Sorry to end the week with a whole bunch of radio silence, but the work crush got the best of me on this sunny summer Friday. Didn’t want to leave y’all with Mac Batchelor atop the page—no offense, Mac—so let me outro with yet another installment of Bad Movie Friday. This week’s victim/honoree is the […]
Tags:Bad Movie Friday·Frank Zagarino·movies·Oliver Reed·The Revenger
Thanks for putting up with the spotty posting last week, as I struggled to keep up with the hectic sked over at Ta-Nehisi Coates’ realm. Did my best to cross-post when I could, but I’ll admit to lazing out a bit—which is why you’re getting Bad Movie Friday on a Monday. (All the background on […]
Tags:Bad Movie Friday·Cyberjack·housekeeping·Michael Dudikoff·movies
(Cross-posted from Ta-Nehisi Coates) Growing up, Jack London was high atop my personal literary pantheon. The first time I read “To Build a Fire”, it absolutely rocked my world—I mean, who knew you could have a story in which the protagonist’s death-by-freezing could be portrayed in such a sweet manner? (That closing vision of “the […]
Tags:Apocalypto·art·books·creativity·Jack Johnson·Jack London·Mel Gibson·movies·racism
In the name of holding our blogging cards close to our chest, so that next week’s TNC guest stint is something special, we’re gonna be taking you straight into Bad Movie Friday on this lazy summer morn. Some of our closest friends would argue that Avenging Force doesn’t deserve a place in the schlock pantheon, […]
Tags:Avenging Force·Bad Movie Friday·Gary Busey·Michael Dudikoff·movies·Surviving the Game
By the time this post goes live, we’ll be sitting in a dentist’s chair, getting our teeth scraped and sandblasted for the first time in well over a year. We’ve consumed vast quantities of dark coffee and sugar over that period, so we expect a very rough experience. Considering our natural fear of dentists, we […]
Tags:dentistry·Marathon Man·movies
The armed forces obviously have to deal with a lot of requests from Hollywood, which is why the various military branches all have entertainment liaison offices. If your forthcoming production is supposed to depict military personnel, or you want to film on a base, you need to go through an elaborate clearance procedure that occasionally […]
We’re operating on the assumption that the masses have either a) already bolted for the holiday weekend or b) are too absorbed in the World Cup quarterfinals to pay attention to fresh information on The Tubes. As such, we’re signing off for a spell with the most patriotic scene from 1980s filmdom: Sylvester Stallone’s final […]
Count us among the many millions who are counting the seconds until The RZA’s directorial debut, Wu-Tang vs. The Golden Phoenix, hits the big screen. In the meantime, we must sate our martial-arts jones with less cinematic fare, starting with this 13-year-old account of Manipuri swordfighting. The denizens of the Indian province have long been […]
Tags:anthropology·India·Manipur·martial arts·movies·The RZA·Wu-Tang vs. The Golden Phoenix
We’re off to deal with the federal government, so we’ll outro with one of the greatest stunts in cinematic history: the crocodile jump from Live and Let Die. As amply shown above, no fancy CGI or other tricks were used in the making of this scene—croc farm owner Ross Kananga (nee Heilman) actually jumped from […]
Tags:crocodiles·James Bond·John Cazale·Live and Let Die·movies·Ross Kananga·stunts
We were totally unplugged during our Northern Michigan trip, so we just learned of Gary Coleman’s tragic passing a few hours ago. Given our relatively advanced age, it should go without saying that his work played a major part in our cultural formation—we certainly feel a small nostalgic thrill whenever someone quotes Diff’rent Strokes. But […]
We’re still enjoying the best that northern Michigan has to offer. Back as soon as we’re able to pick up Microkhan’s Jr. from Detroit and bundle him onto the plane. But if we’re not posting anew by, say, week’s end, just assume that we decided to chuck it all and become professional taxidermists in Ontonagon.
