All I wanna know is...

Which one of you sonsabitches went backslidin' on The Lord and brought down a second Biblical Deluge upon us???

"Up in the Air Junior Birdmen"

My pick of the week:

The Harvard Film Archive is screening "Air Mail" a 1932 aerial drama directed by John Ford tomorrow night at 7pm starring Ralph Bellamy, Gloria Stuart and Pat O'Brien.
I'm enjoying the hell of the HFA's current John Ford retrospective, like a lot of golden age film-makers Ford seems to have had instinctive identification with the underdog, this led him down some odd paths, from a toleration for the groveling antics of Stepin Fetchitt to many many manful attempts to make that redoubt of an actor, John Wayne seem like less than a sure bet.
I gotta hand it to him though, Ford is one of those guys who can shoot gloomy expressionistic interiors a'la Murnau and then turn around and make his next film feel like a documentary in the blazing desert sun of Monument Valley.
Hell "The Searchers" alone convinced me John Wayne really could act...

Stranded at Charles Street Red Line Station this morning

due to a disabled train AND a medical emergency in one of the other cars. Usually I'm full of snarkage at delays like this, but when the Fire Department start shouldering their way thru your car on their way to some unknown mishaugas, it is strictly "There But For the Grace of God" time with me.
Anyway it gave me a chance to walk to work and pass thru the Public Gardens as well, which might be a nice walk indeed some weekday morning when Spring really hits.

Channel Zero Lives!

The reports of the death of our film and video series are greatly exaggerated!
Because on Friday April 16th at 8pm, Channel Zero will return at the Somerville Theater in Davis Square for a one-in-a-lifetime screening of the most infamous "Brucesploitation" martial arts film ever made, "The Dragon Lives Again!" (1977.
Ever wondered what happened to Bruce Lee in the afterlife?
Director Key Law did, the genius behind such anti-classics as "Crippled Masters" cast Bruce Leong as Bruce Lee and sent the late Martial Arts Master off to Purgatory where he fights to thwart a hellish coup masterminded by Dracula, The Godfather and "The Exorcist".
Weid doesn't begin to describe this movie! Image an Ed Wood Jr. film with kunh fu throw in and you might start getting close to the truth of it!

Join Us, April 16th at 8pm for "The Dragon Lives Again" in the Somerville Theatre's screening room!

Okay I'll give you all just ONE

Irish Song...."The Foggy Dew" and don't gimme no lip about it being the "Fenian version" either.

Ah Saint Patrick's Day

that day of days when I the very Scion of One Hundred Hardy Sons of Ireland, ardently wish that I was born Italian.

I mean how would you like it if the Gawd Damned beer brewery's took over your signature ethnic holiday?

Sharktopus!!!

Say...It...out...Loud


Sharktopus!!!

Of course this is a pending TV monster movie on SyFy...but the crowning glory?
It stars Eric Roberts and will be directed by Roger Corman!
I'm kvelling, simply kvelling.
Geez, remember when Eric Roberts was a Man of Destiny? Golden Globe Award, "Runaway Train" he even had a cute little sister named Julia that everyone thought would end up decorating some sitcom in a supporting type role.
Now look what has happened, Eric is living in Julia's pool-house and paying his rent by acting as unofficial au pair...
Ah but he has landed Sharktopus!
The road to glory beckons!!!

"The Crazies" (2010)

Imagine, George Romero probably has made more on one of these licensed remakes of his old horror classics than he made in ten years as a low budget director.
And for once, the remake is worth the price of admission. Then as now the story is simple, small town sheriff tries to get his pregnant wife past a military cordon when a bio-weapon is accidentally released turning friends and neighbors into raving killers.
In the 1973 original the clumsily executed quarantine is a metaphor for the US involvement in Viet Nam, civilians are gunned down, the army makes fatal mistakes, troops are poorly trained and badly lead.
If the original had a flaw it was in it's cheap ass budget and over-reliance on first time actors, a lot of scenes that ought to hit home are botched for purely technical reasons.
This time Producer George Romero has the scratch to execute a pretty tightly draw survival tale letting the political aspects creep in by inference. In all it is a scary movie one of the better plague-based horror films I've seen of late, I give it three stars solid.
.

To think that I once dismissed Kathryn Bigelow

as a director of entertaining but preposterous cops-n-robbers movies.
And as of today she stands tall as an Oscar Winner for directing "The Hurt Locker"...The sort of gritty macho techno-drama that her ex-husband James Cameron was trying to make out of "Avatar".
Well, this goes to show yuh, not everyone is Orson Welles bursting out of Zeus' forehead ready for battle armor and all. Some people have to work their way up towards "mature artistic integration", Ms. Bigelow would be in the later category.
Well, whatever the woman is my new heroine, I don't wanna overstate things, but she may have just saved Hollywood from digital triviality last night.

Oscar Memories

Somewhere in the first half hour of Miss Congeniality, Michael Caine's beauty pageant coach turns to Sandra Bullock's tomboyish FBI agent and intones "This-Woman-Has-No-Talent!"
***
But nevertheless Sandy is up for an Oscar in a movie that wouldn't rate prime time on the Oxygen Network.
I mean forget about "Speed Part 2" and even her Leopold and Loeb homage "Murder by Numbers"...Nope playing some Confederate Shrew with a burning drive to raise up an African American Football player is the path to glory.
Funny how Oscar works...funny.