The Working Man’s Artform: Reflections on The Movie Theater

“This is a working man’s art form. It’s not the opera. It’s not theater. It’s not going to a big concert. The idea was that anyone could go and see a movie… we have priced them out to where now it’s a deal.” – Quentin Tarantino

When I was a kid we lived in a small one bed room apartment shared by four people. My dad worked all day and only on the weekends could he really find time to spend with me and my brother. On the weekends he’s gather us together and we’d find time to do something together. The only caveat is we’d had to be able to afford it. Even in the late eighties that was a tough endeavor. So we’d go to the park, or the public pool, or free day at the Bronx Zoo. But quite often he’d snatch up me and my brother and we’d go to the movies together. It was the least expensive option that offered an immersive experience.

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On Depression and Westerns

Special guest Article by Leigh Evans KreuzThey say you never forget your first love.

I’m thirty-eight now and I’ve forgotten a big chunk of my life up until this point. Sometimes, if I’m especially #blessed, the right stimuli and the right amount of THC knock a few things loose. Being born before the turn of the century, I was a kid who, like my parents before me, was raised largely by television. Our story begins during the little slice of my life in which I was often sat behind the arm of a floral patterned sofa, staring in rapt attention at the rabbit-eared television; relic from the time when sets were advertised as being (holy smokes, Batman!) IN COLOR. I happened to be born into a culty Assembly of God church run by a guy who wore Jim Jones sunglasses without a single wit of irony and utilized information control in the guise of “keeping the children safe”.

That meant we weren’t allowed to just watch whatever we wanted because the stuff on TV would send demons through the screen or something. (For further reading and cringing so hard your back cracks read “Turmoil in the Toybox” by Phil Phillips). The selection of “Jesus approved” material was pretty slim for the child of “God and country” 1980s Reaganites.

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Five Reasons The McCallisters Are the Worst Family in Movie History

I’ve seen “Home Alone” and “Home Alone 2” at least two hundred times since 1990, and every single time I’ve seen it I’ve always wondered how anyone ever lived with the McCallisters. Yes, Kevin had his flaws, but if you take a step back you can’t really blame him for being kind of petulant, and devious, and selfish when he lives with such a huge clan of careless yuppies prone to losing their children.

After thirty years I thought I should list five reasons why the McCallisters are the Worst Family in Movie History, and why it wouldn’t surprise me if Kevin abandoned them after high school and went on to live his own life leaving them all to fester trapped in suburban hell. That’s my head canon, anyway.

Happy Holidays!

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Rest in Peace, Cartoon Network (1992-2023)

Back in the heyday of cable television, channels were all aimed toward a certain market and fan base. If you loved science fiction there was a channel for you. If you loved medical science, there was a channel or you. If you love romance movies, there was a channel. And surely enough there was the Cartoon Network. Cartoon Network offered up cartoons twenty four hours around the clock and in 1992 they guaranteed a complete line up of cartoons you couldn’t find anywhere. Their line up consisted mainly of Hanna Barbera since they were owned by Warner, so for pretty much anything non-Disney, Cartoon Network had.

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Hysterics of the Dead in 2003 with Uwe Boll

Streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

If you’re an avid movie goer and movie lover, most of the time you can tell when a movie is going to stink five minute in to it. Sometimes it’s from the first moment, but sometimes it takes at least five minutes. When I trekked to Manhattan to see “House of the Dead” a week before Halloween, it hit like a gut punch within the opening credits that I was not going to see the next zombie movie masterpiece. Granted, this was 2003, and I hadn’t heard of Uwe Boll. Hell, I barely had any knowledge of what “House of the Dead” was as a whole. I just know that the ads for it on MTV looked pretty damn cool.

I was at a weird mind set in 2003. I’d just come out from open heart surgery in July, and I’d spent the entire summer suffering, especially after the historic black out that took out power from most of America for twenty four hours.

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We Kill for Love: The Lost World of the Erotic Thriller (2023)

If you grew up in the eighties or nineties with cable television, there was always a few occasions where you’d be cruising through the channels looking for something to watch. And there was always a chance you’d happen upon channels like Showtime, Cinemax, or HBO and inevitably stumble on to an erotic thriller. These glossy movies were made cheap, and fast, and almost always featured a hard boiled male protagonist as well as an absolutely sexy woman, and always featured softcore sex. From the late eighties to the end of the nineties, the erotic thriller was a popular facet of late night television and video store shelves.

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When Dinosaurs Ruled the 90’s

The 1990’s were an odd time where the most unlikely of trends would just consume the pop culture climate. Sometimes the trends lasted for fifteen minutes (Swing music! Grunge Rock!), and other times they lasted the whole decade. For many that don’t remember, the concept and science of Dinosaurs experienced a wide resurgence in the 1990’s, and getting in to dinosaurs was chic for quite a time. I fondly remember just tearing through massive books of dinosaurs that my cousin lent me, and spent so much time learning about various species and classes of dinosaurs.

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