EPIGRAPH
"I've never had to knock on wood. But I know someone who has..."
[italics mine. - ed]
STORY
It was the mid-to-late 90s and I was sat in the cold in my father's van in the Bayview Elementary parking lot. The station was playing it again. The station was always playing it again. Through aimless tuning, we had found — that is, my sister and I had found — a frequency which played one song and only one song. In…
SPIKE LEE: Here come “New York’s Finest.” The title Do The Right Thing does not really refer to Mookie throwing the garbage can through the window, I mean. My experience, you know, since this film’s come out, the white audience, they’re more concerned about destruction of property, the destruction of Sal’s Famous Pizzeria, than they were about the death of Radio Raheem. I think they should ask themselves that question: why are they more concerned with the property of this…
Bess Ehrhardt plays a character in the movie (with barely a couple of lines) who is an ice skater but the on-screen marquee for the Follies just credits her as her real name. That's not even the 900th weirdest thing in this movie. While WB is willing to freely admit that Hollywood is full of trash, MGM still puts up a front that, ultimately sends a mixed message. This is because their front is just as bad! I've become an…
My favorite movie series to be called
Goofy Movie. Its success is judged by the sheer amount of times I feel obligated to rewind and see a bit again, just to be sure I wasn’t imagining what I heard/saw.
The BFI Mediatheque currently has it as a streaming selection and I watched it at their Southbank London location. The surviving reel runs 12 minutes, features a fair amount of intertitles, and is a very dry and slow affair, elegant in its way. The opening credits are included and all of the labelled cast members look exactly as they should. As far as I can tell, this film is only viewable at these BFI locations, but it is totally free…
Someone says "Aircraft carriers are a shitty idea" with a completely straight face in a film about screenwriting. A film so full of howlers and cringey missteps that I actually think the whole pointless Welles character assassination barely registers (because it's also barely in the movie). Don't throw Norma Shearer under the bus like that. Be sure to tell everyone in the audience who and what everyone is at every moment! Typewriter screenplay scene transitions and reel changes, yikes! Needless…
