You've heard of the Twelve Days of Christmas? Now, for the second straight year, The Bloodshot Eye counts down the Thirteen Days of Halloween with reviews of recently released All Hallow's Eve-appropriate DVDs, each day through Oct. 31. (Well, through Nov. 2, actually -- I got a late start this year...)
"Tall girl, worth the climb."
Remembered from my college days, that politically incorrect assessment of Amazonian pulchritude is put to the test in "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman," the 1958 sci-fi stupefier now available on DVD as part of Warner Home Video's accurately titled box set, "Cult Camp Classics Vol. 1 -- Sci-Fi Thrillers."
Continue reading "The 13 Days of Halloween - Day Eleven: She's Just Tall, That's All ('Attack of the 50 Foot Woman' on DVD)"You've heard of the Twelve Days of Christmas? Now, for the second straight year, The Bloodshot Eye counts down the Thirteen Days of Halloween with reviews of recently released All Hallow's Eve-appropriate DVDs, each day through Oct. 31.
A tale of bloodthirsty ruminants terrorizing the hillsides of New Zealand, "Black Sheep" puts the eeeeewwww into baa-ram-ewe.
Continue reading "The 13 Days of Halloween - Day Ten: Woolly Bullies ('Black Sheep' on DVD)"You've heard of the Twelve Days of Christmas? Now, for the second straight year, The Bloodshot Eye counts down the Thirteen Days of Halloween with reviews of recently released All Hallow's Eve-appropriate DVDs, each day through Oct. 31.
Inhabited by pickpockets, junkies, whores, "foreign malcontents" and even a briefly seen nude artist's model, "The Penalty" is a deliriously exciting and imaginative thriller that presents Lon Chaney, the silent cinema's "Man of a Thousand Faces," in one of his most astonishing disguises as a "cripple from hell."
Continue reading "The 13 Days of Halloween - Day Nine: Silence Is Ghoulden (The 'American Silent Horror Collection')"You've heard of the Twelve Days of Christmas? Now, for the second straight year, The Bloodshot Eye counts down the Thirteen Days of Halloween with reviews of recently released All Hallow's Eve-appropriate DVDs, each day through Oct. 31.
The scientist with the head of a housefly in "Return of the Fly" looks pretty cool as long as he's just standing there strangling somebody with his claw hand. But when he runs through the forest, bumping his oversized bug noggin on branches that the actor inside the costume obviously can't see, hilarity runs with him. He looks like a theme park mascot in a giant cartoon-character head, trying to flee an aggressive tyke.
Which is as good a reason as any to watch "Return of the Fly" (1959), the sequel to the famous science-fiction chiller, "The Fly" (1958). It's now available on a new four-disc box set from Fox Home Entertainment, "The Fly Collection," that also includes the final film in the trilogy, the relatively obscure "Curse of the Fly" (1965), in its long-awaited (by Fly-fans) DVD debut.
Continue reading "The 13 Days of Halloween - Day Eight: A 'Fly' Went By"You've heard of the Twelve Days of Christmas? Now, for the second straight year, The Bloodshot Eye counts down the Thirteen Days of Halloween with reviews of recently released All Hallow's Eve-appropriate DVDs, each day through Oct. 31.
The flight attendant's signature cry of "Please take your seats!" has never been more plaintive than in "Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane," a direct-to-video horror release that fools no one by eschewing a more logical and lurid subtitle: "Zombies on a Plane."
Continue reading "The 13 Days of Halloween - Day Seven: 'Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane' (Or, Just Another Day in Coach)"You've heard of the Twelve Days of Christmas? Now, for the second straight year, The Bloodshot Eye counts down the Thirteen Days of Halloween with reviews of recently released All Hallow's Eve-appropriate DVDs, each day through Oct. 31.
Before "King Kong," before "One Million Years B.C.," even before the "The Land Unknown" or "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms," Irwin Allen's 1960 production of "The Lost World" was the one dinosaur movie I saw on television again and again as a Mesozoic-obsessed youth in Chicago and then Memphis, where my family and I moved when I was 7.
