🍿 Reflections on Jurassic Park: Ian Malcolm is gross and he has all the best lines. That shot of the T-rex with the banner falling is so iconic. (Forgive me the spoiler.) If you’ve been to Universal’s Jurassic Park area, this whole thing feels much more real because they did such a great job.
Marjoe Gortner and Lynda Carter in Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw (1976) Vitals Marjoe Gortner as Lyle Wheeler, wannabe outlaw New Mexico, Summer 1975 Film: Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw Release Date: April 28, 1976 Director: Mark L. Lester Costume Designer: Cornelia McNamara WARNING! Spoilers ahead! Background People typically cite two major reasons to watch the low-budget ’70s crime flick Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw… neither of which are Marjoe Gortner’s wardrobe. Is that going to stop me from writing…
Below Deck chef Anthony Iracane crossed over from Bravo to Food Network to compete in 24 in 24: Last Chef Standing, a high-pressure show. Let's check in on his progress!
An appropriate story for this week's issue: you'll recall that on Saturday, I highlighted a story about the changing face of baseball with the coming of free agency, and how Andy Messersmith, a pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers, won his arbitration case to become the first free agent. Messersmith signed with the Atlanta Braves, then owned by Ted Turner, who also owned WTCG. Not long after that, Turner announced a gimmick where the players would wear their nicknames on their jerseys, instead…
Buster and his co-star in 'The General' (1926).I'm back on the road this week to the Regent Theatre in Arlington, Mass., where they're screening Buster Keaton's 'The General' (1926) on Wednesday, April 29, with music by me.It's the third visit to the Regent this month, as the venue pursues a mini-series of silent screenings that included Cecil B. DeMille's 'King of Kings' (1927) and Harold Lloyd's 'Safety Last' (1923).'Safety Last' was part of a 110th anniversary show (the Regent opened in…
My brother Richard recently alerted me to this actress from Alabama; I was not familiar with her. Let's investigate.I've done a number of pieces on the blog about actresses whose careers began before 1960; some are linked from this post. Joyzelle Joyner is certainly one of those women from the state who found some success in Hollywood, although her career film career did not last very long. Lillian Joyzelle Joyner was born on August 27, 1905, in Mount Pleasant in Monroe County. She was one of…
Anaïs Mitchell has created something magical. I felt like giving a standing ovation after every song. Just pure theatrical joy delivered by a cast who know how to squeeze every drop of emotion from an audience. Perhaps it was sitting right at the front of the stalls, but the opening of Hadestown feels like dinner theatre; almost cosy in its intimacy. The first act is so busy - there are a hundred-and-one things happening on stage that it occasionally becomes overwhelming. The second act is…
American theatre usually explores it national characteristics, its State challenges, dilemmas and restrictions through the vehicle of family drama and in Fran Kranz’s blistering new play Mass arriving at the Donmar Warehouse, several different kinds of family are created and deconstructed as two grieving sets of parents come together to mourn their children and seek […]
It’s no secret that the Hollywood Comet loves musicals. In 2010, I revealed I had seen 400 movie musicals over the course of eight years. Now that number is over 600. To celebrate and share this musical love, here is … Continue reading →
Despite a terrible start, April is the month I’m finally catching up with the TBR Challenge–and I’m even managing to post this review just shy of a couple of weeks late. The challenge theme was ‘fool’s errand’, described by challenge host extraordinaire Wendy as “some harebrained idea or scheme, some sort of desperate Hail Mary idea to worm their way out of a situation.” You will agree that investigating a murder to claim the reward money so your parents don’t lose their house, is pretty much a…
Predicting who will be the next James Bond has become one of the great communal conversations. Whether that’s via prediction markets, professional bookmakers, newspaper headlines, or just down the pub - everyone has an opinion.I think it should be said loud and often that this is a deeply silly thing to bet on. Predicting the Bond casting is less of a science, more like forecasting the weather next Christmas (ie, will it be white).There are real underlying patterns in the historical data, but…
1984 SF comedy, dir. W. D. Richter, Peter Weller, John Lithgow: IMDb. The Oscillation Overthruster allows passage through solid objects… but it may lead to the end of the world.
