Following the relative lack of box office success of Fantasia and Pinocchio and with the country on the verge of entering a World War, Disney needed to churn out something inexpensive and much shorter. That little movie turned out to be the story of a young elephant with big ears who learns to fly. I’ll… [Read More]
Fantasia: Chaos vs Peace #TBT
In a bold move, Walt Disney’s 3rd animated film is a mostly silent concert feature, with several animated shorts or segments inspired by and featuring the music of prominent classical composers such as Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and the like. The movie is considered a high point in animation history and rightfully so. However, I don’t want… [Read More]
Pinocchio: Little Wooden Head but a Big Heart
I read the original Adventures of Pinocchio by Italian author Carlo Collodi when I was young at my grandmother’s house and remember being struck by how dark and surprisingly violent it is (fun fact: the first thing Pinocchio does to the Talking Cricket upon meeting him is squashing him dead with his shoe). Indeed, the… [Read More]
Shaft Triple Feature #TBT
With the release of Tim Story’s Shaft from Kenya Barris’ (Blackish) script, fans of the legendary crimefighter can see what three generations of the first black hero on screen with Richard Roundtree, Samuel L. Jackson, and Jessie Usher. Just in time, Warner Bros. Archives has released the triple feature of Roundtree’s original three Shaft films… [Read More]
The Year of the Dragon (1985): Bringing the War Home #TBT
Michael Cimino, of The Deer Hunter fame and Heaven’s Gate notoriety, shoots the gap between his Oscar wins for the first and the derision of his work for the second in Mickey Rourke’s The Year of the Dragon. While Rourke had collaborations with Steven Spielberg (1941), Lawrence Kasdan (Body Heat), Barry Levinson (Diner), and Francis Ford Coppola (Rumble Fish) under… [Read More]
Starsky & Hutch (2004): The Remake Revolution #TBT
Before SWAT, Hawaii Five-O, MacGuyver, Lethal Weapon, and Magnum P.I. were remade as television dramas, studios seemed fascinated with remaking old television shows into slightly more offbeat films. In between films like I, Spy, and later films like The A-Team and 21 Jump Street, Starsky & Hutch took the old 1970s buddy cop show and twisted it, hard. Thanks to Warner Archive Collection, the Blu-ray… [Read More]
#ROXY: A modern take on an old nose… I mean classic.
A modern take on Cyrano de Bergerac, #Roxy is a movie about Cyrus Nollen (Jake Short), a boy with a big nose who is very tech savvy and feels he can’t be loved because of his physical appearance. He is in love with his best friend, Roxy (Sarah Fisher), one of the more popular girls… [Read More]
MacGuyver (1985)- The Complete First Season: A White Knight #TBT
In the mid-1980s, Lee David Zlotoff wrote for Hill Street Blues and later produced Remington Steele; he even directed The Spitfire Grill. But his greatest contribution to modern media was the creation of MacGuyver, the story of a troubleshooter for the Phoenix Foundation (and also an agent of a shadowy branch of the U.S. government). MacGuyver regularly found himself in… [Read More]
Dragnet (1987): Just the Facts #TBT
“The story you’re about to hear is true.” Thus begins the spiritual lovechild of Dragnet. In 1987, Dan Ackroyd and Tom Hanks ‘updated’ the legendary tone of the television show that ran from 1951-59 and 1967-70, formed around the story which Jack Webb created, produced, and starred in for so many years. Ackroyd plays the singular,… [Read More]
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: The Boy Who Was Lucky #TBT
Given that this year marks the twentieth anniversary of the publication of the first Harry Potter novel (well… it had already been published in the UK in 1997, but the US version didn’t come out until 1998), it seems fitting to go back and watch the films that were such an integral part of my childhood. … [Read More]
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