Continue reading "The 13 Days of Halloween - Day Six: Pimp My Iguana (Irwin Allen's 'The Lost World' on DVD)"
I've typically enjoyed spending time with the savants, lost children, myopic visionaries and damaged souls who inhabit the meticulous and eccentric Cornell-box compositions of the movies of Wes Anderson. But although the director's new short, "Hotel Chevalier," is wonderful, the feature that follows, "The Darjeeling Limited," never quite builds up steam. Anderson's signature style seems to be suffering from the pressure of the law of diminishing returns -- a law as menacing to the artist as that of gravity is to the balloonist. My review is here.
Also opening today: director Andrew Dominik's "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," a movie as elongated as its title. This is a Western of brief violence and vast canvases of sky and prairie. Lost in these wide open spaces, Jesse James (Brad Pitt) and his gang -- mostly "petty thieves and country rubes, culled from local hillsides" -- seem like pilgrim souls wandering the eternal landscape of their own limited imaginations: dead men too stubborn to give up the ghost. I really liked this movie. My review is here.
You've heard of the Twelve Days of Christmas? Now, for the second straight year, The Bloodshot Eye counts down the Thirteen Days of Halloween with reviews of recently released All Hallow's Eve-appropriate DVDs, each day through Oct. 31.
The words "David Arquette's directorial debut" are unlikely to inspire much anticipation among film fans, much less horror buffs.
Longtime local artist/cartoonist (like there's a difference) Tom Foster and fellow artist Mike Pickard will unveil some 20 different paintings of Sivad -- TV's beloved back-in-the-day "Monster of Cermonies" -- from 6-9 p.m. Friday (Oct. 26) during the South Main Historic Arts District's RiverArtsFest/Trolly Tour.
The paintings -- ranging in price from about $75 to $250 dollars, if you want to take Sivad home with you -- will be on display at the Then & Again gallery at 506 S. Main.
Continue reading "Have A-Goooood Evening in Downtown Memphis with Sivad"
"Hollywood Plugs Its Tale of a Leak / Flick Glams Up the Story Of Jailed Journalist Judith Miller" is the headline on a story in today's edition of The Washington Post, written by reporter William Booth, who spent some time at The Commercial Appeal while director Rod Lurie was shooting his new movie "Nothing But the Truth" here.
The Post story, of course, isn't particularly anecdotal and larky (though it is somewhat snarky), despite the jejune headline. Instead, it focuses on the connections (and divergencies) between Lurie's fiction-film production and its real-life inspiration, the Judith Miller/Valerie Plame controversy.
The story is here. Needless to say, the Post did NOT reproduce the above photo of a fearless reporter from The Commercial Appeal making a nuisance of himself while director Lurie struck a pose for an off-camera sculptor.
In director John Brahm's "The Lodger" (1944), Jack the Ripper is portrayed by actor Laird Cregar as a whispery and seemingly gentle hulk of a Victorian London serial killer, tormented by the inner demon of sexual confusion.
He likes to look into the Thames at night. "Deep water is dark and restful and full of peace," he intones, like a man in a trance. Later, after a typically atmospheric murder sequence, Brahm shows Cregar hunched over the side of a small boat, dipping his presumably bloody hands into the cleansing river water. He looks weary and defeated -- a living victim of the Ripper's compulsion to kill.
Continue reading "The 13 Days of Halloween - Day Four: Deep Water, Dark Shadows - the 'Fox Horror Classics Collection'"You've heard of the Twelve Days of Christmas? Now, for the second straight year, The Bloodshot Eye counts down the Thirteen Days of Halloween with reviews of recently released All Hallow's Eve-appropriate DVDs, each day through Oct. 31.
To state the obvious: Back in her glory days as a contract star at Warner Bros., Ida Lupino -- a great actress and pioneering female filmmaker -- never could have imagined that by the time she was pushing 60 a movie role would require her to wring her hands, bug her eyes and make this fervent prayer and promise to the Lord: "I won't never sin again, never. Only don't let no rat eat us, please, God!"