HONKY TONK (1941), an excellent example of '40s MGM star power, was just released on Blu-ray by the Warner Archive Collection.Clark Gable stars as Candy Johnson, a con man of sorts who arrives in a new frontier town with his partner Sniper (Chill Wills) and promptly falls head over heels for young Elizabeth (Lana Turner), whom he'd first met on the train.Elizabeth believes her father (Frank Morgan), whom she hasn't seen in years, is a respectable judge, but he's actually an old friend of…
Michael only partially does Jackson’s achievements justice. We see little of how he created his art and persona. The mastering of dance steps in the small hours in cramped hotel rooms, the beatboxing into tape recorders in lieu of being able to competently play any instruments himself, the days-long studio sessions repeating takes dozens upon dozens of times are largely missing. His album Thriller, still the biggest-selling of all time, seemed to come together in a breezy afternoon after…
Our guy is a notorious artist of sexy paintings (pop star Kenji Sawada has made good movie choices, playing leads in Hiruko the Goblin, Mishima, and Happiness of the Katakuris). His pretty young beloved is sick at home with her parents, wants to elope but not right now, so Yumeji enjoys a heavy romp with a prostitute, picks up another artist’s model, and becomes obsessed with a widow(?) and her bizarre story, until her husband (the crazy guy from Zigeunerweisen, even crazier) arrives and chases…
Here’s the best career advice I ever received as a product manager: “product-manage your own career.” I wish I’d internalized it sooner. Early in my career, I stayed quiet and did good work, assuming the right people would notice. Spoiler: they didn’t—not because the work wasn’t good, but because nobody else was tracking it. Treat yourself as a product. What are your features? What are your bugs? What does your roadmap look like? And critically: who’s keeping the changelog? Nobody’s keeping…
More Lige, more lions. The above version is a chopped-down abbreviation of A FRESH START, which stars Lige and Jimmie Adams, both in moustache mode. I’d be willing to bet Lige got the idea of venturing before the cameras with a naked upper lip from Buster Keaton, along with much else. Our director for this […]
Splendid singing is the key attraction of this relatively understated staging of Mozart classic Don Giovanni, performed with a specific focus on the alternate title The Rake Punished. From the dramatic opening minor chords of the overture, the exacting work of maestro Raymond Lawrence is clearly evident, as is the warm acoustic tone of live classical music at the Athenaeum. More than 40 musicians strong, the Melbourne Opera Orchestra is heard at their best, bringing expressive life to Mozart’s…
StarringJon Favreau, John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, Emjay Anthony, Scarlett Johansson, and Dustin HoffmanDirectorJon FavreauOverviewWhen Chef Carl Casper suddenly quits his job at a prominent Los Angeles restaurant after refusing to compromise his creative integrity for its controlling owner, he is left to figure out what's next. Finding himself in Miami, he teams up with his ex-wife, his friend and his son to launch a food truck. Taking to the road, Chef Carl goes back to his roots to…
A domestic comedy about a starstruck wife and a sour husband. She challenges her spouse to follow the advice of Douglas Fairbanks and keep a smile plastered on his face but, of course, reality is much more complicated. Home Media Availability: Stream courtesy of the Swedish Film Institute. Life can be delish with a sunny […]
I’ve been keeping up with my movie-viewing this year, but not so much the telly side. Time to sort that out. Like half the UK, I was obsessed with season four of The Traitors in January, having caught up on prior traitoring late last year. This series was marked by the inclusion of barristers, detectives, crime writers and psychologists among its contestants, which shouldn’t be surprising: the word is out that it’s the best psychological puzzle on TV. But there’s an even wider potential…
Die Halterung für den Treppenschutz passt nicht auf unser Geländer. Daher hab ich dieses einfache Teil als Ersatzlösung gedruckt. Die zwei Einzelteile werden mit zwei M6 Schrauben und Muttern verbunden. Für einen guten Andruck ist in die eine Hälfte ein Filzstreifen eingeklebt. #3dprint #3ddruck #kind Modell: Gitter-Halter-Body.3mf FreeCAD Datei: Gitter-Halter.FCStd
By Jessica Holmes At last! After spending the last couple of years stuck on Earth, the TARDIS finally gets a chance to stretch its proverbial legs and whisk the Doctor away to… a disused quarry. In SPACE! But as he soon finds out, there’s a lot more to this rocky planet than first meets the … Continue reading [April 26, 1971] The Iguanas of Death (Doctor Who: Colony In Space) → The post [April 26, 1971] The Iguanas of Death (<i>Doctor Who</i>: Colony In Space) appeared first on Galactic Journey.
There is a fundamental difference between two questions we often confuse. The first is: What is truth? The second is: What is true in this specific case? The first question is surprisingly easy to answer: Truth is simply the correspondence of the mind with reality. The second question—the one that requires us to get our boots dirty - is the “hard” question. It is the work of the surveyor, the researcher, and the writer. As I look at the landscape of the American West, particularly the stretch…
This animated short is a blast from start to finish… it could easily form the basis of an excellent video game. It tells the story of Bob and Pasha (the apocalypse dog of the title), who go about their business scavenging a living, with everything they own tottering and teetering on top of their rusty, dilapidated old car. Bob does, frankly, look a little too well-fed for someone living after the end of the world as we know it, but perhaps the wasteland is full of calories as well as dangers.…
Unfortunately due to trauma, most of my childhood is currently just a blank space in my head. One thing that stands out though, though it's probably more my early teenage years, is the Star Wars: The Clone Wars, especially the Ahsoka, Anakin character arc.She was the first character on a TV show or movie that I actually felt true raw emotion for. I cried for her and felt angry for Anakin.Ahsoka and AnakinThe Clone Wars also created a reason why Anakin's became Darth Vader and slowly shows his…
I do love a cautionary tale about ducks. And, as luck would have it, this very funny animated short has just come up on my radar. A number of people, looking for a little recreation, visit their local park. They hope, of course, to do the normal “parky” things, stroll around, take in the scenery, feed the ducks a little bread – that kind of thing. Something of a shock waits in store for them – some of the local ducks have worryingly changed… The animated short – entitled “Ducks” (well it would…
(this is a mirror of my review of the recently released documentary of the vaporwave music scene, Nobody Here: The Story of Vaporwave, taken from my Letterboxd account) I'll get this one out of my chest: the audacity of the people submitting this doc on this site putting Vektroid's full name in the casting, despite her face and voice literally nowhere to be seen. that alone already cemented how much worth this movie has. as someone who's still relatively a newbie to this musical movement (the…
Seven unique character-driven stories. Each character will set off on a thrilling adventure in an uncertain future and they’ll come to reckon that even during our most isolated moments, we are all connected through the human experience. An anthology mini-series, containing ten stories, with each episode based on one of the Ten Commandments and explores characters facing one or several moral or ethical dilemmas as they reside in an austere housing project in 1980s Poland. The episodes themselves…
