I recently watched Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, which I can best describe as surprisingly awesome. As a resident of the Empire State, I thought I had a pretty good handle on our former governor’s self-destruction, but the flick gave me a whole new perspective on the affair. It’s shamelessly pro-Spitzer, […]
Tags:Cecil Suwal·Client 9·crime·Mark Brener·movies·prostitution
Sorry to start the week out on a rushed note, but gotta jet out to the far reaches of Queens to work some business magic. Back soonest.
I’m assuming this news will break few hearts, but Bad Movie Friday is gonna go on hiatus for a while. I just got a little sick of sifting through the mountains of cinematic dreck each week; it’s pretty depressing to realize that Invasion U.S.A. is actually the cream of the B-grade action crop. And so […]
Tags:movies·Predator·The Ponchos·writing
Though I only recently became aware of the fact that Burkina Faso is a hotbed of film production, I was completely unsurprised to learn that the nation’s movie industry is deeply troubled. The primary culprit, as you might surmise, is piracy; as cinemas have vanished with the proliferation of affordable DVD players, the markets in […]
Felt weird to leave my political thoughts atop the blog for the weekend—I know you come here for more off-the-beaten-path fare, since my smarter fellow travelers already have that beat covered. So I’m gonna outro from this crazy week with a quick lil’ Bad Movie Friday entry: the Pat Morita death scene from 1999’s beyond-dreadful […]
Whenever I find myself running behind on a major project, my thoughts turn to a certain passage from Easy Riders, Raging Bulls that discusses Michael Cimino’s utter disdain for logistical constraints. When infamous director started shooting Heaven’s Gate in the spring of 1979, he did so with orders to stay within a $10 million budget […]
Over the past day or so, I’ve once again been flooded with mail regarding my Alcoholics Anonymous opus from last July’s Wired. The reason, of course, is Charlie Sheen’s recent decision to come out hard against the organization, which he accuses of being (and I paraphrase) a fraudulent mind-control cult with an abysmal success rate. […]
Tags:Alcoholics Anonymous·alcoholism·Charlie Sheen·drugs·movies·Wired
I have no plans to watch the Academy Awards this weekend; any enterprise that once saw fit to honor the abysmal Crash is simply not worthy of my time. But I do harbor some fond memories of ceremonies past, including the most hilarious no-show in the Oscars’ history: Michael Caine’s failure to accept his Hannah […]
Tags:Bad Movie Friday·Jaws IV·Michael Caine·movies·The Swarm
Absolutely nothing in the tank today—totally drained by a fifth consecutive day of solo parenting. Gotta use all available mental bandwidth to start outlining a forthcoming Wired opus ’bout an ingenious casino scam. You know the drill—enjoy the prime example of Malaysian movie music above, and catch you again as soon as I’m able.
The granddaddy of Malaysian vampire flicks, 1968’s Raja Bersiong tells the tale of a pre-Islamic king who develops a taste for human blood—a culinary affection that eventually leads him to grow long fangs, and then (spoiler alert!) to be killed by his subjects for paying more attention to his snacks than his royal duties. As […]
I’m a few months late in noting a milestone in American cult history: the 25th anniversary of the collapse of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh‘s commune in Oregon, after his followers’ unsuccessful attempt to tilt a local election by tainting some local salad bars. Though I was still in grade school when this all happened, I […]
Tags:1980s·Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh·cars·cults·finance·Guru·movies·Oregon·Rolls-Royce
For the year’s first installment of Microkhan’s much-beloved Bad Movie Friday feature, I was sorely tempted to call out Cindy Crawford’s disastrous attempt to evolve from model to mactress: 1995’s Fair Game, not to be confused with the recent Plame Affair dramatization of the same name. But I decided to shift course upon reading Crawford’s […]
Tags:Bad Movie Friday·Cindy Crawford·Guardie del copo·Italy·movies·Silvio Berlusconi
I toyed with the idea of doing a couple of “Best of…” lists in these waning days of MMX, much as I did last year. But in the course of trying to pull together some worthy candidates from the realms of filmdom, books, and booze, I got to thinking about the criteria I was employing—at […]
Tags:Big Fan·books·Burkhard Bilger·Canada·movies·music·Propagandhi·punk·Sandor Katz·The New Yorker·Winter's Bone
Can’t believe I’m about to do this, but actually gonna take a few days off starting right now. Big plans for the holiday weekend: ice skating, Staten Island, and Ayinger Celebrator (not necessarily in that order). I leave you with a comically inappropriate snippet from Yogi’s First Christmas, arguably the greatest ursine-themed holiday movie of […]
There was a time not long ago when slapstick comedies like Hamburger…The Motion Picture seemingly occupied half the multiplexes in America. The cinematic formula, arguably pioneered by the much-maligned Police Academy heptalogy, was devilishly simple: Throw a bunch of wacky, hormonally charged characters into close quarters and let physical mayhem ensue. I was squarely in […]
Tags:Bad Movie Friday·fast food·Flying Lotus·Hamburger...The Motion Picture·Leigh McCloskey·movies
