Archive for October, 2015

Beware the cold nose of DEATH!!

Oh, Homo sapiens…just how stupid can you be?

Strange how tunnel-visioned people can be sometimes. No-one has any difficulty interpreting the horse-head scene in The Godfather; yet when their cat leaves a mouse’s head on the mat, they insist on calling it “a gift”. They hear all about missing persons cases, but never stop to wonder why their dog keeps digging holes in the garden.

You keep your friends close, they say, and your enemies even closer: a statement that has somehow come to encompass inviting those enemies into your house, running from shop to shop to find “their favourite”, sharing your bed with them, and going walkies in all weathers; all the while gushing about “unconditional love”.

Well, enough! This month, the B-Masters are making it their mission to expose these cuddly infiltrators – these adorable assassins – these killers in our midst who think they can get away with murder just because of their big eyes and their cold nose and their little whiskers and—and—aww, who’s a little sweetie? you’re a little sweetie, aren’t you? oh yes you are, you are! what, you want me to stand at the top of the staircase? okay, but I don’t see what y…………

petsgonewild2

It’s PETS GONE WILD – all through November at the B-Masters blog!

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On your mark, get set, laugh

Off The MarkIt’s rare for a comedy to try and imitate the comic style of movies like Airplane!, Top Secret!, and The Naked Gun. Off The Mark is an even rarer example of one of these imitations being actually funny.

Going out with a bang

Guess what? I found one!

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After experiencing so many disappointments while I was exploring the roots of the disaster movie, you can imagine my giddy delight when I unexpectedly encountered The Real Thing.

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THE LAST JOURNEY (1936)

A train-driver begins to develop psychological problems, which interfere with his work and lead him to believe that his wife and his best friend are having an affair. When he then finds himself being forced into retirement, he makes up his mind that his last journey will be one that no-one ever forgets…

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Cat Demon Blues

We’re celebrating Halloween early on TC.

KURONEKO

kuroKuroneko is a film that feels older than it is. Shot in 1968, five years after Shindo’s more famous horror movie Onibaba, Kuroneko hearkens back to the more humanistic period pieces and sword-fighting films of the 1950s. Kuroneko is also one of my favorite films. And not just because it has cat demon ladies in it. Though, really, cat demon ladies should be an enormous draw for anyone. Cat demon ladies and ghost cats have been around long before Ju-On / The Grudge or even before Utagawa Kuniyoshi illustrated a sweet party of a lady, two cats dancing with handkerchiefs on their heads and a giant cat monster interrupted by some guy in 1835.

 

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The best movie from Oklahoma I’ve seen

Cole JusticeThe vanity movie Cole Justice has, among other negative attributes, slipshod production values, laughable writing, and awkward acting. Yet at the same time, there’s something about this movie…

Not quite disastrous enough (Part 2)

Finally…

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So at last I got around to watching and writing up another crop of short reviews about films that don’t quite qualify as “disaster movies”.

The recurrent theme this time was films starting out in a way that got my hopes up, but then letting me down badly the further the film went on. Planes, trains, storms, floods, you name it—they just didn’t make the grade.

On the other hand, this exercise gave me the impetus to finally track down a copy of John Ford’s The Hurricane which, like San Francisco the year before, is not a disaster movie, but contains one of the greatest disaster sequences of all time—and all done with practical effects. CGI only wishes it could be this effective…

Not Quite Disastrous Enough

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My warning is my good deed for the day

The Wrong GuysWhile The Wrong Guys has in its cast comic talent like Louie Anderson, Richard Lewis, Richard Belzer, Franklyn Ajaye, Tim Thomerson, and John Goodman, there are almost no laughs to be found in the end results.

The Golden Age of Egyptian Cinema

WELCOME TO CAIROWOOD

afrita04“Examples of Egyptian filmmaking date back to the beginning of the 20th century, with Cairo becoming a hub of commercial filmmaking in the Arab world with the introduction of sound. It was there that the country’s first “Hollywood-style” film studio, the well-funded Studio Msr (a project of wealthy financier Talaat Harb) was established in 1936. From that point until the mid-60s, when the film industry was nationalized by President Nasser, a vibrant commercial aesthetic prevailed, with a pantheon of glamorous stars churning out genre entertainments calculated for mass appeal. It was a time during which Egypt turned out a staggering majority of the Middle East’s Arab language films—nearly a hundred a year—and did so with a level of technical sophistication easily on par with that of any Western film industry.”

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