Blog Archives
Happy Birthday Magical Mystery Tour
This year we celebrate the 45th birthday of the U.S. release of The Beatles’ psychedelic, experimental film, Magical Mystery Tour. The band’s third movie, Tour was released in theaters in America, but it was actually a made-for-television project when it debuted on sets across Britain on Boxing Day, December 26, 1967. The best Beatles flicks [...]
Orson Welles at 99
I’m not sure why this didn’t get a Google Doodle, but Orson Welles would have been 99 today and I think that’s worth noting. I love covering films and I love talking about magick — Welles knew a bit about both. Welles was a child prodigy who founded the groundbreaking Mercury Theatre company in New [...]
Borders: Starring Robert Anton Wilson
25 years ago, Robert Anton Wilson starred in this experimental, made for television film, Borders. The movie combines interviews and commentary by luminaries like Wilson and physicist Michio Kaku with early computer animation and a dramatized storyline about an idealistic scientist trying to do honest research in the belly of the defense industry beast. This [...]
Mitch Hedberg’s Lost Movie
When comedian Mitch Hedberg died from a heroin and cocaine overdose in 2005, it cut short the career of one of the most interesting stand-up comedians since Bill Hicks. Hedberg combined contemporary stoner observations with the brevity and timing of an old school one-liner comic to hilarious effect, and his star was on the rise: [...]
10 Years of Insomnia
This month, Joe Nolan’s Insomnia is celebrating an important anniversary. In May of 2004, I opened up a Blogger account and started writing this illuminated scroll. Blogging was just becoming mainstream at that time and everybody was doing it. I didn’t really have a subject in mind for Insomnia, I just wanted to share thoughts [...]
Pulgasari – The North Korean Godzilla
While monster movie fans are waiting with a combination of hope and dread for the release of the new Godzilla film this May, I thought I’d offer-up this strange little snack to tide us all over as we await the return of the Great One. Pulgasari is a 1985, North Korean, Godzilla-style giant monster film [...]
New Derek Jarman Documentary
From the 1970′s through the 1990′s, Derek Jarman was the at the bleeding edge of experimental film-making in Britain. Two decades after his death, the man behind Caravaggio and The Garden is the subject of a new documentary by Andy Kimpton-Nye. The film features Tilda Swinton, Peter Tatchell and Tariq Ali. Here’s a few words [...]
AB: After Brando
Marlon Brando may have been the best American actor ever. He was a star of the stage before becoming a cinema idol, bridging a career between the two with his performance as Stanley Kowalski in both the Broadway production and the Warner Brothers film of A Streetcar Named Desire — both directed by Elia Kazan. [...]
23 Years of Slacker
This spring we’re celebrating the 23rd birthday of Richard Linklater’s counterculture classic, Slacker. Capturing the way-out fringe of his Austin, Texas neighborhood, Linklater put himself on the map with this rolling conversation of a film that’s as subtly sophisticated as it is endearingly odd, smartly self-conscious and deeply human. Here’s some nice words on the [...]
