Wednesday, November 29, 2006

speaking of needless remakes...

Tony Scott has been threatening to do this for a while, but now the wheels seem to be turning on his next film, the LA-based remake of The Warriors! Says the Tiger...
"I really hate remakes, but the The Warriors is one of my all time favourite movies, and what I'm doing is kind of reinventing it. And rather than a gang it's going to be 30 guys who take on 3,000. It's Kingdom Of Heaven meets The Warriors."

It will be more like

meets

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

All hail the homogenizing of the North American Moviegoing Experience!

From Grady over at Kaiju Shakedown comes this sad news: LADIES AND GENTLEMEN - THE MUSIC PALACE HAS LEFT THE PLANET.

I've spent many hours of my life in old Chinatown cinemas, an insitution that died at the end of the 20th century. With great movies, cheap double bill prices, and strange snack bar food, they were exotic detours where you could feel like a stranger in a strange land and not leave your own city. Now NYC has lost one of North America's last Chinatown movie theatres, the Music Palace. For some fond memories, read Grady's piece over at Subway Cinema:
I'll come clean: I've done shameful things in the Music Palace. I've eaten dinner, breakfast, lunch. Slept all day, dozed off for a few minutes, worked my way through a pack of cigarettes in one sitting, gotten drunk, dug through their trash, smoked dope, taken speed, had sex, argued with a cell phone user, played with a kitty, and had a party. To be fair, the sex and the dinner were both before they started turning on the lights between shows...knowing what I do now I would've held off.

and also deserving of spankings...

Happy 90th Forry! Forrest J. Ackerman, the man who sparked the imagination of monster and horror and sci-fi and fantasy fans worldwide with his magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland celebrated his birthday on November 24th.

Chime in on the Forrest J Ackerman Blog-A-Thon at Tim Lucas' Video WatchBlog, Flickhead, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule (view his parody of the opening of James Whale’s Frankenstein), Bright Lights After Dark, and MJSimpson.co.uk.

Forry with November 23rd Birthday Boy, Boris Karloff

happy birthday Joe Dante!


Just a quick post to honour the B-Day of Joe Dante. If you haven't seen his Masters of Horror episode, Homecoming, check it out as it is easily the best in the series (I still have to watch Miike's "Imprint" episode).

In the summer I watched CARQUAKE aka CANNONBALL projected outdoors from a super 8 print (at Dion's Wiltshire Drive-In) and spotted his cameo as the grease monkey who kinda saves the day. I got to meet him at the Sitges Festival in Spain in October and meant to tell him that but blanked!

Check out more Dante b-day wishes in the Joe Dante Blog-a-Thon at Tim Lucas' Video WatchBlog, MovieMorlocks.com (who wishes "Joe Dante and John Sayles would get back together"), Nadaland, and at KGB Productions, Inc.

I am killing you because of my "stripper mom"

From Mystery of the Haunted Vampire via Final Girl comes this posting on the characters and casting of the Rob Zombie's reinterpretation of HALLOWEEN
The casting call makes it sound like Zombie is simply going to do a variation of The Devil’s Rejects with a slight Halloween twist. The description of Michael as a stringy-haired kid who likes torturing animals after his school mates mock him for having a stripper mom is banal.
This is going to be the worst Halloween movie yet and that’s saying something.

Saturday, November 25, 2006

a marquee and some monsters in the skies

For our neighbours to the south, a discovery made in the fascinating Swapatorium:

A series of photos picked up at an estate sale documenting the 1932 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York. The marquee on the movie theater is showing Divorce in the Family with Jackie Cooper. Click here for more details and more pics of the inflatable creatures...

Rootin - Tootin - Shootin - Singin - Yodelin Entertainment

"Also Good COLOR CARTOONS" - more fun images found at Greenbriar Picture Shows
which looks back at a more "Golden" era of film as opposed to the "Rusty Tin" era that we dwell on here...

a birthday cake for Frankie

I just celebrated my birthday on the 23rd of Nov and the grand event involved gathering with a group of friends at a bar, then going over to the Rainbow Cinema at Market Square (in Toronto) to catch the late show of CASINO ROYALE. The new Bond was a treat, more reminiscent of ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE than any of the last installments. For more Bond-age, check out Poptique's BATTLE OF THE BONDALIKES (Part One, Part Two, Part Three and hopefully more in the future...).

As I got toasted and shared pints, people bring up the celebrities that I share birthdays with... Howie Mandel? I think not! I prefer to bask in the fact that I share my birthday with BORIS KARLOFF! Yup! One of the original big screen boogeymen! And I also share my birthday with his daughter Sara and my own sister's name is Sarah... coincidence? I think not! Lots of his works are finally getting decent DVD releases and for the diehard fan, how about an official life size wall mount? And no - that was not a hint of what to get me next year for my birthday.

