Wow, Cheeseburger, if you think that, you obviously haven't seen many Joe Dante movies.

The skeleton duel in 7th Voyage is, for me, much more awesome than the one in Jason, mostly because of the moody lighting and the fact that its one-on-one nature gives it greater intensity. Also, it is the sequence that utterly blew my ten-year-old mind, and made me fall in love with movies forever.

The example is, in a lengthy career, the only prominent African-American actor ever featured in one of his films is Chiwetel Ejiofor. And as I thought my original post made clear, I'm not criticizing Allen for this—he hasn't made a film about hardscrabble Southern whites or Pakistani immigrants, either.

Great piece but…
…why is Allen so frequently taken to task—at this site and elsewhere—for his depiction (or non-depiction) of black characters in his films? He has never portrayed Manhattan as free of people of color, and has never merely shown them as domestics, as this article implies. There are plenty of black…

Agreed on Jessica Harper, but to me, the real revelation in Shock Treatment was Cliff DeYoung. I'd always thought of him as a bland journeyman TV actor, but he really nails both characters in this, and his duet with himself is great.

And I'm not sure a new one would have better effects, anyway. Gizmo is a legitimate presence in Gremlins, largely because he was actually there on the set—the actors could react to him, and the effects crew controlling the puppet could respond to their reactions in real time.

About a quarter? I've read that only the opening scene—Peter Ustinov purchasing Kirk Douglas—is the only sequence in the finished film actually directed by Mann. (And it does seem characteristic of Mann, especially in the use of the landscape. ) Any other scenes he may have directed were reshot by Kubrick.

Extras?
I've got a copy of this from the early days of DVD, and it features a ton of extras, including a typically hilarious commentary track from Dante. Anyone know if the special features on this are edition new, or just ported over from the old disc?

Yeah, I actually like the live-action opening sequence, but the final sequence just goes on forever. It does have Mike Starr, though, which is always a plus.

I don't own a Blu-Ray player
…but I may have to upgrade just for James And The Giant Peach.

Not to turn this into the film-nerdiest thread ever, but Vincente Minnelli's Limehouse Blues segment from Ziegfeld Follies is one of the greatest things ever put on film, if you can get over the yellowface casting of Fred Astaire and Lucille Bremer. The opening scene especially plays like something out of Mario…

Slipin3, that moment in Wings Of Desire made me want to stand up and applaud. In fact, what with Falk, Nick Cave and Bruno Ganz, the whole movie is a good working definition of the word "awesome".

FALK!
Glad to see we'll be getting more Peter Falk next time. He's easily one of my five favorite actors of all time, the type who just makes anything better just by showing up. Whether he was working with Cassavetes or appearing in some for-the-check heartwarming TV movie, his line reading, inflections,…

Yeah, but at least Breathed's later work was merely poorly conceived and badly executed—it was still good-hearted. The arrogant, mean-spirited qualities of John K's subsequent work managed to make me retroactively hate even the original run of Ren & Stimpy.

While I'm charmed (or, more accurately, geeked out) by the notion of Watterson sending personally-rendered notes to Breathed, I wonder if he has also regarded Breathed's post-Bloom County career as an example of Doing It Wrong. His subsequent strips were all beautifully designed and drawn, but they were absolutely…

"Introducing Pia Zadora as Kady"
is one of the greatest credit boasts in history. Not quite up there with Sgt. Pepper's fabled "Introducing Sandy Farina as Strawberry Fields" or Star Trek's deathless "Presenting Persis Khambatta"…but what could be?

WRITE ABOUT WHATEVER YOU WANT
Honestly, this series has consistently been one of the best, most insightful pieces of pop culture analysis I've ever read. There's been some new insights to things I thought I knew well, like Twin Peaks, and inspiration to turn to things I've overlooked, like The Andy Griffith Show. …

They're great fun in a forties B-movie kind of a way, but they were largely responsible for the still surprisingly widely-held perception of Watson as some kind of elderly bumbler.

To me, his moving, deeply felt performance in Hoosiers represents not only what we've lost, but what we barely had: Hopper as a character actor. With Frank Booth, there's no doubt that he was, to some extent, riffing on his own well-known past (not Lynch's intention, I'm sure, but there's no way to see Hopper as an…

WHERE'S THE CORBETT LOVE?
Though I have no preference in the Joel/Mike debate, I do prefer the Comedy Central era to the Sci Fi era (though there are obvious exceptions—Riding With Death and Giant Spider Invasion are two of my favorites), and in general, I think the sketches were stronger in the Joel era.