Five Great Bill Paxton (1955-2017) Performances

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Bill Paxton could play any character. He could play anyone, at any time, from anywhere. He was a cowboy in the old west, he was a soldier in the future fighting aliens, he was a tornado chaser, a leather clad vampire, a slimy car salesman, an obnoxious big brother, a dad burdened with the knowledge of demonic entities, a punk, et al. He could be anyone. I am one of the many kids who grew up watching Paxton give riveting performances on film, no matter how big or small the role was. Paxton was a man who could appear in any time period on film and you bought his performance and his place there.

By all accounts, Paxton was a very nice and warm man who loved his fans, and treated everyone with immense respect. I was born in 1983, so I was old enough to remember a time where Paxton was in a lot of movies, and was a constant face on film. He’d just pop up, and it was a pleasant surprise every single time. Paxton even helped invent a ton of imitators who would walk around screaming “Game over man! Game over!” over and over and over. It never got old.

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Hollywood: An Insider’s Perspective

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It is the dream of millions to become a major player in Hollywood, but only a relatively few lucky souls are able to secure power positions in the film capital. On today’s show, Phil Hall gets a unique perspective on how to succeed in Hollywood from Summer Helene, executive vice president of California Pictures at Paramount and an award-winning film and television producer. This is a brutally honest and deeply funny program – take time to listen to this!

The episode can be heard here.

Detour (2016) [FrightFest Glasgow 2017]

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As his mother lays in a coma, possibly brain dead following a car accident for which he holds his stepfather responsible, Harper drunkenly meets and subsequently hires a shady man to take care of things and avenge his mother.  As he questions his decision the film goes into two paths at once, creating a layered story that must be followed until the end to be fully understood.

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Getting Schooled (2017)

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In 1983, a group of stereotypical teens are in detention on the weekend with a wheelchair-bound teacher.  Soon, they start getting picked-off one by one in varying levels of violence and blood.

The writing team of Chuck Norfolk, Steven Scott Norfolk, and Tim Norfolk have written a film that wants to be an 80s movie and gets some of the true 80s feelings and vibes, but they also use a lot of more current way for characters to act.  Directed by Chuck Norfolk, the film feels like what a full-grown filmmaker thinks the general public wants to see about the 80s.  It’s less John Hughes homage and more caricature of the 80s through a 2010s teen’s eyes.  The film has some things that work, but the attempt at rendering the 80s feels force and like something without much thought put into it.  The film uses a lot of clichés from other films without thinking if they fit in here, thinking if it looks like what we think the 80s were like, it will work.  However, the 80s represented here do not feel right; they don’t feel like the 80s of many other films, or even the 80s this reviewer remembers.  The characters in this setting feel mostly like caricatures with one feeling a bit less like so, but looking more like she would belong in this decade or the 2000s.

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Cinema Crazed Covers The 2016 Oscar Contenders

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It’s that time of year again, where Hollywood either guides us in to celebrating actual works of cinematic art, or will likely arouse the ire of cineastes for years to come by playing it safe with the obvious crowd pleasers once again. In either case, “Oscar” night 2017 promises to be an interesting and controversial one. With the political landscape, racial landscape, and current crop of movies nominated at this years’ ceremony, a lot of us are hoping the Academy celebrates films that hold a miror to society rather than simply celebrate the safe, and light hearted fare that pass itself at “escapism.” That said, while we are a bit of cynics, we have a good time every year with the pageantry, the fun, and celebration of film.

To remind you of who is nominated this year, we covered a lot of Oscar nominees. If you want to a refresher course of what we thought of a lot of the films up for an award this year, we’ve compiled a list of movies reviewed by the Cinema Crazed contributors. Feel free to voice your own opinions on these films and many others in the comments!

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