While the exact year escapes me, I recall with fondness that time in grade school when one of Oklahoma City’s local UHF stations was televising a 3-D movie marathon. It took some heavy pleading on my part to convince my mom to drive the quarter-mile to the nearest 7-Eleven, where a pair of those cellophane-lensed … Continue reading Gorilla at Large (1954)
The Towering Inferno, by the numbers: • 138 stories, stands San Francisco’s brand-new Glass Tower • 300 partygoers celebrating this massive erection — the world’s largest • $2 million saved by going with electric wiring inferior to the architect’s specifications • one fire caused as a result • and nearly three hours of star-studded cheese … Continue reading The Towering Inferno (1974)
In naming his new book, Joseph Maddrey chose the wrong preposition: Beyond Fear is about fear. What the Bear Manor Media trade paperback is beyond is the usual quality of film bios seen in the indie-pub field — miles above, no less. The subtitle teases Reflections on Stephen King, Wes Craven, and George Romero’s Living Dead, … Continue reading Reading Material: 5 Books to Remember for Memorial Day Reading
Tron — the 1982 tale of a computer programmer (Jeff Bridges, True Grit) zapped into a world of anthropomorphized data programs — is not a classic. The writing is basic; the direction, adequate; the plot, silly; the acting, coasting on charm alone, which, in the case of Bridges, is fairly substantial. Yet little of that … Continue reading Tron: Legacy (2010)
Big Ass Spider! needs a lesson in basic punctuation. Its title includes an exclamation point that is not needed, yet excludes the hyphen that is. After all, this is a movie about a big-ass spider, not an ass spider that also is big. (I do not know what an ass spider is. Oh, if only … Continue reading Big Ass Spider! (2013)