As that quote suggests, "The Food of the Gods" doesn't pussyfoot around. The 1976 movie is barely 10 minutes old before hero Marjoe Gortner is scratched and pecked in a barn ambush by a gigantic rooster. Demands Marjoe, understandably peeved, of farmer Lupino: "Where the hell did you get those (goldurned) chickens?!?"
Continue reading "The 13 Days of Halloween - Day Three: Old Lupino Had a Farm, EE-I-EE-I ... OOOOOH NOOOOO!!!! ('Food of the Gods' on DVD)"
The Indie Memphis Film Festival may be devoted to "the Soul of Southern Film," but that mission doesn't exclude other types of programming.
This year, Indie Memphis has reserved one of its three screens at Malco's Studio on the Square for a "Global Lens" series of nine foreign-language feature films, plus a program of seven international shorts. All these films will be screened at least once more before the festival ends Thursday (Oct. 25).
So far, I've seen five of the Global Lens features, and each one has been well worth watching.
Continue reading "We Are the World: The Global Lens Series at the Indie Memphis Film Festival"You've heard of the Twelve Days of Christmas? Now, for the second straight year, The Bloodshot Eye counts down the Thirteen Days of Halloween with reviews of recently released All Hallow's Eve-appropriate DVDs, each day through Oct. 31.
As a lifelong "monster kid," there's not much that makes me happier than finally catching up with an old horror movie that proves to be better than I'd anticipated.
I've wanted to see the relatively obscure and rarely championed "The Return of Dracula" (1958) for almost four decades, ever since I first read about it an oft-reprinted article in the pages of the old Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine.
I finally got my chance this month, thanks to the recent release of a double-feature DVD pairing "The Return of Dracula" with "The Vampire" (1957). The disc is one of 12 new releases in the revived (Hallelujah!) "Midnite Movie" series from Fox/MGM home entertainment. (A complete cover gallery of the new discs can be found here at the DVD Drive-in website.)
Continue reading "The 13 Days of Halloween - Day Two: 'The Return of Dracula' and 'The Vampire'"You've heard of the Twelve Days of Christmas? Now, for the second straight year, The Bloodshot Eye counts down the Thirteen Days of Halloween with reviews of recently released All Hallow's Eve-appropriate DVDs, each day through Oct. 31. (And yes, I've got some catching up to do, thanks to the time demands of the Indie Memphis Film Festival and the shooting of 'Nothing But the Truth' in The Commercial Appeal newsroom...)
* * *
When American independent filmmaker John Sayles took questions Friday night after a special screening of his new movie "Honeydripper" at the Indie Memphis Film Festival, to my non-surprise nobody in the audience asked him about "Alligator," the 1980 creature feature the Schenectady-born auteur scripted about the same time he was preparing his directorial debut, "The Return of the Seacaucus 7."
Continue reading "The 13 Days of Halloween - Day One: Down in the L.A. Sewers, Where the 'Alligator' Grows So Mean..."
"Team Picture," which screens Sunday (Oct. 21) and Wednesday (Oct. 24) at Malco's Studio on the Square, is probably the least expensive and most undemonstrative feature film in this year's Indie Memphis Film Festival.
On the surface, its story and visuals couldn't be simpler. Yet it's also the richest and most assured local feature in the festival, and it introduces a valuable and distinctive voice to the Memphis (and even national) filmmaking culture: a 25-year-old writer-director who calls himself Kentucker Audley.
Continue reading "Go, 'Team': 'Team Picture' at the Indie Memphis Film Festival"
As the above photo by staff photographer Mike Brown of actress Kate Beckinsale and writer-director Rod Lurie demonstrates, Hollywood has set up shop -- temporarily -- on the third-floor newsroom of The Commercial Appeal.
Here's a story on the shooting of "Nothing But the Truth," as it appeared in today's newspaper. Expect more reports later. (And readers, please share with us your own encounters with the stars/the filmmakers/the crew people, etc.)
Filmmaker John Sayles ought to like Memphis, a city where the distance between zones of affluence and neglect, uniformity and eccentricity, and perceived danger and safety often can be measured with just a few footsteps.
