Posts tagged as:

Movies

“The Bloor”: A Documentary About the Bloor Cinema

by Joey deVilla on November 13, 2009

Bloor Cinema logo The Bloor Cinema, located in the student-bohemian neighbourhood of Accordion City known as The Annex, has been a city institution since the turn of the previous century. It started out as a vaudeville theatre, became a cinema, then an “adult film” venue, and now it’s a repertory theatre and home to second-run films, Rocky Horror nights, independent cinema, art films, foreign films, film festivals and special projects like the The Pee-Wee Herman Picture Show. I’ve had many nice dates there (contrary to legend, I do have dates that do not end in police action or crisis counselling), the most recent of which were with The Missus.

Local blog BlogTO posted an article today pointing to the documentary film titled The Bloor, which chronicles the life of this Toronto cultural landmark. It’s been posted to YouTube in two parts, which I’ve posted below. It’s good lunchtime viewing.

{ 1 comment }

The “Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus” Trailer

by Joey deVilla on August 14, 2009

A mega-shark! A giant octopus! A reference to the "Thrilla in Manila"! Lorenzo Lamas and Deborah (formerly Debbie) Gibson! What more could you possibly want from a movie?

(A tip of the hat to John Bristowe for pointing me to the video!)

{ 4 comments }

{ 0 comments }

A Game of “Guess Who?” with Samuel L. Jackson

by Joey deVilla on May 11, 2009

It would probably go something like this:

Samuel L. Jackson on the other side of a "Guess Who?" game: "Does he look like a bitch?"

Yes, you’ll need to have seen the Milton-Bradley boardgame “Guess Who?” and this scene from the Quentin Tarantino flick Pulp Fiction to be in on the joke:

{ 1 comment }

“Yippie Ki Yay…”

by Joey deVilla on May 6, 2009

In an earlier article, I wrote about the cleaned-for-TV version of Samuel Jackson’s famous in the movie Snakes on a Plane. Here’s an even better-known line – Bruce Willis’ battle cry from the Die Hard movie series – as edited for prime-time television audiences:

You have to keep in mind that there is no character or concept in the movie named “Mr. Falcon”; the words seems to have been picked randomly. He might as well have said “major factor”, “motor fixer” or even “mojito freezepop”.

(And whoever did the voice rework did a terrible Bruce Willis impression. He sounds more like a young John Travolta saying “Yippee ki yay, Mr. Kotter.”)

For reference, here’s the non-Bowdlerized version:

Inventive as the attempt to come up with a prime-time TV-friendly substitute for “motherfucker” in Die Hard 2 is, it doesn’t hit the creative new heights achieved in this clean-up of The Usual Suspects’ “lineup scene”:

I think it might’ve worked better had they simply bleeped those words out.

Once again, in the name of completeness, here’s the unedited version:

{ 6 comments }

“Snakes on a Plane’s” Signature Line – The TV Edit

April 27, 2009

Snakes on a Plane, even when you take into account that it’s supposed to be a big dumb action movie aiming to be a cult film, wasn’t all that good. Apparently it’s been made worse through its bowdlerization for TV, where Samuel Jackson’s famous line has the profanity (and personality) drained from it:

“I have had [...]

Read the full article →

Anvil: Toronto’s Real-Life Spinal Tap Gets Their Break

April 21, 2009

Anvil! The Story of Anvil was the one documentary I really wanted to catch at last year’s Hot Docs film festival. If you watched Canada’s MuchMusic station in the 1980s and its heavy metal segment, The Pepsi Power Hour (hosted by the mullet-sporting JD Roberts, who later became CNN’s silver-haired John Roberts), you might [...]

Read the full article →

Why He Became Darth Vader

March 18, 2009

This article originally appeared in Global Nerdy.
Photo courtesy of Matt Gunn.

Read the full article →

Dan Meth’s “Trilogy Meter”

March 10, 2009

Here’s an interesting visualization of cartoonist Dan Meth’s ratings of the movies in various film trilogies. Do you agree with his assessments?

Read the full article →

1960s-Style Covers for Movie Novelizations

February 3, 2009

I really like the abstract works that designers like Saul Bass created in the 1960s. Here’s an example of Bass’ work – his poster for the Hitchcock movie Vertigo:

Someone who goes by the nom de plume of “Spacesick” likes ‘60s abstract graphic art as much as I do and has created I Can Read [...]

Read the full article →

Mr. Miyagi to Obama: “Big Ups, Playa!”

January 9, 2009

For some reason, this photo-comic in which “Mr. Miyagi” (played by Pat Morita in the Karate Kid movies) gives mad props to Barack Obama amuses me to no end. I decided to enhance it by adding a caption to the bottom":
Found thanks to Giles Bowkett.

Read the full article →