Okay, here’s the deal: Ever since Microkhan Jr. entered the picture, we’ve been able to spend a grand total of one night alone with the Grand Empress. But all that’s about to change, starting today: By the time you read these words, the Microkhan crew will (hopefully) be winging its way to Detroit, en route […]
Bananas week ’round here, as we put the finishing touches on our addiction opus for Wired and prep for a much-needed vacation. (If anyone knows of must-see attraction on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, please advise.) So we’re gonna float into the weekend by reviving our Bad Movie Friday feature, which has been absent from these pages […]
The Stasi was hardly the only important East German institution to leave behind a wealth of archival material. Deutsche Film Aktiengesellschaft, better known to Western film buffs as DEFA Studios, also preserved its documentary heritage upon Communism’s collapse. The state-run movie producer has since bequeathed much of its vast archives to the University of Massachusetts, […]
Tags:East Germany·Eolomea·movies·sci-fi
While using the U.S. Patent Office’s records to try and discern what genius invented the jalapeno popper, we accidentally stumbled upon an invention for the ages: the flavored boot for eyeglasses. We’ll let the application’s description do the dirty work for us: Many individuals who wear eyeglasses frequently will remove their eyeglasses and place the […]
The hero of the criminally underseen documentary Sliding Liberia is one Alfred Lomax, a young Liberian whose life was turned upside down by his nation’s brutal civil war. After fleeing his hometown of Robertsport in 2003, Lomax landed in the capital city of Monrovia, where daily foraging trips brought him in contact with the sport […]
Tags:Alfred Lomax·Liberia·movies·Sliding Liberia·sports·surfing
Sad news out of the Philippines, where beloved comedian Palito has passed away. The man born Reynaldo Hipolito was in many ways the anti-Dom DeLuise—a performer whose career path was determined by his incredible leanness: Born on Sept. 4, 1934, Palito was best known for his comedy films “Ram-Buto” and “Jones Bone,” which were spoofs […]
Tags:comedy·movies·Palito·Philippines·Rambuto
We have very vivid memories of the disappointment we felt upon first seeing The Phantom Menace. One of our pals had scored tickets to a late-night showing at the mammoth Ziegfeld Theater, and we ducked out of a raging party just to get our Star Wars on. The lights dimmed and the movie opened not […]
Something sorta major just came up, so we need to check out for the afternoon. Apologies, but fear not—we’ll be back strong tomorrow, bringing you nothing but the finest handpicked information. For now, though, please indulge our recent fascination with The RZA’s creative process by checking out this 1999 interview with filmmaker Jim Jarmusch. As […]
Tags:creativity·Ghost Dog·hip-hop·Jim Jarmusch·movies·music·RZA·Wu-Tang
An exceedingly quick Bad Movie Friday this week, as we need to duck away and deal with some weighty matters. So we’re going with a slam dunk: Cyborg Cop, directed by quasi-legendary Sam Firstenberg (aka the man who gave birth to that cinematic abomination known as American Ninja). While Firstenberg may have some action chops, […]
Tags:American Ninja·Bad Movie Friday·Cyborg Cop 2·movies·Sam Firstenberg
In our haste to post about Dave Tompkins’ vocoder opus, we neglected to mention one of the book’s best features: the fact that it highlights an epic Klaus Kinski performance about which we were entirely unaware. Despite our passable knowledge of French, we can’t quite grok the plot of 1979’s Zoo zéro based on the […]
Tags:Klaus Kinski·movies·vocoder
Thanks a million for your forbearance this week. All deadlines shall be met by sundown, and we’ll hopefully be back to full-on Microkhaning come Monday. Let us kiss off this dismal week, however, with a very special Bad Movie Friday entry: The Apple, a baffling stab at trying to combine a dystopian nightmare with a […]
In reading about Universal’s decision to nix P.T. Anderson’s The Master, a movie obviously inspired by the founding of Scientology, we found ourselves heartily agreeing with several of The A.V. Club‘s commenters: Perhaps what the world needs isn’t a flick about L. Ron Hubbard’s quasi-religious scam, but a Hollywood-style biopic about the even more fascinating […]
We’re a bit embarrassed to admit this, but we once wrote a magazine piece that seriously examined the physiological feasibility of Godzilla. We called various eggheads and asked them to assess whether a lizard-like creature as massive as Tokyo’s favorite monster could ever exist in the real world. The universal answer, of course, was nyet—Godzilla’s […]
Tags:Alligator·Bad Movie Friday·Godzilla·Japan·John Sayles·movies·reptiles
While we’ve always been vaguely aware of the Mormon film industry, we never realized that its history could be traced back to the very dawn of popular cinema. Nor were we particularly familiar with the brief silent-era vogue for movies that cast Mormons as archvillains, which BYU film historian Gideon Burton identifies as part of […]
As the late Art Buchwald would have been happy to tell you, Hollywood’s accounting practices tend to be garbled at best, and borderline criminal at worst. Studio bean counters are masters of obfuscation and misdirection, with a knack for making blockbusters seem like middling hits, and profitable B-movies appear like money losers. Figuring out how […]
Ttaubotneanauayean for your patience this week, as we eased up on the posting in order to tackle our crushing Wired gig. All will resume to normal on Tuesday, after we’ve hit our deadline. To reward your steadfastness, we’d like to offer up a very special Bad Movie Friday entry: 1989’s Millennium, starring the truly mismatched […]
We have never attempted to conceal our fascination with movies starring non-human primates. That quirk of our character shines through yet again in this week’s Bad Movie Friday installment, featuring the 1951 Ronald Regan vehicle Bedtime for Bonzo. Suffice to say that the trailer above makes us weep for the scientific literacy of Eisenhower Era […]
Tags:animals·Bad Movie Friday·chimpanzees·movies·primates·Ronald Reagan·Tamba
For the record, we think Harvey Keitel’s performance in Bad Lieutenant is one of the most awesome acting jobs in cinematic history. It’s such a grandiose villainous turn, in fact, that we have a tough time seeing him as anything other than a crack-smoking, sexually deviant New York City cop. And so we get a […]
Tags:acting·Bad Lieutenant·Bad Movie Friday·Harvey Keitel·Kurt Russell·movies·primates·The Barefoot Executive·Thora Birch
The recent passing of J.D. Salinger got us thinking about the small role The Catcher in the Rye played in our decision to wield the (figurative) pen for a living. While we’re pretty sure the book wouldn’t hold up should we crack it again today, it wowed us during junior high. It was, in fact, […]
Tags:Billy Ocean·books·J.D. Salinger·movies·music·Now the Hell Will Start·Star War·The Catcher in the Rye