There’s a scene in My Best Fiend in which Werner Herzog reveals what made him believe that Klaus Kinski possessed rare talent. It was a brief moment in a film whose title now escapes me, about a German soldier who is executed for deserting the army to be with his girlfriend. (A Time to Love […]
Tags:Coskun Aral·Klaus Kinski·Lebanon·movies·photography·Werner Herzog
This week’s Bad Movie Friday entrant bends the rules a bit: it’s actually a network mini-series, a once glorious TV genre that has sadly fallen out of favor in the modern era. Rage of Angels: The Story Continues was one of many Sidney Sheldon potboilers to appear on the small screen during the 1980s, and […]
Tags:Bad Movie Friday·movies·Rage of Angels·Sidney Sheldon·TV
I’ve previously examined the economics of Nigerian filmaking, a business that rewards both the prolific and the extremely cost-conscious. The industry’s margins are typically razor thin because producers begin with the assumption that 70 percent of each movie’s revenue will end up in the hands of pirates. The trick to longevity, then, is to create […]
Sorry about dropping the blogging ball this week. The quick trip to Florida made things rough, and I just remembered that the Grand Empress and I have a pressing appointment in Sunnyside today. When this post goes live, then, I’ll likely be on the 7 train, looking out at Five Pointz. I’ll leave you, then, […]
Tags:cartoons·movies·Uzbekistan
There’s a great scene in Robert Altman’s The Player in which Tim Robbins’ slithery movie producer stops a writer who’s in the middle of pitching a script idea. The poor scribe, it seems, made the mistake of implying that his proposed film would feature a TV star in the main role. This notion makes Robbins […]
Tags:Bad Movie Friday·Family Ties·movies·Robert Altman·Scott Valentine·The Player·TV
In order to round out a gestating Wired essay, I spent a good chunk of this past week drumming up examples of celluloid robots. One invaluable resource that I relied upon was this excellent Wikipedia entry, which mentions a number of B-movie ‘bots that vanished from my memory banks. Perhaps the most laughably cheesy of […]
Tags:Bad Movie Friday·cigarettes·Eliminators·Mandroid·movies·robots
Scrambling to catch up with a pile of work after a rough trip back from Nevada—funny how an overly large and inconsiderate seatmate can really ruin an otherwise uneventful flight. So no polymathism today; in its stead, please check out The A.V. Club‘s recent take on Death Wish 3, the subject of last week’s Bad […]
In a pensive mood today, as I mark another revolution ’round the Sun while simultaneously grappling with some tough decisions. At times like these, I often ask myself, “What would Genghis do?” But then I watch the clip above, which quotes the Great Khan pretty much verbatim, and I’m reminded that I can find little […]
Nights on the road can get a little dull when you’re traveling solo for work—you end up spending a lot of time alone in your hotel room, eating bad food and watching bad TV. But occasionally the Fates show you a little mercy, by offering up some unexpected entertainment. Such was the case during my […]
Tags:Bad Movie Friday·Charles Bronson·Death Wish 3·mathematics·movies
Apologies, really thought I’d have time to write today. But it’s nearly 8 a.m. here in northern Arizona and I’m several notches less than prepared for a mammoth day of reporting. Thanks, as always, for your forebearance—all will be back to normal by Friday, if not earlier.
There’s a classic scene at the beginning of The Godfather II in which young Vito Andolini passes through Ellis Island’s immigration line. It is there that, due to an immigration officer’s carelessness, he is given the mistaken surname of Corleone, which is actually the village of his birth. Moments later, frightened young Vito is informed […]
Tags:immigration·labor·movies·pseudoscience·racism·The Godfather II
The morning grog is heavy today, on account of the fact that I stayed up late watching Crossing the Line, a documentary about Virginia native James Joseph Dresnok‘s 1962 defection to North Korea. Despite some clunky Christian Slater narration, it’s a stellar flick—a deeply researched portrait of a man whose tragic background made him yearn […]
Tags:Crossing the Line·dictatorship·James Joseph Dresnok·movies·North Korea·propaganda·psychology
It gives me tremendous pleasure to announce the long-awaited return of Bad Movie Friday, which has been on hiatus for a couple of weeks. I’m bringing it back after discovering a trove of utmost goodness on YouTube—namely, the collection of Andy Sidaris, previously lionized in this space as the writer-director behind the legendary Hard Ticket […]
Tags:Andy Sidaris·Bad Movie Friday·Erik Estrada·Hard Ticket to Hawaii·movies
Okay, so maybe our species doesn’t really kill 100 million sharks per year, as is so widely reported. But even if the true figure is closer to 26 million, that’s still a heckuva lot of fish—and far out of proportion to the number of humans who annually perish in shark attacks. Blame Jaws if you […]
A bit hectic today, as I’m packing and prepping for a trip out to my hometown of Los Angeles. Haven’t been out there since early 2006, before I added the Grand Empress and Microkhan Jr. to the fold. Should be interesting to see how I view the city that made me through a family man’s […]
Tags:Greenland shark·housekeeping·Inuits·Jaws·movies·mythology·sharks