Said Sayles, who brings his new movie, "Honeydripper," to the Indie Memphis Film Festival tonight (Friday, Oct. 19):
Continue reading "Sayles-manship: John Sayles Brings His New Movie To Memphis"
Movies by actors-turned-directors Sean Penn and Ben Affleck open in Memphis today.
Continue reading "Babies Gone Wild: Today's Reviews"
An ingenious low-budget horror comedy from Atlanta, "Blood Car" -- which screens at 10:45 tonight (Oct. 19) at Malco's Studio on the Square -- literalizes the idea that the comfort and clout that Americans enjoy are the benefits of a Faustian blood-for-oil contract to which all of us are de facto signees.
The movie is funny, but it isn't so much tongue in cheek as body in trunk: Writer-director Alex Orr ultimately slams the lid shut on our laughter. As in "A Bucket of Blood" (1959) and "The Little Shop of Horrors" (1960), the shoestring Roger Corman classics that were Orr's obvious inspirations, there's real tragedy in this story of a shy, unlucky-in-love milquetoast transformed by his first mouthful of red meat into a selfish status addict.
Continue reading "Hemoglobin-Powered Drones Scream Down the Boulevard: 'Blood Car'"
This time, the press release gets it right: The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art describes tonight's must-see screening and mini-concert audience-with-a-legend as "one-of-a-kind evening."
How could it be otherwise when the legend in question is the producer, songwriter, former Arthur Murray dance instructor and "madcap jester of the music industry" (to again quote the press release) known as "Cowboy" Jack Clement?
Continue reading "Cowboy Jack of All Trades: Clement Comes to Town"
Cary Grant with a progressive's conscience, George Clooney has positioned himself as America's most useful movie star: A proud and self-aware exemplar of Hollywood charm and glamor who uses his power to create thoughtful, quality movies. In some ways, Clooney's new picture, "Michael Clayton," written and directed by Tony Gilory, is a populist parable in upscale dress -- an "Erin Brockovich" for people who prefer scotch to beer, as a lone legal hero defies an evil corporation. It's a stealthy film; it creeps up on you. My review is here.
Continue reading "Send Lawyers, Guns and Money: Today's Reviews Are 'Michael Clayton' and 'We Own the Night'"
A few years ago, in my ongoing alternate identity as a stacker o' platters on the "Welcome to the Working Week" program that airs from 6-8 a.m. each Monday on WEVL-FM 89.9, I broadcast Lon Chaney Jr.'s recording of "Song from 'Spider Baby'" during my annual Halloween week special.
The phone rang almost immediately. "That was the worst song I ever heard in my life," the listener stated. He wasn't laughing; he sounded grim, angry -- even offended.
Continue reading "Along Came a Spider: 'Spider Baby,' Onscreen and on DVD"
The complete schedule and in fact the entire program for the 2007 Indie Memphis Film Festival is here, in a pdf file. (Be the first on your block to print one out!)
Continue reading "The Indie Memphis Schedule Is Here!"
In the astonishing 1981 movie "Mystics in Bali," a woman's disembodied head flies through the air with menacing purpose, trailing a string of internal organs from its neck like the tail of the yuckiest kite ever.
Leaving its hollow and stump-necked body temporarily behind, this supernaturally liberated noggin is motivated by a need to consume blood -- or something containing blood.
Continue reading "Off with Her Head; or, The Girl's Got Guts: 'Mystics in Bali' on DVD"
The 10th annual Indie Memphis Film Festival opens Oct. 19 with an appearance by one of the key figures in modern American independent cinema, John Sayles.
The acclaimed writer/director/actor, two-time Oscar nominee and Bruce Springsteen music video-director will introduce the Memphis premiere of his new movie, "Honeydripper," a blues-based drama about an Ike Turner-like electric guitar innovator who galvanizes a rural juke joint in 1950 Alabama.
Sayles also will participate in a question-and-answer session after the screening. He will be joined by his longtime professional and private-life partner, producer Maggie Renzi.
