Krites! I love them, I adore them. I even think they’re cooler than the Gremlins. What am I saying? They’d swallow those gremlins up whole. Can the Gremlins get in to one huge gang bang of a ball and swallow up a man with a few bites? I think not. Granted, you have to love Gizmo, but the Krites are tops with us.
No one will ever really accuse “H2″ or “Rob Zombie’s Halloween” of ever being a masterpiece. I mean, while they do have the vision of a man who has something to say in the horror genre, they’re not the indicators of someone who can firmly grasp what a remake is supposed to be. John Carpenter’s “The Thing” worked so well because he had source material to work off of, and re-imagined the Howard Hawks original in creative ways. Zombie’s “Halloween” movies felt like repackaged leftovers disguised as a meal. Heck, I don’t think Zombie ever grasped what filmmaking was supposed to be.
“I’ll see you at the movies.” – Roger Ebert’s Final Written Words.
It’s as I said in my review for “Starting Out in the Evening”: Come obscurity, irrelevance, success, or fame, a writer still has to write, regardless. In Roger Ebert’s case it was, come disease, sickness, and life altering illness, a writer still has to write. And Roger Ebert, no matter what he faced in his life, had to write. In the end, whether you agreed with him, hated his ability to raise controversy, or just had a relative indifference toward him, very few movie critics changed the world of cinema and the landscape of writing as he did. It’s with a heavy heart that I write about the passing of my favorite movie critic of all time, as Roger was a man who seemed to almost know he was dying.
When I was a kid, “Moonwalker” was on constant rotation on our VCR and for ninety minutes, it kept me and my brother quiet and out of my mom’s hair. As brothers prone to fighting and bickering, movies are what usually kept us shut, especially since we couldn’t even afford basic cable back then. Around the time “Moonwalker” came to VHS, we knew perfectly clear that the movie itself was nothing but a promotional tool for Michael Jackson.
Back then, Jackson ruled the world and was considered the most iconic person on the face of the Earth. He was pretty much a God, so we didn’t care that the VHS was just nothing but a commercial for Jackson’s incredible abilities, we just wanted Michael Jackson. Pretty much in the same way we didn’t care “Kriss Kross: Jump” or “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Making of the Coming Out of Their Shells Tour” were just tapes intent on promoting a product, we didn’t care” Moonwalker” was just for Michael Jackson’s publicity team. It was our fix of the popular Jackson, and we loved it.
Russ Meyer was a man who loved breasts. He surely enjoyed the female form, but mostly he loved breasts. He fetishized them, worshipped them, and centered his entire career making films that idolized them in some form or another. Russ Meyer is one of the last directors who cast and adored curvy busty women, and though he’s written off sometimes as an exploitation director, Meyer definitely was a dying breed of male. Sure, breasts are still worshipped in today’s society, but not many directors have the guts to reveal them so much in their films.
Being a pure comic book geek I was most surprised to discover that not only did The Incredible Hulk steal one of the biggest movies of 2012, “The Avengers,” but that the man who played him, Mark Ruffalo, has been the best Bruce Banner so far. The Hulk has been in two movies prior to “The Avengers,” and the limited screen time of The Hulk has warranted renewed interest in the character.
The Hulk is now going to have yet another new movie series in the work and is set to debut on television once again as Hollywood misses the point. Once again. The Hulk is excellent. In limited doses. In either case, while the first two cinematic efforts to give the Hulk a series have failed, I do have to admit one thing about the prior films.
One of the biggest childhood favorites that I gladly admit to loving is “Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon.”
Many film buffs based in knowing cult classics or bad films in general just know what film I’m talking about and they just can’t help talk about and bask in all its pure horrid presence. To this day I fondly remember my mom asking “You actually like that movie?” every time I decided to watch it.