Roger Ebert 1942-2013

Anyone interested in movies – and particularly anyone who writes about them – had to take note this past week of the death of Roger Ebert, the Chicago-based movie critic who over fifty years became the face and voice of criticism for a large public. He more or less fell into the role in the […]

Movies in Your Head

One of the “advantages” of having a tedious day job which requires a certain amount of concentration but very little thought is that I can spend my shifts listening to my iPod. I’ve recently been addicted to old-time radio shows – among them The Shadow, Gang Busters, Escape, Inner Sanctum, Nero Wolfe, even an excellent […]

Gerry Anderson 1929-2012

I’m not sure how I missed the news back in December, but Gerry Anderson died on the day after Christmas. Although he eventually did several live action series and one live action theatrical feature, Anderson was inextricably associated with the string of television fantasy projects he produced using puppets and elaborate miniature effects throughout the […]

Miscellaneous Thoughts

I recently picked up a copy of Raising Hell: Ken Russell and the Unmaking of The Devils by Richard Crouse (ECW Press, 2012). It’s a breezy read recounting the production history and subsequent fate of Russell’s 1971 masterpiece (perhaps a little too breezy: Rouse confuses Russell’s Isadora Duncan, the Biggest Dancer in the World [1966], […]

Blu-ray Review: The Awakening (2011)

In the past few years, something interesting has been happening in the horror genre. After several decades of increasingly graphic movies focused on the torture and destruction of the human body, something more subtle has been re-emerging. Like it or not, one of the key instigators of the trend was The Blair Witch Project (1999); […]

DVD Review: Compliance (2012)

“Inspired by true events.” “Based on a true story” … audiences have had good reason to be skeptical about such claims at the start of a movie at least since The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). And as Craig Zobel’s uncomfortably tense Compliance unfolds, the viewer may feel an increasing sense of disbelief … how could […]

Blasts from the past

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car (2021): Criterion Blu-ray review

Jerry Lewis in The Jazz Singer (1959)

Disk error: No Blade of Grass (Warner Archive)

“Folk Horror”

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