"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Archive for the ‘Blog Post (short for weblog)’ Category

sneak peek of ALIEN 3 on Patreon now

Friday, June 17th, 2022
There are really two specific movies that were released in the summer of ’92 that were the primary reasons I wanted to do this Weird Summer thing. One of them is David Fincher’s audaciously anti-crowdpleasing ALIEN 3. I’ll be posting the review here on Monday but I thought I would give Patreonites a chance to read it early if you want. (It’s nearly 6,000 words, so it might take the weekend.)
 

CHECK IT OUT HERE

 
 

New Patreon exclusive: “TEXAS CHAINSAW Re-Massacred”

Friday, June 10th, 2022
Look at this asshole
Do you guys realize that the Michael Bay produced remake of THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE was 19 years ago? In the time since I watched it one time at a preview screening and despised it, an entire generation of horror fans have grown up, many considering it a classic of their era. And I feel like I’ve calmed down a little, so I decided to finally watch it a second time, write about how I feel about it now, and reflect a little more on how I’ve changed as a writer since the Ain’t It Cool days.
 
I understand not everybody can support me on Patreon so I promise I’ll post it here at some point in the future, but for now it will be a Patreon exclusive. If you can afford throwing a buck or more at me per month, it helps maintain my ability to only work the day job part time and spend most of my hours on the good shit here. For any donation you can read posts like this early, plus exclusive reviews (all the TWILIGHT movies, some vintage TV episodes), book-to-movie comparisons, writings from abandoned book projects, and more. So keep it in mind if it’s within your budget. Thanks friends!
 

READ IT ON PATREON

 
 

I MUST BREAK This Podcast

Saturday, June 4th, 2022
I was shamefully unaware of this until recently, but there’s a podcast called I MUST BREAK THIS PODCAST that’s all about the films of Dolph Lundgren. And it’s up to episode #87!? That’s the one where I got to come on and talk about the 2016 film FEMALE FIGHT SQUAD starring Amy Johnston. Dolph plays her dad. I’m glad I had an excuse to watch it again because I remembered it being good but it was still better than I thought it was gonna be.
 
Anyway, I had a fun time talking about it. CHECK IT OUT HERE if you’re interested.

I think they call this a shoot interview

Monday, May 16th, 2022

I was recently interviewed on a podcast and this is a little different from any I’ve done before so I wanted to say something about it.

As you may or may not have heard, there’s a podcast called Downlowd: The Rise and Fall of Harry Knowles and Ain’t It Cool News. Kind of like a documentary about a websight I once wrote for. I don’t know if the podcast is popular or not – much like Ain’t It Cool News itself back in the day, I mostly just see people talking shit about it. The first I heard of it was a while before it came out, when someone who had once been harassed by Harry Knowles posted negatively about having been approached for an interview. I had not been asked and felt relieved not to have to make a moral decision about it. I figured this guy making it, Joe Scott, didn’t know who I was, and that I didn’t have much to say anyway. I was only involved via e-mail.

(read the rest of this shit…)

Bruce

Wednesday, March 30th, 2022

I’m sure most of you have heard about the retirement of the one and only Bruce Motherfuckin Willis – a.k.a. Bruno, a.k.a. Walter B – due to a diagnosis of aphasia, a disorder which interferes with the ability to comprehend speech. I saw a tabloid story quite a while ago which claimed he was struggling with early onset dementia, and it’s unclear to me whether that was a misunderstanding about this, or whether that was true and this is a further development. Either way, it explains some of what has been going on with him in recent years, which honestly people have been pretty unkind about. But now they know.

I don’t need to tell you what Bruce means to me and everything we do here, but here’s a brief summary: I idolized him as a kid because of Moonlighting, DIE HARD is kinda my favorite movie, my first Usenet post was about DIE HARD, many people are kind enough to associate me with DIE HARD and refer all DIE HARD related news items to me, Titan Books associated me enough with him that they got me to name my review collection after him, also there was a famous incident in the Ain’t It Cool days when Bruce himself unexpectedly logged in as a talkbacker to respond to my concerns about LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD being rated PG-13. To my left as I write I have a beautiful framed Thai DIE HARD poster that I look to for inspiration. Three days ago I bought The Return of Bruno on vinyl.

One of my favorite things I’ve written was the piece about DIE HARD from a little after my dad died. If you’ve read that you know how much my feelings about DIE HARD and Bruce are tied in with memories of my dad, who I lost to Alzheimers. I see alot of my dad in myself and fear inheriting his fate; also I have always looked up to aspects of Bruce and aspired to be like him. So obviously it hit me hard on a number of different levels when I first heard about this. Since I always believed the story it didn’t come as a shock to read the confirmation today, but the emotions came at me like a flood. And I know it’s the same for many of you.

