Category: 1976
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Conway gives Bolt a first name (or, at least, uses it), which is nice. In fact, Conway gives Bolt a whole reflective moment here, a lot more than any writer has done before. Abby and Matt, however, are incredibly distant. It doesn’t much matter, because the ending of this issue suggests Swamp Thing is done…
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In 2001, the Academy awarded Dino De Laurentiis the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial award. The clips ran from the beginning of his career to the present–I can’t remember if Body of Evidence got a clip–and I kept waiting to see how they’d deal with Kong. The De Laurentiis produced remake is either forgotten or derided,…
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Network lost Oscars. It doesn’t really matter what it lost them to, because the absurdity of the Academy Awards is summed up in that one statement. Network lost Oscars. I’m not sure what shot is Sidney Lumet’s best in the film, because I’m remembering two of them from the last half. These aren’t necessarily the…
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There are a couple kinds of Westerns, once you break it down enough. Ones where people go places, ones where people don’t. The Outlaw Josey Wales is a going places Western. It’s about a man on a trip and what the trip does to the man on the trip. I’ve seen Josey Wales before, probably…
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In an American history survey class, when we got to Nixon, one student asked if we could cover it. She felt we hadn’t covered it well enough. The professor said we would not be covering it–everyone knew it. He was–obviously–wrongly assuming some knowledge of history from college students, a foolish presumption (I have MFA instructors…
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Inoffensively bad–but still real bad–adaptation of Edgar Rice Burrough’s novel about Victorian-era scientists Doug McClure and Peter Cushing (both are terrible but Cushing is much worse) drilling into the Earth and finding it hollow. Hollow earth has cavemen, dinosaur monsters, and scantily clad Caroline Munro. Will McClure stop being a disaffected blue blood and become…
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Punny–as opposed to funny–all-star disaster movie spoof about the crew and passengers of a nuclear-powered Greyhound. Things go terribly wrong with the bus and only lead Joseph Bologna can hold it all together. The absurdist humor always takes the easy route, but there are some rather good performances and then some not so good ones…
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Singular Western pits rustler-turned-farmer Jack Nicholson against mercenary Marlon Brando. Exceptional on most fronts, including Penn’s direction, Nicholson’s performance, and the John Williams score. Brando’s good too, he’s just not Nicholson. DVD, Blu-ray, Streaming.Continue reading →
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We all know Winston Churchill wasn’t kidnapped or assassinated during World War II–except maybe President Bush, but he’s still waiting for John Rambo to call with info on Osama–so The Eagle Has Landed‘s ending is a bit of a give-away. The film succeeds–to some degree–since it presents the audience with characters they care so much…
The Stop Button 