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Why’d It Bomb? The Carmichael Show (2015-2017)

Kevthewriter wonders why NBC cancelled The Carmichael Show. (more…)

Movies of 1978 Bracket Game: Dawn of the Dead Vs. The Deer Hunter

Things are starting to heat up a bit as we select the final four movies in the 1978 bracket game.  Today’s contestants have little in common.  Forty years ago, The Deer Hunter was showered with praise and Oscars while Dawn of the Dead was a well-regarded cult movie.  Few would have ranked the zombie movie over the Vietnam war drama back then, but The Deer Hunter has faded from memory while the…

March 27 & 28: Happy Birthday Mike Newell and Holliday Grainger

Our headliners today worked together on the 2012 film adaptation of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations.  Newell was the director, Grainger had the major role of Estella.  In the above photo, we have from left to right Ewan Bremner, Robbie Coltrane, Mike Newell, Holliday Grainger, and Jeremy Irvine. Mike Newell is turning 76 today.  He attended Cambridge and began directing in the mid-sixties in…

Scott Speedman: The Outsider on the Inside

Scott Speedman became a TV star during his four-year run on the coming-of-age drama, Felicity.  When the show ended in 2002, all three of the principal actors made their bids for movie stardom.  Of the three, Speedman seemed to fare the best on the big screen.  He costarred in the first Underworld movies although the series eventually carried on without him.  This profile from the March 2003…

Movies of 1978 Bracket Game: Halloween Vs. Every Which Way But Loose

Today starts the second round of our Movies of 1978 Bracket Game.  All through the first round, I promised closer matches as we moved on.  Eventually, we will reach a point where readers will have to make some tough decisions.  But today will not be that day.  At some point, the winner of our mach movie bracket was going to have to face off against a movie that actually remained relevant for four…

Movies of 1978 Bracket Game: Heaven Can Wait Vs. Foul Play

We’re down to the last two movies in the first round of the Movies of 1978 bracket game and we’re sticking to the comedy theme.  I remember as a kid seeing the marketing material for these movies and having not a clue as to what they were about.  These movies were sold on star power, but the actors were unfamiliar to me.  I was endlessly fascinated by the image of an angel in sweatpants and…

March 26: Happy Birthday James Caan and Leonard Nimoy

James Caan turns 78 today.  He attended Michigan State and Hofstra before graduating from the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York.  During his studies, he made a number of guest appearances on TV.  His first major film role was in Lady in a Cage in 1964, following which Howard Hawks cast him in prominent roles in Red Line 7000 and El Dorado; he also received a Golden Globe…

Phillip Noyce: The Reinventor

These days, Phillip Noyce works primarily on the small screen.  Recently, he directed the first two episodes of Fox’s medical drama, The Resident.  Back in the 90’s, the Aussie director had a decent run in Hollywood with two Jack Ryan movies starring Harrison Ford and misfires like Sliver and The Saint.  Noyce went back to making smaller movies like Rabbit-Proof Fence and The Quiet American both…

Weekly Recap: Superman Soars and Grease is the Word

As I promised back in January, I have come back to the bracket game for a little March madness.  Rather than dealing in college hoops, we’re talking about movies from forty years ago when Grease and Superman were the most popular movies around.  For the most part, the first round has been made up of one-sided contests.  But I suspect that will change was we thin out the competition.  We’ll recap…

Movies of 1978 Bracket Game: Animal House Vs. Up in Smoke

So far our look back at the movies of 1978 has covered horror, drama, fantasy and musicals.  For the last couple of rounds, we’re going to get down to serious funny business and have a few laughs.  These comedies had audiences rolling in the aisles forty years ago.  That line had a double meaning for one of today’s competitors.  I grouped these two comedies together because of the four funny…

March 25: Happy Birthday Sarah Jessica Parker and Edgar Ramirez

Sarah Jessica Parker is celebrating her 53rd birthday.  She was born in Ohio but eventually moved to New York while growing up.  She made her Broadway debut at the age of eleven in a revival of Harold Pinter’s The Innocents, and in early 1979 took over the title role in the Broadway production of Annie.  Her first big screen role was in the short-lived but critically acclaimed CBS sitcom Square…

Walt Disney World: First Time, First Time in a Long Time, Last Time for a Long Time (2018)

You know, for a few minutes there I thought I might not have enough stuff to fill out my standard Walt Disney World trip preview article. Silly me. Once I actually started going through my plans for my coming spring break visit it became obvious that I had naturally built in plenty of new things – even if I’m a little nervous about a couple of them. You may have noticed that I’ve jimmied the…

Movies of 1978 Bracket Game: Grease Vs. The Wiz

Movie musicals have been pronounced dead about as often as Westerns which is to say a lot.  Although they may not be as popular as they once were, musicals never went away.  During the seventies, movies were moving away from the traditional studio fare into gritty realism.  The kind of movies where characters broke into song were not in vogue and yet the top movie of 1978 was an adaptation of a…

March 24: Happy Birthday Jim Parsons and Alyson Hannigan

Jim Parsons is celebrating his 45th birthday.  He attended the University of Houston, and during the early 1990s he became very active in the Houston theater community; he was the cofounder of Infernal Bridegroom Productions, a Houston area theatrical company.  He made his Off-Broadway debut in a production of Franz Kafka’s The Castle.  Early in the 2000s he began working in film and television;…

Movies of 1978 Bracket Game: Superman: The Movie Vs. The Lord of the Rings

There is no shortage of escapism in modern movies.  But forty years ago, flights of fancy were few and far between.  The seventies were known for gritty, realistic cinema.  Partially, the lack of fantasy films was a result of technological limitations.  The tagline for Superman: The Movie was “You’ll believe a man can fly” because prior to the movie’s release, it was inconceivable that the effect…

March 23: Happy Birthday Chaka Khan and Akira Kurosawa

The Queen of Funk is celebrating her 65th today.  Chaka Khan (given name Yvette Stevens) grew up in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, and began performing in the Chicago area as a teen.  At 17, she briefly became the lead singer of an R&B/soul band, the Babysitters, and a year later she was recruited as a lead singer by the band she became famous with, Rufus.  The band, often billed as “Rufus…