After Martin Scorsese burst onto the scene with the one-two social realist punch of 1973’s Mean Streets and 1974’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, he produced an ode to the milieu from which he sprang, a briefer-than-feature-length trip to his parents’ walk-up apartment in Little Italy for Sunday macaroni and gravy…
Some people like MCU films; some people like Scorsese and Coppola films. I’m not really a fan of any of them. But what individuals may like or dislike isn’t really the issue in this discussion. The issue is what is considered to be quality, serious art, what is not, and why…
What is America and what does it look like? In the ‘80s, it looked like the world as re-imagined by the Memphis Group, Syd Brak, and Steven Spielberg. Reality was far grimmer, but no one seems to remember all that. Instead, we have a convenient and informal shorthand consisting, in part, of skyscrapers and saxophones…
For any Italian, the Summer of 1982 means one thing: the country’s victory at that year’s FIFA World Cup final. The faded images of the nation’s president, 86-year-old Sandro Pertini—a socialist partisan who had fought against Nazi-Fascism during World War II—practically beside himself with joy when Alessandro Altobelli scored the third goal against Germany…
Fowles wants to destroy master narratives, but he’s too fascinated with mastery to do it…
By K.E. Roberts
There is probably something more entertaining than William Shatner devouring scenery as an alcoholic, defrocked, nihilistic priest confronting evil druidic sorcery on a double-decker 747 alongside a cast of fellow C-listers, but I can’t think of it right now…
Like many folks my age, I first encountered crusading news photographer Carl Kolchak (played by the imminently charismatic and recognizable Darren McGavin) thanks to The X-Files creator Chris Carter’s repeated praise of the character as one of the biggest influences on his creation of Mulder and Scully…
The Halloween of my Northern English youth was more an informal folk festival than anything institutional, as a quick leaf through the TV schedules of the day will demonstrate: no pumpkins were deployed and you didn’t dress up; you just stayed indoors, turned the Herbert van Thal anthologies to the wall, and hoped to god no witches attacked…
By K.E. Roberts
Of all the mutually reinforcing influences that compelled the mainstream popularization and commercialization of the horror genre in the 1970s, the role of made-for-TV films gets short shrift. Quite simply, they reached millions more viewers (impressionable kids included) than theatrical releases…
By J.E. Anckorn
In 1999, Stephen King was struck by a van as he took a walk to the store to buy candy bars. The van’s driver claimed to have been distracted by his Rottweiler Bullet’s attempts to steal meat from a cooler, swerving into King and throwing him fourteen feet into the woods…
We Are the Mutants 