The inspiration for this post came from stumbling across the Greenbriar Picture Shows blog, a look back at the "Great Days of Film Exhibition" where curator John McElwee has a two part posting on some of Karloff's films from the 30s and 40s including NIGHT KEY, THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG and ARSENIC AND OLD LACE. (Part One / Part Two).

Film Forum in NYC had a great retrospective including THE MASK OF MANCHU, THE RAVEN, THE GUILTY GENERATION (a prohibition-era Romeo and Juliet), THE LOST PATROL, THE HAUNTED of his work including THE HAUNTED STRANGLER, and of course, one of his best, the post modern take on his legacy, Peter Bogdanovich's TARGETS.

His last appearance in a major film, Karloff, plays an old horror film actor at the end of his career who must confront the new, late-1960s monster in the shape of a clean-cut, junior Republican multiple murderer. Although written and shot in 1967, it was released after the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy and thus had some topical relevance to then-current events.

On a patriotic note, here is a tidbit of Canuck trivia - "Having married against his family's wishes, as well as incurred some additional disfavor for abandoning an appointment in government service, Karloff refused to use his family's prominence to secure work in Canada, then much under the influence of the Crown. To support himself, Karloff took work as a farm laborer in the province of Ontario, where he first attempted to realize his dream of becoming an actor."

Finally, here are two youtube treats - a 1960's TV commercial from the late 1960's with Karloff applying various torture techniques to his Ronson Comet lighter and Art Carney auditioning Karloff to take over the Chevy Show from Dinah Shore for the summer season, with his "Shiver Show."



Friday, November 24, 2006

Chuckstradamus

Turns out recent history is a ripoff of an eighties Chuck Norris movie!

This is the kind of movie that would play at the Eaton Centre Cineplex (in one of the tiniest theatres in the complex) for three months. When I would go there on $2.50 Tuesdays I wouldn't even check the listings first; I would just see the most out-of-control movie posted on the marquee.

The Nitty-Gritty of the "Live Now" Group

"But if you drink your school, stay in drugs, and don't do milk, you'll get work!" - Mr. T

Love the breakbeats on the soundtrack...

and still on the subject of


And this posting is lifted from a July entry on my Kung Fu Fridays blog...

Thanks to Paul McEvoy, beloved master of mayhem of London, UK's Fright Fest along with Alan Jones (read his great blog, a delight for true genre fans) and Ian Rattray (Ian - start a blog or something so I can link you!), for sending this link to the new video for Knights Of Cydonia by the band Muse. Oh they certainly don't mak'em like they used to (or did they ever?)


hooking the audience in far away places

From Kung Fu Fridays disciple Lars, comes this flickr gallery of Swedish edition posters. And they are for sale or trade, so if you are interestest, drop him a line!

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Kill Him!

Trailer for a Psych-ghetti Western.

"I usually start the month with a postman" - Rémy Belvaux, 1967-2006

Belvaux dining with the serial killer subject of his doc, Ben (Benoît Poelvoorde)

Just re-discovered the obit for the director of MAN BITES DOG (C'est arrivé près de chez vous aka which tranlates as It Happened in Your Neighborhood), Rémy Belvaux, who passed away in Septemeber. Pity this film never made the grindhouse circuit. The Ontario Film Review Board totally change the message of the movie when the cut out the rape and the child murder from the film. I remember the charged screening at the Toronto International Film Festival with Tarantino in the audience who was there with the CDN premiere of his own canine flick. Belvaux's other claim to fame was assisting in the ambush of Bill Gates with a cream pie in 1999. (source)



Run, Man, Run

The Big Gundown

Again, amazing Morricone score...

hilton vs milan


While JH has revealed the George Hilton in his hand, I am going to throw down a Tomas Milan! You've probably seen him as the sadistic mexican general in TRAFFIC, but back in the late 60s and early 70s, this Cuban actor was the shit for Italian pulp cinema. He would flip from playing Mexican raggamuffin banditos to smart talking tough street cops. One of my favourite spaghetti westerns starring Milan is FACE TO FACE (1967) aka ''Faccia a faccia'' co-starring Gian Maria Volontè, who played "Indio" in FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (and who despite passing from a heart attack in 1994 has a wicked official website). Directed by Sergio Sollima, FACE TO FACE is part of a loose political trilogy which includes THE BIG GUNDOWN (1966) and RUN, MAN, RUN (1967), all rife with anti-capitalistic and anti-fascist themes.Behind the dusty shoot-outs in FACE TO FACE is a heavy political allegory about the rise of fascism in Europe, but you can ignore the morality and enjoy the kickass Morricone soundtrack!


yousuper8

see this on youtube before somebody with no life complains... these cool kids from sweden are transferring vintage smut from super 8 to dvd! and they even have a myspace page.


