I remember the summer that Alien opened, 1979, two years after Star Wars rocked the world. The Force stayed with me all through my childhood, and through to this very day. But Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, and a little magazine called Starlog, got me very interested in genre film and television. I wasn’t…
Tag: film
The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones (1992/1993) – Espionage Escapades
Indiana (Sean Patrick Flanery) continues his time in the secret service during the Great War with these two episodes that were combined to form one feature length film. Barcelona, May 1917 Written by Gavin Scott from a story idea by series creator George Lucas, this first aired as an episode on 12 October, 1992. Indy…
Amelie (2001) – Jean-Pierre Jeunet
The final recommendation from the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film book following my screening of Pretty Woman is a film that is pure joy captured on film. Jeunet’s beautiful comedic romance brought Audrey Tautou to international attention, and did something that usually takes a lot of effort – got a North American audience…
The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) – Peter Jackson
As I return to the Family genre of the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film book I am greeted by an old friend, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, the final family film recommendation. I grew up with the book. I was introduced to The Hobbit via the Arthur Rankin…
South Park: The Complete Eleventh Season
Incredibly, this series just keeps getting better and better. South Park: The Complete Eleventh Season, recently re-released on blu-ray from Paramount Pictures took a spin in my player, and made me laugh throughout. This season, over the course of fourteen episodes, series creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker pull out all the stops and make…
Fake Blood (2017) – Rob Grant
Whether Canadian film-makers Rob Grant and Mike Kovac movie is fact or fiction isn’t the point of their latest cinematic effort. What is important is the film’s subject matter, and the commentary it makes on film, violence in cinema and the responsibility of the film-makers. Opening Friday at the Carlton here in Toronto, Fake Blood,…
War of the Worlds: The Complete Series
Back in the late 1980s, I was first discovering classic science fiction film and was completely taken in by George Pal’s original War of the Worlds film from 1953. I was in my late teens, and as soon as I heard that there was a new series coming along picking up decades after the original…
Cycle of the Werewolf (1983) – Stephen King
Reading like a cross between Our Town and The Wolfman, Stephen King’s too short novella, Cycle of the Werewolf is on the Book Shelf this week. Serving as the basis of the 1985 film, Silver Bullet, Werewolf reads as a not fleshed out enough short story. That’s not to say it doesn’t work. It does….
The Jaws Log: Expanded Edition (1975/2005) – Carl Gottlieb
Anyone who has even visited the blog knows what my favourite movie is. I mean, it’s right there in the banner. Jaws has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, I have very few memories that would have occurred before I saw it, I mean I was three going…
Star Wars: The Last Jedi – The Visual Dictionary (2017) – Pablo Hidalgo
Available now from DK Canada is this amazing companion piece to the new Star Wars film. Filled with hints, that are now canon, about characters, both new, like Supreme Leader Snoke, and old, like Luke Skywalker. Leafing through the pages , I catch things that I didn’t see in the screening but ties in nicely…
The Mind Reels 