The Bootleg Files: Abbott & Costello Meet Superman

Posted on October 11, 2019 by Phil Hall

BOOTLEG FILES 704: “Abbott & Costello Meet Superman” (2015 fan film).

LAST SEEN: On YouTube.

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: It’s kind of obvious what is going on here.

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: They’re lucky that Mike the Cop doesn’t arrest them.

Fan films often represent a victory of enthusiasm over talent, with aspiring Spielbergs getting carried away with their mania over popular film franchises. For the most part, these films can be accepted as charming – a few are actually quite polished thanks to an intelligent use of digital effects.
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Cluny Brown (1946)

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Phil Hall

Ernst Lubitsch’s last completed film was a riff on the British class system in the period before World War II. The estate of Sir Henry Carmel is turned upside down by two outsiders: Adam Belinski (Charles Boyer), a Czechoslovakian writer forced from his country by the Nazis, and Cluny Brown (Jennifer Jones), the orphaned niece of a Cockney plumber who is hired as the new maid but who secrets desires to pursue her uncle’s profession.
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The Box Trolls (2014)

Posted on October 6, 2019 by Felix Vasquez

Laika has the ability to conjure up magic and unique premises that you can’t find anywhere else, and it’s why I think they’re bringing so much to the animation medium. While “The Box Trolls” isn’t their best title, it surely is a meaningful and heartfelt work of art that works as an entertaining allegory about the class structure and the idea of the dream of wealth and whether or not it can ever live up to our fantasies. Is there such a thing as too much? And it is really as ideal as we think?

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Celebrating the 1989 “Beetlejuice” Animated Series

Posted on October 6, 2019 by Felix Vasquez

In 1988, Tim Burton introduced us to a foul-mouthed freelance “bio-exorcist” ghost, simply named Beetlejuice (or, to those sticklers out there, Betelgeuse). Like most entities of his ilk, chanting his name three times would give him power, allowing him to interact with the real world and perform hauntings and create monsters. Michael Keaton took on the guise of the demonic anti-hero with a penchant for perversion and trickery and director Tim Burton created a bonafide horror icon for the 90s. In 1989, the love for Beetlejuice had hit its high and Burton cemented himself as a master of Goth tales with Batman and Edward Scissorhands soon after.

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The Pagemaster (1994)

Posted on October 5, 2019 by Felix Vasquez

When I was a kid whenever councils or committees tried to encourage kids to read, they always invented some kind of mascot, and for me it was Cap’n O. G. Readmore. Every Saturday morning after the cartoons, he’d show up to remind kids to read, and explain how much fun reading was. “The Pagemaster” has good intentions but deep down it feels disingenuous and an awful lot like a glorified Saturday Morning special turned in to a big feature. At barely eighty minutes in length, it’s a mediocre, dreary, occasionally boring film that you can’t help but feel like it could have been shown as a TV movie.

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Swing Time (1936): Criterion Collection [Blu-Ray]

Posted on September 30, 2019 by Felix Vasquez

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers was an absolutely peerless pair of brilliant dancers that didn’t just inject chemistry on the dance floor, but also as a romantic pairing. Whether they were swooning over one another, or tap dancing in sync, it’s impossible not to be caught up in “Swing Time.” George Stevens’ classic romance comedy and musical takes the pairing as mismatched strangers that fall in love over the art of dance and their performances that look effortless but actually act as their own characters.

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Shaft (2019) [Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital]

Posted on September 30, 2019 by Felix Vasquez

In 2000, the late great John Singleton’s mediocre reboot of “Shaft” seemed like a great vehicle franchise for Samuel L. Jackson to bring to life one of the most popular anti-heroes of the seventies. Then suddenly nothing. And there was nothing for a long time, no sequels, or follow ups, or even a TV show. Twenty years later, the fans finally get a follow up, but nothing more than a cheap, lazy, and ridiculous legacy sequel/soft reboot by Tim Story that completely undoes a lot of what we saw in the 2000 Singleton version, right down to the gritty crime atmosphere.

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