Monday, November 20, 2006

Le Parisien

The Imperial Six has a sister in Montreal. Le Parisien.

(source)

I almost did a backflip when I rounded a corner heading to St. Catherine Street and came across this near clone of the Imperial Six's seventies sci-fi lobby, all white lighting and helvetica signage (The Imperial had a little something extra - TV screens behind glass, rolling previews...) I always thought the design was cool - no wonder Montreal's seen fit to keep theirs.

Le Parisien's programming is like the Carlton in Toronto - mostly francophone arthouse fare. The photo here was taken during the World Film Festival in the late eighties.

We need more Imperial Six memories, people.

Saturday, November 18, 2006

70 mm in Mexico City



(source offers a look back at widescreen-equipped theatres south of the border, down Mexico way, once upon a time...)

Friday, November 17, 2006

Cairo Calrissian



(Source has tips on collecting Egyptian film posters!)

follow-up

These poster images just in from Michael over at Tint Archive. Nice additions to previous posts over here at the sticky floor cinema...

See JH's post: Coffee, Tea Or Me?

See JH's post: Moments With Tony

lenzi and popcorn

Oh you lucky people in Hollywood... do you even understand how privileged you are to see this? Saw this posted on 150 Days of Sodom where I also read a scathing review of the 3-D Night of the Living Dead (picked up for a supposed CDN theatrical by Alliance Atlantis).

friday trailer mash-up

Saw 3: Curse of the Were-Rabbit (Saw vs. Wallace and Gromit trailer mash) on Transbuddha

a few words about KISS...

(click on image to enlarge)

From Variety, May 9, 1979:
There is a myth that KISS possess personal talismans which "transforms" them into their stage personae and endow them with "super-human" powers. They have developed unique Kabuki-like make-up "masks" which they wear on stage. They have never allowed themselves to be photographed "out of character" – this augmenting greatly their image of mystery and "otherworldiness."
KISS meets Phantom of the Park - go over to the awesome PCL LinkDump for their links to the complete movie which has been uploaded to YouTube!

And imagine the fun KISS could have with your little sisters Barbie collection..

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Broadway (Los Angeles)





















(sources)




(source)

Does your airline pilot need one for the road?

From Variety October 17, 1979 - aka DANGER IN THE SKIES

Pulled from the trivia section of the IMDB:
Started shooting in Palm Beach, Florida in November 1978 according to articles in Boxoffice magazine. Articles said screenwriter Robert P. Davis was directing and that Robertson had co-written the script. "C. Gregory Earls of Cecil Prunier Productions is producing", said the Nov 20 1978 issue of Boxoffice. Apparently Robertson took over the directing chores.
And the comments from the IMDB seem very forgiving...

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

At a Specially Selected Theatre Near You!



















(source)

The Faint Tang of the Grindhouse


(source)

they were never made #1

Going through two Variety market issues that are filled fill of ads pitching projects that often never made past pre-production. Lots of glorious images and concepts and then some that you could understand being a challenge to finance... From 1978:

(click image to see bigger version)

Monday, November 13, 2006

Saturday, November 11, 2006

Imperial Six


















(source)

Searching For Sin in New York


This is a truly sticky entry...

Robin Bougie, editor of the fabulous sleaze movie zine, Cinema Sewer, and contributer to Al Goldstien's legendary Screw Magazine, goes on a pilgrimage to 42nd street...
We came to Manhattan as younger generation classic porn fans, in search of the sleaze and depravity history has taught us about this place through word, verse, and cum-soaked porno house film stock. The Times Square and Deuce of yesteryear. We knew it was no longer, thanks to the crass, rancid Disneyfication of that section of the isle, but we came to hunt for even a lingering smell of jizz-coated ass…. just to say that we’d been there, and taken a loving whiff.
Read on to learn of their meeting with 70s porn legend Jamie Gillis and other icky things. The article is also available on The Cultural Gutter. And make sure you wash your hands after reading Robin's livejournal. Note: not safe for work... unless you work in an adult video store...


And to fulfill our monthly Public Service Announcement commitment, here is a helpful eassay called "The soul warping effects of masturbation... and how to live without it," from a website for those who want freedom from sex addiction and pornography. The opening paragraph:
One of the most fascinating characters in the Lord of the Rings movies is Gollum. Like Frodo, Gollum is a hobbit whose original name was Sméagol. Hobbits are stout people with elf-like faces who stand half the height of men; they enjoy good company with hearty beer in the local pubs, as did Sméagol… until he saw "the one ring to rule them all.”
Other highlights include:

Hey it's just a little porn and I'm no sex addict, what's the big deal?

What I wish I would have known about sex addiction 20 years ago...


now if I can just get the comment feature working again...