Oh, we saw The Last Emperor too. It was an odd experience because the teacher prepared an expurgated version that removed the sex and the bit were the boy-emperor splatters his mouse against the palace gate, but left in a gruesome shot of someone getting a bullet to the head.

I got my wires crossed. IMDb says the guy who played Khrushchev in Stalin was some dude named Murray Ewan, who apparently spent his career in one-off supporting roles on British television.

We watched the HBO biopic of Stalin, with Robert Duvall as you-know-who and Bob Hoskins as the lovable Nikita Khrushchev. The teacher was a substitute who didn't give a fuck, so we all had fun overdubbing Khrushchev's dialogue with stuff like "Oh boy, just you wait till I become General Secretary" and making fun of…

THANK YOU. This reminds of the people who insisted that nobody took Kathryn Bigelow seriously until The Hurt Locker, at which point Blue Steel, Near Dark etc. were supposedly retroactively declared good movies, as if there weren't people in the '90s writing her up in Screen and Cinema Journal.

Well, for one thing, "barely existed" doesn't equal "didn't exist." And some of those examples aren't "prefab franchises" in the sense I meant: The Pink Panther wasn't conceived as a series (A Shot in the Dark came about while they were working on the original and saw the potential in Sellers' character), and while Dr.…

It was added for the video release. It wouldn't have been on the theatrical release because the idea of prefab cinematic franchises barely existed in 1985—the ending of the first film obviously sets up a potential sequel, but it wasn't like today where studios begins developing sequels before the first movie even…

I dunno, that sounds like bullshit to me

That'll be one of the TV movies they do after the series finally goes off the air.

http://www.youtube.com/watc…

This report (in Chinese) cites a theater employee named "Zhu" who said this wasn't an accident, which I find completely believable. The Loki/Thor slash subculture isn't unknown in China and it was more than successful in drumming up hype.

There were a few moments where this seemed to be building to something genuinely gutsy. Like when the first "combat arena" turned out to be a barren cubic room on the Nth floor of an office tower, which hinted at a stripped-down, almost structural approach, as if Ernie Gehr decided to do a fight scene. But of course…

The Aldrin interview is classic, but I was always partial to this bit with Dr. Koop.

Issue four of the print series came out a couple of weeks ago and they've already solicited through #7.

They started with Newmar, then a few issues ago they brought in Kitt. The Kitt Catwoman appeared with Batgirl, so it wasn't just random switching-out—both Yvonne Craig and Eartha Kitt were only in the last season, so they knew enough not to put Batgirl alongside Newmar or Meriwether (who hasn't showed up yet, but I'm…

This isn't a serious Oscar contender. It's not due out in the U.S. until next spring, and I can't find any sign it'll even get a qualifying run this year. In any case spring is not the usual place for Oscar movies, and that plus the fact it's going out under the Weinsteins' "Radius" label (used for simultaneous…

He's pretty funny in Wrong Cops. Granted he's basically playing the straight man to Mark Burnham, but he pulls it off well, particularly his delivery of the line "I am not a retarded person."

Great stuff. It's not much of an exaggeration to say it invented an entire genre.

bring back Cookie Bane

Well, Hercules definitely had something goin' on with Iolaus. Something sexy. Just not in that particular movie.

The only Region B releases I can find are some German discs—I assume those are the ones you're referring to. Based on this comparison of the first film, I'm not convinced the German disc is an upscale, but based on this, I think the HK release actually might be. They both look pretty bad, though. The forums at Blu-ray.…