Movie Pioneers In Chicago
Before the movie industry moved west to Hollywood, it got its start here in Chicago during the silent film era. “The first movie industry was in Chicago,” said Geoffrey Baer of WTTW-Channel 11, an expert on Chicago and its history….
William One Shot Beaudine
William Beaudine started making films in 1909, bringing nearly fifty years of expertise to the Mickey Mouse Club. A man to gladden the heart of penny-pinching producers, he delivered nearly every film he directed on-time and on-budget. From May 1955…
The Thing from Another World
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…
Sci-Fi Predicts The Future
It’s no secret that sci-fi movies have always been a great way to peek into the future. The range of the predictions that they all make boldly range from technology to the way we act as a society, but that…
Bingham Ray 1954 – 2012
The news that Bingham Ray died this morning at 57, after suffering a stroke at Sundance last week, is spreading across the festival Twitter-sphere like an electronic pall. The founder of October Films, which in the 1990s did as much…
In Defence Of George
Greetings, my dears. As William Bibbiani is out of town this weekend (the lucky schmo is hobnobbing with attractive porn stars in Las Vegas), I, Witney Seibold, will be taking up sole reigns of B-Movies Extended this week, wherein I…
Troll Hunter director Favourite Monster Movies
Jurassic Park The building of suspense, the inspired simplicity and the amazing VFX were more influential on Troll Hunter than any other movie. Even today its effects are better than most films. Spielberg and his crew did everything right. I…
Steven Soderbergh: ‘Three more movies and I’m out of here’
Steven Soderbergh has had enough. It’s no secret: his retirement has been a hot topic of conversation in Hollywood since Matt Damon first let slip that the Oscar-winning film director was disillusioned back in 2010. The director of Erin Brockovich,…
David Carradine:A Hellraiser To The End
Not long ago, 22-year-old Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame explained to Parade magazine why he was temporarily led astray by booze: “I’ve worked with Richard Harris, Gary Oldman, all those actors who went crazy when they were young, and…
Before Shaft, Before Super Fly, There Was This.
By all cultural accounts, 1968 was a hellish year for America. The assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy helped spark the “burn baby burn” sensibility ignited in the streets. It was also during this turbulent period that Paramount…
Monstrous Movie Music
Monstrous Movie Music artwork MONSTROUS MOVIE MUSIC contains a 27-minute suite from one of the greatest giant monster movies, Warner Brothers THEM! Bronislau Kaper’s landmark 1954 score ranks among the composer’s greatest works, full of suspense, mystery, and thrills. As…
Zombie Apocalypse
Golden Globe® winner Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction), Taryn Manning (TV’s “Hawaii Five-0,” “Sons of Anarchy”) and Leslie-Ann Brandt (TV’s “Spartacus”) battle the living, feeding nightmare in Zombie Apocalypse, debuting onDVD, Blu-ray™ and On Demand December 27th from The Asylum. The…
The Chuck Jones Experience
For generations of animation fans there is no greater legend than Chuck Jones. The creator of the famed Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for Warner Bros., Tom & Jerry cartoons, the TV version of Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch…
Exploring the Universe, One B-Movie at a Time
ALMOST exactly 40 years after the original TV series was canceled by NBC for low ratings, the 11th feature film based on or spun off “Star Trek” has arrived on a wave (I suppose I should say a photon wave)…
Do Movie Stars Matter?
We talked about how certain movies tend to open strongly these days without the presence of a big movie star. Bibbs brought up Robert Pattinson, a good-looking British actor who plays a vampire of some kind. He has a point….
Slamdance…..
Slamdance does not insist on Word Premiere status; they will take a shopworn film as long as it makes the grade. Submitting your debut film to multiple festivals in the USA, is costly, grueling and a gamble. If you don’t…
Suspiria! Screens At The Hollywood Theatre
On Tuesday January 31st at 7:30pm at the Hollywood Theatre, The Grindhouse Film Festival presents an extremely rare 35mm print of the Italian horror classic Suspiria! An American ballet student, Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper), arrives from her flight in Munich,…
Meet Michigan’s Movie Industry
Jackson, MI, January 11, 2012 – (PressReleasePoint) – Before the 1930s and the advent of what has come to be called the “talkies”, opulently decorated vaudeville and movie theaters were built. Predating the earliest sound systems they were created to…
Dinoshark
For millennia, it slept inside a frozen glacier: waiting to be set free. But with an unexpected shift of climate, the glacier cracked, and what was once extinct was reborn to unleash terror in a brave new world. On April…
Drive-in cinemas: Will they survive the digital age?
At their peak, there were more than 4,000 drive-in cinemas in the US. Now only a few hundred have survived against the odds – but could the cost of converting to digital be the final straw? “I would hate to…