiful, classy chanteuse with 12…
Adrienne Barbeau
Adrienne Barbeau began appearing in local theater productions as a teenager in San Jose. As a struggling young actress in New York, she earned the rent as a go-go dancer. Her big break came when she joined the cast of…
Ray Harryhausen
Raymond Frederick Harryhausen was born on the 29th June 1920 in Los Angeles, California, USA, to parents Fred and Martha. He had a passion, which has never abated, for dinosaurs and anything fantasy. His parents both encouraged him to pursue…
The Thing
The scene is a distant Arctic missile base, where a UFO has crashed. The investigating scientists discover that the circular craft has melted its way into the ice, which has frozen up again. While attempting to recover the ship, Captain…
Journey 2: The Mysterious Island
In this sequel to Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D, we catch up with young Sean Anderson (Josh Hutcherson), now a bit older and getting into all kinds of mischief. Sean’s mom (Kristin Davis) and step-dad Hank (Dwayne…
Producer Arthur Gardner
Arthur Gardner is grasping for a memory that seems to lie just out of reach. The longtime Hollywood producer looks at a photo on the wall, gazes at his desk then stares back up at the wall. But prompted by…
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…