Watched: The Mandalorian and Grogu 🍿I took my teenager to see this. It was good if considered an extended TV episode. I think Jeremy Allen White was a miscast; his voice didn’t work for me in the role of Rotta.

Marilyn. The very mention of her name conjures images of her playful, unmistakably flirtatious smile, her luminous blonde hair, her expressive eyes. Not to mention her distinctive singing voice and her flair for comedy. But as a resident in the shadowy world of film noir? Not so much. At least, that’s probably not what most folks associate with Monroe – but you can bet that I sure do! Monroe was born 100 years ago, on June 1, 1926, and I’m celebrating this event by spotlighting the four films…

True Stories (1986) Writer/director David Byrne is our guide to the fictional town of Virgil, Texas, where they’re about to hold their sesquicentennial celebration. He introduces us to an assortment of Virgil’s eccentric residents, including: Kay and Earl Culver (Annie McEnroe and Spalding Gray), a husband and wife who haven’t spoken to each other in years, a pathological liar (Jo Harvey Allen), Louis Fyne (John Goodman), a good-natured bachelor who just wants a wife, and a woman so lazy she…

FOLLOW ME QUIETLY (1949) is a movie I've enjoyed multiple times in the past, including on Turner Classic Movies in 2011 and via a Warner Archive DVD in 2014.It had been a number of years since I last saw the movie, so I was glad to revisit it this weekend on a brand-new Warner Archive Blu-ray.FOLLOW ME QUIETLY is a minor yet well-made, interesting film noir/crime film which runs a snappy hour flat.William Lundigan plays Detective Harry Grant, who is trying to find a serial killer known as "The…

Who won 24 in 24: Last Chef Standing season 3? Do I know? Do you know? Was it good? Was it great? Let's find out!

An ongoing series Several of my interests in one: Steven Spielberg on The Rewatchables talking 2001: A Space Odyssey. Wikipedia as a Windows XP desktop. Shoutout to the Night Witches, (unfortunately) not an awesome band but an all-female Soviet bomber regiment who attacked the Nazis during World War II.

Altered States: the documentary. Lilly invented the isolation tank, did psychedelic drugs, got naked, and “regressed through generational time.” He survives experiments with dolphins, the US government, hollywood, LSD, and the isolation tanks, only to go insane on ketamine (“hourly injections of ketamine inspire increasingly apocalyptic visions”). Besides Altered States, works based on his studies include Ecco the Dolphin, Day of the Dolphin, Holy Mountain, and probably parts of the Hitchhikers…

I've seen the vast majority of Cary Grant's films, but thanks to Universal I've recently caught a couple of his very earliest films for the first time.I reviewed the entertaining comedy THIS IS THE NIGHT (1932) last month, and I've just finished watching GAMBLING SHIP (1933).GAMBLING SHIP is a quick little 72-minute film from Paramount Pictures which I found lots of pre-Code fun.Grant plays Ace Corbin, a Chicago mobster who decides he's tired of living dangerously and heads to California for a…

The Prisoner’s Dilemma is one of game theory’s all-time great puzzles. It goes like this: Two men are taken into custody for a crime. The cops have a little evidence, enough to put both men away for a few years, but if they had more to go on, the punishment could be a lot more severe. The two men in the holding cell know the cops won’t have much if they both keep quiet. All the crooks have to do is not turn on each other to both get off with a light sentence. However, the crooks also know the…

The story so far: Voyager launched with Michael Piller and Jeri Taylor as showrunners. Under their auspices, we saw the USS Voyager, its intrepid crew, and the rag-tag band of Maquis paramilitaries they were chasing swept to the Delta Quadrant. Forced to work together, the characters merged into a single Starfleet organisational structure, pulled their socks up, and began the long slog back to the Alpha Quadrant… which at first ended up involving way too many encounters with the Kazon.…

Camera: iPhone 17 pro max. Using Provoke app.

A Mexican customs officer befriends a Magonista general, Welsh mercenary Rhys Pryce, played by Rhys Pryce, and is threatened with death by the government for refusing to betray him. A slice of the Mexican Revolution. Home Media Availability: Stream courtesy of EYE. One Good Turn While the star system was not established for another fifteen […]

What a treat it was to witness The Rapping Princess– a celebration of individuality and music, told with a huge dose of joy. The Rapping Princess is adapted from the book by award-winning author Hannah Lee, with illustrations by Allen Fatimaharan. Real care has been taken to honour the book from the rhythmic verse to the joyful details from Fatimaharan’s illustrations which are echoed in the production, particularly in the gorgeously vibrant set and costumes designed by Laura McEwen, which even…

"Tuning a piano is about creating harmony out of chaos, and to do that you've got to be comfortable with imperfection." A piano tuner (Leo Woodall) with sensitive hearing discovers he has a talent for safe cracking. He starts work for an Israeli crime syndicate to pay for his mentor’s (Dustin Hoffmann) medical bills. What starts as an amusing buddy comedy turns into a rom-com, then crime caper, then mutates into a full-blown quite harrowing thriller. It sounds tonally confused but somehow…

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…