Jean-Jacques Annaud’s adaptation of Umberto Eco’s novel, The Name of the Rose, is an engaging tour-de-force with a fantastic cast, an intriguing mystery, and a fantastic setting. Amazingly, Sean Connery’s career was in a bit of a lull when he lobbied for the part, one which, it seems, much like Bond, and Indy’s father, he…
Tag: drew struzan
Star Wars: The Courtship of Princess Leia (1994) – Dave Wolverton
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… Set four years after the events of The Return of the Jedi, this story just never sat well with me. I picked up a lot of the original Expanded Universe novels as they came out, and I can remember bits and pieces of them, and…
Indiana Jones and the Hollow Earth (1997) – Max McCoy
1934 This week’s book shelf sees me continuing to seek out adventure with one of my favorite heroes, Indiana Jones, in the third novel by Max McCoy. Having previously enjoyed McCoy’s two previous forays into action with the globe-trotting archaeologist, I was quite looking forward to some Nazi punching and delving into hollow Earth theories…
Fan Expo 2017
Dichotomy. Juxtaposition. Privilege. Hope. One wouldn’t necessarily associate all of these words with a gathering of groups of people who are coming together to celebrate their fandoms. But as Toronto’s Fan Expo 2017 came to its conclusion, these are the words that leapt to mind unbidden. Privilege springs to mind, because my co-host and I…
Blood in the Snow Film Fesitval 2016: 24×36 (2016) -Kevin Burke
The Blood in the Snow Film Festival gets underway this evening at the Yonge & Dundas Cineplex Theatre. Leading off the festival is a documentary that has been on my radar since its beginning, 24×36 – a movie about movie posters. As anyone who has followed the blog knows, I, like a number of my…
James Bond: 50 Years of Movie Posters (2015) – Alastair Dougall
I love movie posters as much as I love movies, and as far back as I can remember, I can recall cutting black and white facsimiles of posters from newspapers and taping them to my wall, until I was able to start buying them (or bringing them home from work – a bonus of having…
We Don’t Need Roads: The Making of the Back to the Future Trilogy (2015) – Caseen Gaines
As soon as I heard this book was coming out, I jumped at the chance to pick mine up. As anyone who knows me will tell you, I love Back to the Future, and Michael J. Fox has long been one of my heroes. Heck, I was even lucky enough to get to pose…
Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons (2013) – Stephen Chow
Released this week to Blu-Ray and DVD is the latest effort from director Stephen Chow, and if you know the name, then you know what to expect. Best known to Western audiences for his films Kung Fu Hustle and Shaolin Soccer, Chow is a phenomenon, and Journey to the West is yet another enjoyable example…
Masters of the Universe (1987) – Gary Goddard
Sometimes you just want to disconnect your mind, and enjoy some fromage that just melts around your brain, and Masters of the Universe is 80s cheese that is just oh-so-bad, and not in the fun cult way that Flash Gordon is. In the long run, I think the only really good thing to come out…
The Death of the Movie Poster as Art
The art form that is the theatrical movie poster is dying. This isn’t one of those “when I was a kid” stories, it’s a legitimate claim. Now, yes, it’s true I’m going to be talking about movies from my youth and even before my birth, but they’re being used to illustrate the point, not indicate…
The Mind Reels 