Watching The Shining In the Time of Trump
This evening, thanks to TCM and Lincoln Square Cinemas, I caught The Shining on the big screen for the first time. Though I've seen the picture dozens of times over the…
An American Dream or How Picking the Wrong Point of View Can Blow Your Story
Last night, I attended a preview of Seattle Opera's An American Dream, which aims to tell the story of World War II's Japanese-American internment in opera form. The music was strong,…
Doing A Pixar Exercise For Star Trek The Motion Picture
Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like? I wouldn't say I dislike ST:TMP exactly. The movie came out when…
New Review of Dismantle the Sun
As longtime readers of this blog know, I try to avoid reading published reviews, whether positive, negative, or indifferent. There are several reasons for this. The reason currently in the lead is that I'm…
Good and Bad Reasons To Give the Side-Eye To Fifty Shades Of Grey
I love bad movies and can watch them all day, but only professional obligation could persuade me to read a terrible book. Accordingly, since no one's offered to cross my palm…
Wherein I Take The Piss Out of Footloose
Over at the MMIP Riffs channel, a channel to which all goodhearted people should subscribe, I spend a few minutes picking on 1984's camp-fest, Footloose. Because on the day a…
From MMIP Riffs: 3 Ridiculous Things About The Omen Series
3 Ridiculous Things About (Movie or Movie Series X) is going to be a regular feature of the MMIP Riffs Youtube channel. Here's the first episode, in honor of Halloween,…
Margo Howard Provides An Object Lesson In Mishandling Bad Reviews
From The New Republic: I’ll bet you don’t know what the Amazon “Vine Community” is. I didn’t. I was never even aware of it until my memoir was published earlier this year.…
Movies That I Like For No Sensible Earthly Reason
After doing 42 after '71, I got to thinking about what #43 ought to be. (My odometer turned over a few days ago). I'm not prepared to name that one…
The Movie That Can’t Be Saved
On occasion, I've tried the Pixar exercise that suggests taking a movie you disliked and reimagining it as something you would like. I love the idea of repurposing crap--and I'm…