The Star Wars Universe has expanded massively yet despite the undoubted quality of the offshoots (notably the superb Andor) they are a fairly long way from the tone of the 1977 original. Here though is a branch of the tale that indulges in exactly the same fast paced action orientated type of story that lit the fuse. The Mandalorian and Groku hardly rests, pinwheeling from one place to another frantic to throw our unusual heroes into ever more perilous situations. What you gain from the action…

The opening title sequence for Spider-Noir, the new superhero series developed by Oren Uziel for MGM+ and Prime Video (and produced by SPTV) is slick, stylized and dark – a perfect match for the series starring Nicholas Cage, Brendan Gleeson and Li Jun Li. I had to double-check another cast member, Lukas Haas, and sure enough, the last memory I have of him is when he played the part of the Amish child who witnesses a murder in the 1985 Harrison Ford vehicle Witness. There are plenty of other…

Jīnchéng Theater (金城戲院) is located in Mailiao, a remote coastal township in northwestern Yunlin, Taiwan. It was reputedly built in either 1957 or 1965 and probably closed in the late 1980s or very early 1990s, a casualty of changing consumer habits and population outflow to larger urban centers. This hulking monster of a theater accommodated approximately 600 patrons in wooden seats at its peak, catering to the mostly agrarian population of this small town. The functional façade of Jincheng…

Discussion on the new Mobile Suit Gundam anime adaptation of an old novel

More Luigi Maggi! IL DIAVOLO ZOPPO/THE DEVIL ON TWO STICKS is a trick film fantasy, in which a worthless dude who’s trying to escape marriage to a woman he’s seduced, frees a demon from an alchemist’s bottle and is granted his heart’s desire. That’s it — no ironic reversal/trick/punishment, a Faustian pact without a downside. […]

This weekend, I’m back with some more optical media testing, as I’ve amassed a large collection just waiting for me to discover how well they work, or if they still work at all. This time, we’re looking at four different types – the Imation i-Pro 8x DVD-R, Mitsubishi 8x DVD-R, Verbatim 16x DVD+R and a generic bundle-in 16x DVD-R that came with an external slimline USB DVD writer. What’s the common thread that links them all together? Read along to find out. Imation i-Pro 8x DVD-R Imation would…

La Haine (1995)

Two big new pages on my site today. They’ve been available on my Patreon for some time. First, a grammar of Yamda, a language of Téllinor. We’ve needed a language from this area for awhile. It was fun to make as it’s a trigger system, à la Tagalog, though it doesn’t otherwise resemble Tagalog. The grammar is written as an early document from a Verdurian army officer. This is the 25th Almean language on my site! A new guide to visiting classical Eretald, that is, Verduria and environs in the…

Miscellaneous bits of news and fun stuff from around the Internet......There's great news for fans of film noir and crime films: Kino Lorber Studio Classics has announced that the Dark Side of Cinema XXVII Blu-ray collection is "coming soon." The terrific lineup of films includes Raymond Burr in UNMASKED (1950), which was my favorite film at the 2025 Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival, plus Bob Steele in THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (1941) and Dane Clark in THE MAN IS ARMED (1956). This sounds like a…

Currently watching Zhan Zhao Adventures but at turtle speed. It’s a wuxia, and that’s catnip for me but for some reason I am not binging it or watching it intently the way I did dramas like Fated Hearts or Ingenious One, which I just completed. The fights are stellar, the story solid, but it isn’t addictive like I thought. Not sure why, but perhaps watching Cdramas at turtle mode isn’t a bad idea?

Mark Frost and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return was such an incredible gift. Not only did we get to return to the wonderful and strange town they cerated but we were introduced to many new characters portrayed by outstanding actors. One such individual was Owain Rhys Davis who played F.B.I. Agent Wilson in Parts 14, 15... The post Love Letter to Owain Rhys Davies, Agent Wilson from Twin Peaks: The Return appeared first on TWIN PEAKS BLOG.

Vampire’s Kiss This actually happened to a buddy of mine. Anyway, this is a one or two star movie with a five star Nic Cage performance in it. Every so often I try to make it through a series of Nic Cage films just because the completionist in me can’t help it and because you never know when the next Pig or Joe could be lurking in the shadows. This viewing of Last Kiss was prompted by the latest wild interview Cage gave to The New York Times. I don’t want to give anything away but there is a…

The first recording today is Pokemon: Battle Frontier – Deoxys’ Crisis (Part 2). With Max, Meowth and Deoxys having disappeared, Ash and friends join forces with Team Rocket. Solana tells them that the magnetic disturbances seem to synchronise with sunspot activity, and they have to investigate the cave again. Meanwhile, Max and Meowth are floating in a white void with what looks like jelly beans and cheerios. Meowth says it’s a “kid’s room”. Deoxys talks to Max through Meowth and tells him…

The Way of the Dragon (1972) was released in the United States in 1973, Bruce Lee was already something of a name in the United States. He had played Kato on the cult television series The Green Hornet, guest starred on shows like Ironside and Blondie, played Li Tsung on the TV series Longstreet, and appeared in the movie Marlowe (1969). Unhappy with only playing supporting roles in the United States, Bruce Lee went to Hong Kong where he got a deal with Golden Harvest. Afterwards he formed his…

Zum zweiten Mal habe ich ein handschriftlich notiertes Rezept, das ich mir vor Urzeiten mal gepinnt hatte, ausprobiert und ich wußte schon beim Lesen: das wird ein geiler Scheiß! Eigentlich waren es nur die Zutaten ohne jegliche weitere Anleitung, genau wie beim Nudelsalat Who the f*ck is Alex?Ich habe noch Hack dazugeschummelt, um einen echten Sattmachersalat für die heißen Tage zu haben, der

