Some mesmerizing renditions of Star Spangled BannerAs you can see on the cover, some spectators had funCarl Lewis.mp3Cela Harper.mp3Christina Aguilera.mp3Fergie.mp3Ingrid Andress.mp3Kinsley Murray.mp3Malea Emma.mp3Maya Rudolph.mp3Roseanne Barr.mp3Sound&Sight God Save AmericaThe others can rot

To John Rhys-Davies life | Published 2026-10 You asked what I was reading. My mind went completely blank.

Happy birthday to me and a surprising number of folks in my extended family! What'd you get me, studios? Mainly, Digger, the new Alejandro G. Iñárritu film starring Tom Cruise as an oil billionaire whose operations have apparently caused and environmental disaster and brought the world to the brink of World War III. It kind of looks like a cautionary tale about trying to make Doctor

Written in 2023 at the very dawn of AI among the general populace, this little series of poems and collages proves that, sometimes, the sex really is in the machine...read it HERE...

It’s mad, all right. I’m referring to Spider Baby, or the Maddest Story Ever Told, to give its full title. How do you explain Spider Baby? I’ll try. Is there a spider in it? Um, yeah… Ok, is there a baby in it? Uh, nooo… So, what’s it about? Well, like, it’s about this, like, weird family of sort-of cannibals, living in this weird old dark house… While not evident in the title, the cannibal theme is stated in the title song, sung by Lon Chaney, Jr.—try wrapping your head around that—which ends…

my humble self is always trying.

I think for most Star Trek fans, we all agree Star Trek Voyager deserved a better ending. It's not because the finale was bad, but because after seven years of trying to get home, Voyager finally reaches Earth and… that’s basically it. We see the ship heading toward home, everyone looks happy, and the credits roll. I wanted to see the crew actually get home. I wanted reunions. I wanted to see how they adjusted after spending seven years stranded on the other side of the galaxy. Recently, IDW…

You asked for it, so here’s an occasional open thread to bitch about anything tangentially

Franco Lantieri in Bastard, Go and Kill (1971) Vitals Franco Lantieri as Sanchez, dangerous Mexican henchman Mexico, circa 1890 Film: Bastard, Go and Kill (Italian title: Bastardo… vamos a matar!) Release Date: March 6, 1971 Director: Gino Mangini Costume Credit: Teresa Miccinelli (credited as seamstress) WARNING! Spoilers ahead! Background Like so many new parents, I always have plenty of time on my hands to idle away by watching movies I know little about. For those who recognized the sarcasm…

No, I've never watched Peaky Blinders. The hat reminds me of my grandpa.

Image source: Criterion Collection Jigoku (translated as Hell) initially seems to share a kinship with PSA films like Reefer Madness. A timid theology student named Shiro (Shigeru Amachi) is accidentally party to a hit and run when his disreputable friend Tamura (Yoichi Numata) accidentally runs over a low-level gangster, Kyoichi (Hiroshi Izumida). As if the guilt weren’t bad enough, Shiro’s entire world begins to unravel as everyone around him starts to die in increasingly bizarre fashion. His…

While cleaning up my podcast follows, I noticed that BBC's Infinite Monkey Cage has a new cover image, and new description, and has new (guest) hosts: Prof. Adam Rutherford and Jess Fostekew. It has been a year since one of the original host, Robin Ince, resigned from the show, and BBC is apparently rebooting the show. I will give the new episodes, if they arrive, a try, but I will miss the chemistry between the original hosts. ~ Links: The Infinite Monkey Cage, by BBC Comedian Robin Ince…

Fuze (2025) • View trailer3.5 stars (out of five); rated R, for violence and considerable profanityAvailable via: HBO MAXBy Derrick BangThe devious twists in Ben Hopkins’ fiendishly clever script are ably matched by the multi-faceted, meticulously detailed shoot that brings it to life, under the guidance of director David Mackenzie. No surprise, given that Mackenzie also helmed 2016’s superlative Hell or High Water. After getting called to a London construction site that has uncovered an…

by Cláudio Alves While our TIFF 51 coverage isn’t over – sometimes, it feels like it will go on forever, with Eurocheese and I falling into Sisyphus' fate – one must acknowledge the other big festival of the moment. Right now, the New York Film Festival is blessing audiences with some of the best in world cinema, from September 25 to October 12. As we’ve done in years past, Joanna Sodeman-Taylor will join me in covering the fest from a distance, relying on screeners and whatnot. Hope you enjoy…

