Recent DVDs Columns

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Monday, November 9 2009

PopShots: The Lighter Side of Swine Flu

By Glenn McDonald

Researchers have largely ignored the pop cultural value of the H1N1 virus: hours on the couch catching up on DVD.

(more PopShots)

Monday, November 2 2009

The Ghostbusters Twinkie Defense

By Monte Williams

More surprising than the still-impressive special effects and the jokes that hold up to modern scrutiny is the fact that there are moments throughout Ghostbusters that are legitimately scary.

(more Lowbrow Literati)

Wednesday, October 28 2009

A Ghost Story of Dubious Origins

By Jennifer Makowsky

No matter the vercity of the tale, The Haunting in Connecticut has just enough creep quotient to keep me engaged, especially since I grew up a few miles from the house.

(more The Box Office Belletrist)

Thursday, October 8 2009

New Kids on the Block: Hangin’ Tough, Refusing to Let Go

By Monte Williams

In 1989, I loathed the New Kids on the Block with a passion and intensity that only junior high-aged children can bring to their study of popular culture, yet when Hangin’ Tough Live hit DVD, I had to see it.

(more Lowbrow Literati)

Friday, September 25 2009

Hal Ashby: Hollywood Rebel

By Rodger Jacobs

Films and books strive toward a common goal: telling a story. And very few modern filmmakers are as good at spinning a yarn as the late Hal Ashby was.

(more Deconstruction Zone)

Thursday, September 24 2009

The Handmaid’s Tale: Not So Sci-fi

By Jennifer Makowsky

The terrifying, 'it could happen today' message of this story is best told in the Atwood's book, rather than the film version.

(more The Box Office Belletrist)

Thursday, September 3 2009

Buster Keaton: The Sound of His Obsession

By Michael Barrett

Bill Frisell's ambient, fuzzy, meandering guitar doodles sound like they're trying to approximate the sad stillness blowing through the corridors of Keaton's mind.

(more Canon Fodder)

Wednesday, September 2 2009

Not to be Silenced: To Kill a Mockingbird

By Jennifer Makowsky

'To Kill a Mockingbird' is more than an enlightening tale of the racial inadequacies in the South during the Depression -- it inspired people to study law.

(more The Box Office Belletrist)

Thursday, August 13 2009

Oceans of Fear

By Chris Justice

Brace yourself: this is a fish tale that can silence – like the great white shark itself – all of its competitors.

(more The Tackle Box)

Thursday, July 30 2009

Rudy Wurlitzer, Bob Dylan, Bloody Sam, and the Jornado del Muerto

By Rodger Jacobs

Dylan’s beautifully simple ballad captures the paradoxical fear of and longing for death that is the hallmark of Wurlitzer’s narratives and what lurks at the heart of the human experience.

(more Deconstruction Zone)

International d’Horreur

By Marco Lanzagorta

The country that is producing high quality fear flicks these days is not in North America nor anywhere in Asia, but in Western Europe.

(more Dread Reckoning)

Wednesday, July 29 2009

We All End Up in Diapers: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

By Jennifer Makowsky

Comparing the book to the film, it’s as if Fitzgerald laid just the foundation, and from that Roth built a multi-storied house.

(more The Box Office Belletrist)

Friday, July 17 2009

The Audacity of Certain Black Ballers

By Mark Reynolds

The distance we’ve come from Jackie Robinson hawking Chock Full o’Nuts coffee in the ‘50s, and black A-list jocks hawking virtually anything under the sun today, is astounding.

(more Negritude 2.0)

Thursday, July 16 2009

Let the Kayfabe be Unbroken: My Breakfast with Blassie

By Monte Williams

This movie provokes a guilty-pleasure curiosity, followed by a yearning to somehow feel above the ridiculous performance you’re witnessing.

(more Lowbrow Literati)

Thursday, June 25 2009

Black Hollywood: Blaxploitation and Advancing an Independent Black Cinema

By Thomas Britt

In recent history, the myriad commercial and social reactions to so-called Blaxploitation films made feasible the rise of a robust, intelligent, and independent black cinema in the US.

(more Pop Past)

Thursday, June 18 2009

Ingmar Bergman: No Man is an Island

By Matt Mazur

Bergman’s need to honor, discover and examine his intrinsic connection to women is quite simple: all men are influenced by women.

(more Suffragette City)

‘Have Gun - Will Travel’: Return to Fort Benjamin

By Kit MacFarlane

With attempted justifications of military torture on our minds, Retro Remote heads back to the '50s TV Western to find a surprisingly tough moral stance on the U.S. military's destruction of human dignity and dehumanisation of 'enemy combatants'.

(more Retro Remote)

Tuesday, May 26 2009

Let the Right One In, But Only the Right One

By Jennifer Makowsky

Lindqvist’s book and Alfredson’s film adaptation both convey a sweet, dark version of puppy love. We don’t need the American remake.

(more The Box Office Belletrist)

Friday, May 8 2009

Gidget’s ‘Dear Diary—et al.’ – and All that May Imply

By Kit MacFarlane

As things start getting a little steamy, Retro Remote 'sinks into nothingness' trying to mix Gidget and some serious film theory.

(more Retro Remote)

Monday, May 4 2009

Fighting the Flu

By Marco Lanzagorta

The mobilization of the military to control the spread of the current outbreak of a rare strain of the swine flu in Mexico City is right out of Stephen King’s The Stand.

(more Dread Reckoning)

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