I just feel for him and his family and I hope they’re able to enjoy their time together. Let’s all celebrate Bruce and send good thoughts to him and his family and friends. Also, which Bruce movies is it a shame I haven’t reviewed? I’ve done the big action ones, but surely there are some gaps.

Vern’s Oscar Round-Up 2022

Friday, March 25th, 2022

Ah shit, here we go again. Another Oscar Sunday coming up. As I’ve been doing for some years now, I scrambled to watch all of the best picture nominees that I hadn’t already seen anyway, plus as many as I could from other major categories. This year, for various reasons, I did not write reviews of most of the movies that were nominated, so I’ll kinda-sorta do that here.

No time for a monologue, let’s go straight to the best picture nominees, presented in alphabetical order for your organizational convenience. (read the rest of this shit…)

New podcast appearance: The ’00s Zone

Thursday, December 9th, 2021

You may know Mark Palermo as the screenwriter of DETENTION (Joseph Kahn one, not Dolph one) or as a thoughtful commenter around here for many years. It turns out he’s also a podcaster. Mark and actress/filmmaker Loretta Yu host The ’00s Zone (pronounced like “ozone”), looking back at movies from the ’00s. And they were kind enough to invite me for their episode looking back at THE MATRIX RELOADED and THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS.

I had a great time talking raves and Sentinels with Mark, Loretta and fellow guest Riley, and having listened to a couple episodes for preparation (I chose the ROMEO MUST DIE and CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON two-parter) I can vouch for this as a smart podcast offering a different perspective on these movies than any of the other ones I listen to. I’m going to check out some more.

Please enjoy this episode and let me know what you think, but don’t exhaust your MATRIX talk since, as teased at the end of the episode, I’ll finally be reviewing the whole series (so far) next week.

Patreon bonus review: 2 Halloween(ish) episodes of ‘The Crow: Stairway To Heaven’

Friday, October 29th, 2021

Happy Halloween everybody! (Or I suppose Devil’s Night Eve, as of this posting.) I hope you have enjoyed my super-sized 5-day-a-week horror reviewing this month. But if you need even more review content to put into your container or whatever and you happen to be a Patreon contributor (or want to start) I took a look at two episodes of the short-lived 1998 syndicated action series based on THE CROW and starring Mark Dacascos. And if you missed it I still have last year’s Halloween special, a Knight Rider episode featuring an Anthony Perkins impersonator and the Silver Shamrock pumpkin mask, plus the year before’s Walker: Texas Ranger about a satanic cult.

Enjoy!

STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

 

 



Podcasting in Freddyvision

Tuesday, September 14th, 2021

I’m the guest on the new episode of the podcast 30 Years Later, which is of course a podcast where they revisit movies from 30 years ago. They saw me tweeting about summer of ’91 and invited me on, so of course I offered to do the episode on FREDDY’S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE. It was fun to watch again and talk about it with these guys.

There were a couple things I meant to say but forgot to. One was an overarching point about themes I like in the ELM STREET series, so maybe I’ll save those for an essay. But the other was this trivial observation: I never understood why they used the name of a song from the SUPER FLY soundtrack for the title and then have no version of it in the movie. Maybe Curtis told them to fuck off.

 

Anyway, enjoy!

30 YEARS LATER

Summer of 1991 closing remarks

Wednesday, September 1st, 2021

Thank you for joining me and/or being patient with me during these last few months of S91: JUDGMENT SUMMER, my look back at most of the summer movie releases of 30 years ago. (If you actually didn’t join me, you can scroll down and click on the links to all the reviews). According to my calculations I reviewed 46 movies for this series, not including the non-1991 ones (like the part 1s for some of these part 2s). And now here are my judgments.

By the end, you noticed, I was calling it “Sarah Connor Summer.” There’s never gonna be an over-arching theme to an entire release schedule, but it really is cool how much of a “let’s give women a little bit more to do in movies” movement took place in those months. By that I mostly mean that

1) THELMA & LOUISE and its fantasy of regular women going ballistic against the daily transgressions of sexism really became a cultural phenomenon

2) TERMINATOR 2’s fierce, muscular (but also emotionally complex) version of Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor created a new ideal for women in action movies

and

3) Kathryn Bigelow directed the other best action movie of the summer, both dissecting and glorying in masculine themes from her unique perspective, which she can do if she damn well pleases. (read the rest of this shit…)