The 1990 Zorro series was produced by New World Television (and several international partners) and aired on what was then called The Family Channel (later Fox Family, then ABC Family, and now Freeform). (Somehow I’d misremembered it as a Disney Channel series, even before I knew the previous two Zorro TV series were from Disney.) It ran for 88 episodes, in three 25-episode seasons and one 13-episode season, making it the longest-running English-language Zorro TV series. Its supervising…

This blog post is the thirty-fifth in a series examining past winners of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award. An introductory blog post is here.It was the 50th World Science Fiction Convention, and to celebrate this milestone, the Hugo rocket was electroplated gold for the first and only time. In Hall A of the Orange County Convention Centre, air conditioning struggled to keep up with the muggy humidity outside.A member of the production teamfor Terminator 2 was on handin Orlando to…

Robert Wagner and Susan Flannery in The Towering Inferno (1974) Vitals Robert Wagner as Dan Bigelow, horny public relations agent San Francisco, Summer 1974 Film: The Towering Inferno Release Date: December 14, 1974 Director: John Guillermin Costume Designer: Paul Zastupnevich WARNING! Spoilers ahead! Background I recently saw a tweet clowning on Robert Wagner’s ignominious death in The Towering Inferno that again got me thinking about the style in this char-studded—er- star-studded ’70s…

Myla Carmen as Zara in Before I’m Dead, The Glitch, Photo: Phoebe Dyer There is a veil of death hanging over the theatres around The Cut in London. Care at the Young Vic is set in a nursing home and about the end of life, and a few minutes’ walk away at The Glitch is Before I’m Dead, a play about a terminally ill teen. But the two couldn’t be more different productions. Zara (Myla Carmen) is 17 and likely won’t make 18 because of a brain tumour. She is assigned a therapist, Stuart (Pete…

Animaniacs: Wakko's Wish (1999)

Saoirse Ronan is one of my favourite actors and I decided to have my very own Saiorse Ronan appreciation week, watching six five of her movies. Two of them I had seen before and four were new ones. I was also planning to watch On Chesil Beach but I thought I had borrowed it on DVD from the library but actually had planned to watch it from the library’s streaming service and managed to use up all my loans for the month before watching it. I also wanted to write about them because I enjoy reading…

In the Twin Peaks pilot, several scenes at The Great Northern Hotel were filmed at Kiana Lodge in Poulsbo, Washington. I have previously examined locations such as the fireplace, the Concierge desk, and the moment when Sheriff Truman informs Leland Palmer about his daughter Laura. Today, I’m examining the breakfast meeting with the Norwegians in The Great... The post Twin Peaks Location – Breakfast Meeting with the Norwegians in the Twin Peaks Pilot appeared first on TWIN PEAKS BLOG.

In the most recent episode of my new favorite series, Widow’s Bay, a couple of teens are watching an old black and white horror movie on TV. Thanks to the work of recap podcasters scouring the show for details, I learned that it’s a 1960 British movie called The City of the Dead, or Horror Hotel in its US release. Since it’s (currently) easy to watch for free online, I figured it was worth checking out as a curiosity, if nothing else. My condescendingly low expectations turned out to be…

Today Victor Sen Yung is best known for playing the Cartwrights' cook Hop Sing on Bonanza and Charlie Chan's Number Two son Jimmy in the Charlie Chan movies. Regardless, Victor Sen Yung played many more roles in his career, as well as an accomplished chef who wrote his own cookbook. He was also a pioneer among Chinese American actors.Victor Sen Yung was born Sen Yew Cheung on October 18, 1945, in San Francisco. His parents had both immigrated from China. His mother died from influenza during…

This week’s episode of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars season 11 delivered some really important images that will last a lifetime: Silky squirting milk out of her corseted udder and Crystal Methyd dressed as a chicken prostitute. Marshal Knight recaps!

MISSISSIPPI (1935), starring Bing Crosby and W.C. Fields, has just been released on Blu-ray by Universal.This is a film I've long wanted to see due to its leading ladies, favorites Joan Bennett and Gail Patrick.Bing plays Tom Grayson, a Quaker-raised Philadelphian now living in the South.Tom is newly engaged to Elvira (Patrick), but when her former suitor shows up at the engagement party and challenges Tom to a duel for "stealing" his sweetheart, Tom thinks it's absurd and refuses.Elvira is…

"He's gonna make it!"Steven Post (Kurt Russell) is a young mailroom clerk with high ambitions and a lot of enthusiasm. He wants to see UBC, the faltering television studio that he works for, become the leading network but his boss Mr. Wilbanks (Joe Flynn) won't listen to any of his suggestions, one of which is making a series called Abraham Lincoln's Doctor's Dog. Steve's girlfriend Jen (Heather North) recently found herself caring for a chimp named Raffles who loves watching television. Steve…

TL;DR: A week that felt like nothing but Star Trek shitposts. Underneath that: two videos about being a nervous introvert, a serious darkwave bender, and an unreasonable craving for a Junji Ito horror-manga cardigan. About on brand, honestly.

Amused that screen #15 in the 13-screen AMC on Causeway Street (Arclight never finished building out all their intended screens before going bankrupt) is now an "XL" screen, apparently without them doing anything to upgrade it, much like #18 at Boston Common. I don't know that there are any obvious ones to label XL at Assembly Row or South Bay, but it's the easiest "upgrade" of the summer,

My husband and I are watching the long-running (14 seasons!) show Vera on BritBox. If you haven’t seen it, the star is a curmudgeonly detective in her fifties, no longer svelt, with a brusque style and an unusual wardrobe. Out in the field she wears a mackintosh with a green hat. (You can buy a copy here.) But it is her indoor outfits that interest me. The clothes have no particular style and she makes no effort to “show off her best features,” standard advice given to the older set. Instead,…