The 6-foot-4 Sayles -- whose more popular movies include "Eight Men Out" (1988), about the Chicago "Black Sox" scandal of 1919, and "Lone Star" (1996), a Texas murder mystery -- is probably the most significant filmmaker ever to attend Indie Memphis, which is devoted to "The Soul of Southern Film."
Continue reading "Big Indie Memphis News: John Sayles Comes to Town"
What's the best movie being screened for the public this weekend in Memphis?
"Ratatouille" is one candidate; I certainly encourage people to experience "In the Shadow of the Moon"; and after I've seen it again, I may give the edge to David Cronenberg's "Eastern Promises."
Even so, it's hard to imagine any of these titles will scare George A. Romero's "Day of the Dead" (1985) from its long-established perch in my blood-soaked heart.
Continue reading "The Dead Have Their Day: Black Lodge Video Brings Halloween Horror to the MeDiA Co-op"
One rather hopes that Elaine May and Neil Simon -- the director and screenwriter, respectively, of the sophisticated 1972 comedy "The Heartbreak Kid" -- haven't watched the remake of their film by Peter and Bobby Farrelly, the Rhode Island-born brothers best-known for their seminal (so to speak) gross-out "romantic" comedy, "There's Something About Mary."
Needless to say, the new remake's allusions to donkey sex, south-of-the-border piercings, the palliative power of urine and, yes, Ole Miss are Farrelly innovations. (The character played by Memphis' Cybill Shepherd in the first movie has been reimagined as a University of Mississippi women's lacross coach, accompanied on a trip to Mexico by her entire extended family from Oxford; these Rebels steal the show. In another Mid-South shout-out, Memphian Amy LaVere's recording of "Take 'Em or Leave 'Em" -- a song composed by Memphis musician Tommy Hull -- is showcased in one of the movie's rare non-manic moments.)
Continue reading "Today's Reviews: 'The Jane Austen Book Club' and 'The Heartbreak Kid'"
If today's city elections have left you weary of being treated like a moron, the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art has an antidote: director Jean-Pierre Melville's 1969 masterpiece about the French Resistance, "Army of Shadows."
Continue reading "Have You Seen Your Auteur, Baby, Standing in the 'Shadows'?"
In the dozens of B Westerns he made between 1935 and 1953, singing cowboy Gene Autry -- born 100 years ago this past Saturday (Sept. 29) in the tiny town of Tioga in northeast Texas -- did more than croon, strum a guitar, pitch hay, pitch woo, ride horses and corral cattle rustlers, claim jumpers and card cheats.
"Rovin' Tumbleweeds" (1939) opens with Autry atop a hastily constructed sandbag levee in a driving rainstorm, vainly working to prevent the farmers and ranchers in the valley below from being flooded out of their homes, Katrina-style.
When a radio interviewer asks the cowboy for a comment, he refuses -- then changes his mind and commandeers the microphone. "I just want to to tell you people we wouldn't suffer this loss of life and property if that cheap politician, Congressman Fuller, hadda put through that flood control bill," he declares, in a rare show of impatience. It's Autry's Kanye West moment -- his "George Bush doesn't care about black people" declaration.
Continue reading "A Thrush in the Sagebrush: Gene Autry at 100"
...alongside (possibly) Kate Beckinsale, Matt Dillon, Alan Alda, Angela Bassett, Vera Farmiga and/or David Schwimmer?
The producers for writer-director Rod Lurie's "Nothing But the Truth" have released information for those interested in applying for a job as an actor, extra or stand-in on the film, scheduled to begin shooting for seven weeks on Oct. 10.
The relevant information, as printed in a press release from the "Nothing But the Truth" camp, appears below. And keep reading: At the bottom of this post, you'll find audition information about another film -- the latest from the local production company, Old School Pictures.
Continue reading "Want a Role in a Major Movie..."
![[2008_04_21_18_15_22_81275_0_1.jpg]](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_vqp5_JcMlhY/SLEkUaDH1eI/AAAAAAAAAEA/_C_0EcPb4M8/s1600/2008_04_21_18_15_22_81275_0_1.jpg)
Subscribe to this Feed
0 comments:
Post a Comment