Archive for the 'Celluloid' Category
Weekly Mishmash: April 27-May 3
May 4th, 2008Lots of B&W movie watching this week:
The B-52’s - Time Capsule: Songs for a Future Generation. Spotted this for $7.99 (new) at the local indie record store and had to get it, since an old copy of Cosmic Thing was only other thing I had by them. This is a good, solid — albeit flawed […]
Weekly Mishmash: April 20-26
April 27th, 2008Chalte Chalte (1976). Sometimes I like to check out old Bollywood musicals. This particular one is no classic — with clumsy direction and some really bad, overwrought performances — but it’s almost worth watching for the parade of garish ’70s fabric patterns on display. The plot involves a woman stalking a guy and his fiancée, […]
Weekly Mishmash: April 6-12
April 13th, 2008Bush’s War (Frontline, PBS). We finally finished watching this five-hour extravaganza last Sunday. Favorite moment: when a commentator notes Condi Rice’s “overjoyed” reaction to the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad, the producers show a photo of Ms. Rice in a characteristic sour-faced look.
Junebug (2005). I have so many movies on Netflix that they’re […]
Weekly Mishmash: March 30-April 5
April 6th, 2008Atonement (2007). This one seemed a bit too predictable from the previews, but I found it really absorbing once the momentum of what will happen to Keira Knightley and James MacAvoy started building. Direction was good if a little show-offy (the six-minute tracking shot on the beach, and a scene with Knightley primping in front […]
White Elephant Blogging: Follow That Bird
April 1st, 2008I have to admit that my maiden voyage into the second annual White Elephant Film Blogathon was approached with some trepidation. What kind of cinematic turd are they gonna hand me? Then I found out the movie I was to write about was Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird — hey, that’s not so bad. […]
Weekly Mishmash: March 23-29
March 30th, 2008Cadbury Orange Creme Eggs. Amid a marked down candy buying spree at Walgreen’s, I spotted this variant on my favorite Easter treat for only a quarter each. Man, where have these babies been all my life? P.S. I miss the classic bunny commercials.
The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1937). On the 24th, TCM ran a 24-hour […]
Weekly Mishmash: March 16-22
March 23rd, 2008Ace of Base - Singles of the 90s. When this imported Best-Of collection appeared a few months back as a surprise offering on the defiantly indie eMusic.com, I saw the sign and gave it a guilt-free download. Listening to it gives me a serious yen for good ’90s Europop — and makes me wonder why […]
Weekly Mishmash: March 9-15
March 16th, 2008You know, it’s been four weeks since the Weekly Mishmash has started, and there hasn’t been a single comment on anything in them. Do you like these? Are they lame? I’m getting lonely!
An Affair to Remember (1957). A so-called romantic classic that has eluded me until now. Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr are great together, […]
Movie Poster Artist Extraordinaire
February 13th, 2008After dealing with little to nothing on the web about the great ’70s/’80s illustrator Richard Amsel, it’s a pleasure to see Adam McDaniel’s wonderful tribute to the artist. I’ve written in awe about Amsel before; he was a fantastic talent, but also something of an enigma. I wonder what would’ve been of his career had […]
The White Elephant in the Room
February 7th, 2008William at Robot Action Boy recently pointed out this second annual White Elephant Blogathon which sounds pretty cool. Participants select an awful (or sometimes good) movie, which another randomly selected blogger must view and do a writeup on. All of the blog posts will be published on April 1st. Hurry; deadline for participants is February […]
Forever My Girl
January 29th, 2008Long, long ago I can remember seeing a clip on Entertainment Tonight of a teenage Paula Abdul frolicking in some godforsaken low-budget musical set in a high school cafeteria. She looked dorky, the song was dorky, and the kitsch gods were smiling down on me. Eighteen-odd years later, I revisited it — and, yeah, it’s […]
365 Days of Unrepentant Couch Potatoishness
January 6th, 2008Time once again for list of films I saw in the previous year. I counted 131 movies seen in 2007, with only five of them theatrical — which is about average. Not on the page is the fact that I rated each film on a scale of one to five stars. The bulk of what […]
Disc-O Faves
December 17th, 2007Of all the year-end best-of lists that proliferate this time of year, DVD Savant’s Favored Disc Roundup is among the ones I look forward to the most. It gave me a lot of good ideas for stuff to add to the Netflix queue.
On trend especially I’ve noticed this year is that the prices for full […]
Bass-O-Matic
December 9th, 2007Images from Henri’s Walk to Paris, a rare children’s book designed by the legendary Saul Bass. Via Drawn of course. Because we like to indulge our loves of cats and über-cool movie credits in the same stroke, I also present the Bass-designed opening sequence from Walk on the Wild Side:
Bette in Bookstores
November 14th, 2007Although only the latest in a long string of similar bios, Ed Sikov’s Dark Victory: The Life of Bette Davis is an excellent book which manages to uncover new insights into the subject. Having considered Sikov’s 1998 bio on Billy Wilder one of the finest books on filmmaking ever, I devoured this one in galley […]
