Can Amityville 2: The Possession Be Saved?
The Amityville franchise is a rancid body of work. From the first feature in 1979 to the Michael Bay produced remake in 2005, the series has served up all the…
How Many Stories About Death and Loss Can Jim Take?
Greetings, literary fiction true believers! Follow the yellow brick link to my review of Ginosko #13 in The Review Review.
Is “Battle of the Year” The Next Crap Classic?
The AVClub doesn't just throw the F grades around, but they did for the new dance flick, Battle of the Year: Too incompetent to work as an underdog dance flick,…
I Am An (Anxiety) Dreamweaver
Scott Southard, keeper of a blog of literary musings, wrote a humorous post on literary genres, and the factionalism they encourage, that got me thinking about how I choose to…
A Tale of Two Artists
As with many other things during the 1930s, the Nazi effort to bring the arts under their control was hamstrung by the turf wars that various state and party organs…
Best of the Year So Far
Best Movie Seen In Theaters: None. I hadn't realized until just now that I haven't been in a movie theater since I caught Skyfall with my mom and Venice last December. I…
What Makes A Great Bad Movie?
Over on Facebook, someone responded to my posts about Birdemic: Shock and Terror, with a request for my top ten bad movies of all time. For those who were wondering and…
How Did I Spend My Weekend? Wondering about Gallagher.
Because one of Venice's friends has a daughter who's recently gotten into tool-facilitated-vegetable-demolition, we started a conversation about the comedian Gallagher. Gallagher, for those who don't remember much about mid-1980s…
Could One of the Worst Movies of the 1980s Be Salvaged?
Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d'you rearrange them into what you DO like? Part two of our little parlor game takes us to a…
Who Cares About Literary Likeability?
From the L.A. Times: In a widely circulated interview with Publishers Weekly, writer Claire Messud was asked if she would want to be friends with the protagonist of her new novel, "The…