Screen Time for Rent: Granada TV Commercial, 1977
This 1977 TV commercial for Granada TV Rental opens a window onto an almost forgotten aspect of the relationship the British viewing public once enjoyed with their television sets…
“Splashing the Volcano”: ‘Dianetics’ in the Age of Reaganomics
By K.E. Roberts
Anyone who was watching TV in the late 1980s remembers the commercial: probing personal questions appear in white text on a black screen as a Tangerine Dream-esque synth riff pulsates in the background. ”How can you increase your mind’s potential?”…
“There Ain’t Nothin’ Different”: When Dystopian Sci-Fi Ruled the Cola Wars
By K.E. Roberts
Star Wars and the Cola Wars collided, launching a series of futuristic, high concept TV ads that included all the major players. At the heart of it was one Ridley Scott…
You Can Only Watch 20 Films for the Rest of Your Life
By The Mutants
Think about the list strategically. It’s for the rest of your life! What will you watch when you’re sad? When you’re high? When the holidays roll around? When you’ve got the flu? When you need to believe that goodness prevails?
Tubular Terrors: ‘The Possessed’
Blatantly trying to ride the audience numbers of 1973’s The Exorcist, the same year’s Satan’s School for Girls, and 1976’s The Omen and Carrie, The Possessed is, predictably, imbued with the whole period’s ubiquitous post-Watergate feeling of gloom…
Tubular Terrors: ‘The Norliss Tapes’
This Halloween, I decided to give another of Kolchak producer Dan Curtis’s horror TV movies a try. The Norliss Tapes, which aired on NBC in February of 1973, features another favorite of genre sci-fi and horror TV, Roy Thinnes, in the lead role…
RAD, MAD & BAD: The Analog Rebellion of Craig Baldwin and Other Cinema
Under the stewardship of underground filmmaker and curator Craig Baldwin, Other Cinema stands as the vanguard of Baldwin’s personal artistic conviction—what he calls “cinema povera”…
“Things Can’t Get Any Worse, They Got to Get Better”: Paul Schrader’s ‘Light of Day’
All of the characters in Paul Schrader’s Light of Day (1987) are looking for a way out. They’re stuck in menial nine to five jobs, on the line in factories and behind candy-colored checkout stands in supermarkets…
“It’s A Great Life If You Don’t Weaken”: ‘The Friends of Eddie Coyle’ at 50
American cinema of the 1970s has long been recognized for its downbeat, character-led crime dramas. From Alan J. Pakula’s Klute (1971) to Arthur Penn’s Night Moves (1975) and Ulu Grosbard’s Straight Time (1978)…
“Have a Good Time All the Time”: ‘This Is Spinal Tap’ and the Art of Longing
1984’s This is Spinal Tap is all about the pining—epic pining, as high and fulsome as the band’s hair and the wailing notes they (try to) hit…
