Day 558: An Evening’s Worth Of Lost Film

originally published July 11, 2013 Throughout my years of paying an exorbitant amount of money to study the history of film, I was often told of films that had been lost to the ages for whatever reason. Georges Méliès, the first man to play around with film as an art form, had a lot of […]

Day 547: Marveling At The Monstrous – Worst Films, Part 5

originally published June 30, 2013 In the pantheon of terrible movies – and that is a substantially large pantheon to be sure – the most gratifying and darkly satisfying to sit through are inevitably the classic sci-fi and monster movies of the 50’s and 60’s. These are films made with low budgets, cheap special effects, […]

Day 529: Max Fleischer – The Ani-Maker

originally published June 12, 2013 Unless you are well-versed in the history of cartoons, you probably know only a handful of names related to the industry: Walt Disney, Seth McFarlane, Matt Groening, and if you really remember your Looney Tunes, Chuck Jones. But any of those four would tip their quills in an industry salute […]

Day 503: The -EXPLETIVE DELETED- Hays Code

originally published May 17, 2013 Having recently wrapped up my film studies degree, and now poised in that no-doubt brief window between finishing classes and discovering how this degree will make me an instant multi-gazillionaire, I find myself thrilled to be facing a film-related topic. Every student in a film studies class should eventually learn […]

Day 480: Where The Stars Go At Day’s End

originally published April 24, 2013 Have you seen Quartet, that new Dustin Hoffman-directed movie about the four singers in the retirement home full of singers? I’ve seen the trailers for it, and what sparked my imagination was not so much the story itself but the idea that there could be an old-folks home full of […]

Day 475: A Brief History Of Face-Pieing

originally published April 19, 2013 Ah, the pie. You fill us full of chocolate cream, hot apple or key lime goodness, make even the most intolerable meal redeemable with the promise of dessert, and your mere scent has lured cartoon creatures into physics-defying floating reveries, led by their hungry noses. But you can do so […]

Day 448: The Soviet Film Defectors

originally published March 23, 2013 We all know that the USSR and America spent much of the 1960’s throwing stuff up into space to see who could be more sci-fi awesome than the other. But at the same time as highly educated, meticulously-trained astronauts and cosmonauts were taking turns staring down at the planet from […]

Day 397: Reeling The Rotten – Worst Films, Part 4

originally published January 31, 2013 “Can your heart stand the shocking facts about grave robbers from outer space?” When I set about implementing a regular feature in which I examine some of the worst films/television/music/games ever made, I knew I would eventually have to turn my reluctant gaze to the most infamous bad movie ever […]

Day 377: My Story Pitches For The Upcoming Hungry Hungry Hippos Movie

originally published January 11, 2013 Back in October, a news item plopped onto my desk like a sack of wet rubber thimbles. Perhaps you remember it. Hasbro, the toy company behind Nerf, Play-Doh and Catchphrase, announced that their film division, which runs out of a tiny yet surprisingly whimsical windowless office on the Universal Pictures […]

Day 360: Take The Quiz You Can’t Refuse

originally published December 25, 2012 Christmas, as we all know from saccharine TV commercials for pasta side dishes, is a time for family. Major calendar holidays are, as regular readers of this project may recall, also a perfect opportunity for a quiz. And rather than cash in on the Christmas tropes – I’m sure I’m […]