The Terrornauts (1967) Scientists make contact with an alien outpost stationed on a nearby asteroid. Before you can say, “plot complication,” the scientists (along with a meek accountant and an outspoken lunch lady) are whisked away to the asteroid, where they’re confronted with portals to other worlds and hostile aliens. To make matters worse, they’re locked in a war between two extraterrestrial civilizations – and all this for a budget that would make Moon Zero Two look lavish by comparison.…

A couple gets axe-murdered in the opening seconds, orphaning their two fully grown frizz-haired daughters who are pretending to be cavorting schoolgirls. Once they’ve grown into their actual ages they get exploited by the patriarchy, as far as I can understand – Kirsanoff is more of an editing nerd than a clear storyteller. The cad who has taken advantage of one (or both) of them gets his head smashed in by some third woman and her mustache-man, in a mirror to the open. I played the music on…

We visited my aunt Dolly the week Dolly Parton died and somehow it never came up. A week earlier I saw the Lily Tomlin Snow White fantasy sequence from this movie at a Hard Light pre-show and didn’t recognize it at all from having seen snippets of this on TV through the 1980s, back when everybody knew who Dabney Coleman was. Sterling Hayden doesn’t show up until the very end, after they’ve kidnapped their boss and improved the company without him. Dolly somehow got three Globe nominations for…

The showrunner of Ask This Old House, which starts its 25th season this week, talked to me about everything from YouTube and TikTok algorithms to standing by the work the show's tradespeople do.

Stronger people than I can keep up with a movie every day for October, as part of a blog-based Countdown to Halloween, but I can only commit to watching as many horror movies this month as I can. I’ve even got a Shudder subscription and everything! For my official first-movie-in-October entry, I chose to watch Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead. The first Phantasm movie along with its sequel are pretty inexplicable. Both in that it’s near impossible to explain what actually happens in them in any…

It really moved me.

Pre-Code Crazy is the monthly series here at Shadows and Satin and over at the blog of my pal Kristina, Speakeasy, where each month we recommend a pre-Code film for you to watch on TCM – we never know what the other has selected until we post, and we try to never pick the same movie! I’m usually hard-pressed to find a pre-Code recommendation for October (and a film noir pick, too, for that matter), because TCM is so jam-packed with scary selections. But this month, TCM is serving up a veritable…

He passed away peacefully, I’ll miss him.

Born on this day in 1920 was Walter Matthau (who was not, as he liked to claim, born Walter Foghorn Matuschanskyasky, but plain Walter John Matthow). With his hangdog face and wisecracking cynicism, he was the perfect foil to his friend Jack Lemmon, with whom he made ten films. Here is my favourite Matthau anecdote: Walter was staying with his wife in a hotel which he discovered was quite close to Auschwitz, so he asked the manager to fix them a car and driver so they could pay a visit.…

Given the new feature film adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility, I thought

A lobby card promoting 'The Scarlet Letter' (1926) starring Lillian Gish.You wouldn't think 'Banned Books Week' offers much in the way of silent film accompaniment opportunities.But ah, there you'd be wrong. Before tackling that topic, here's a brief report from this year's Silent Movie Day, which was celebrated on Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026.To celebrate the occasion, I was honored to provide live accompaniment for a new version of 'Sunrise' (1927) screened that evening at the legendary Brattle…

Arabesque (1966)

Happy October!It's time for a close look at the many good things coming this month on Turner Classic Movies.Myrna Loy is the October Star of the Month. A whopping 56 Loy films will be shown every Monday this month, in both the daytime and prime time hours.A separate post listing the complete Star of the Month schedule, featuring many film review links, will be posted here this weekend.The October Noir Alley titles are LOOPHOLE (1954), which is a TCM premiere, plus CRIME WAVE (1954), CHICAGO…

“So long and take it easy, because if you start taking things seriously, it is the end of you.” –Jack Kerouac Continuing on where its predecessor left off, Azur Lane: Slow Ahead!‘s second season opens with Akashi foisting a virtual reality game on Javelin, Z23, Ayanami and Laffey. After finishing their testing, the girls help […]

Thursdays in 1978 did not come to mind when I thought back on standout nights of television from my youth. But when I looked back at the schedule it was surprising how many shows that are still fondly recalled all aired on this same night. Nine of the 11 shows across all three networks would get DVD releases and are still streaming somewhere, a testament to their enduring popularity. ABCMork & MindyWhat’s HappeningBarney MillerSoapFamilyMork & Mindy was a huge and immediate success following…