(1993, Dir: Joe Dante)Recently, while taking in the newest and very gratifying Spielberg/Hanks collaboration, Bridge of Spies, I couldn’t help but recall Joe Dante’s 1993 classic, Matinee, which dealt with much of the same high-stakes Cold War paranoia, albeit comically.
The Public Eye (1992, dir. Howard Franklin)Anyone who’s ever flipped through a Life magazine photo retrospective while sitting in a doctor’s waiting room most certainly has seen the work of Arthur Fellig, a photographer better known to the world by his nickname, Weegee.
As you’ve now had over a month to recover from digest my initial three Cult-Classics-Unearthed-Watching-Late-Night-HBO-in-College, how about two more gems:
North Shore (1987, dir. William Phelps)
It’s funny to think that something as inconsequential as one’s middle name could impact the probability of one’s genius, but it seems that that is exactly the case when it comes to the art of movie direction.
Take, for instance, George T. Miller, the Australian behind The Man from Snowy River (1982) and The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter (1990).
British author Ruth Rendell died this May, at age 85, a few months after suffering a debilitating stroke. Rendell, one of literature’s formost practitioners of thrillers and psychological murder mysteries, was not particularly well known to American readers, readers who, judging by The New York Times “Best Sellers List,” preferred to spend their precious free time
Every hear of The Criterion Collection? No? Well, it’s the company I hold responsible for my crack-like addiction to the latest and greatest home video formats of the last 20 years. Founded back in 1984, The Criterion Collection entered the home video marketplace with a lofty but admirable goal, conveniently printed on each of its releases: “…to gather the greatest films from around the world and publishing them in editions of the highest quality.”
Two recent untimely deaths–those of 43-year-old actress Amanda Peterson and 61-year-old ex-pro-grappler/actor Roddy Piper (the former not entirely unexpected, the latter of natural causes)–got me thinking about the movies that made them famous*, Peterson acting** in 1987’s Can’t Buy Me Love (co-starring the nerd who would one day grow up to be auto-racing enthusiast
Back in 2004, director Steven Spielberg decided the time was ripe to remake the granddaddy of all hostile alien narratives, H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, the 1898 serialized novel telling the story of a Martian invasion as seen through the eyes of an unnamed narrator based in Surrey and his younger brother, based in London. This would be quite a departure for
As with any narrative art form, crafting a satisfying ending to movie is a tricky proposition. Even the strongest works can fall victim to a last few minutes that don’t quite follow through on the promise that preceded them. And while I don’t think a weak ending totally ruins a good movie, it certainly can leave you feeling a bit cheated. One such example, for me, at least, involves
Mise-en-scène. Ring a bell? Unless you speak French, probably not. For a good portion of my formative years I was in the same boat–a sackful of mise-en-scène could’ve dropped from the sky, landed atop my head and still I would have been none the wiser. This changed my senior year of college. Somehow, despite drinking a goodly portion of all the Goebel® and Natural