it's a uniquely American fixation. Utterly perplexing to the rest of the Western world.

the sun is setting on the South and Midwest for good (thankfully?)

from Frank Perry, director of the excellent PLAY IT AS IT LAYS (never released on VHS) and LAST SUMMER (never released on an uncut VHS).

working at a Blockbuster in Santa Monica, CA for 20 months between 2003 and 2005 was one of the worst experiences of my life. From "active selling" while wearing a ridiculous red apron to having to clean up vomit, occasionally close at 2:00AM and give store credit to people who traded in awful $1 public domain DVD's,…

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame exists for two reasons: make a buck and enable its baby boomer judges to feel like arbiters of the Western cultural canon. Should people like Kate Bush, Janet Jackson and Allison Moyet give a shit over being snubbed by these idiots? Of course not.

it makes you have discerning taste! I fucking hate Starbucks and the slop it passes off as coffee. There are some good coffee chains, though (Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and 49th Parallel to name just two).

It's not really authentic unless my computer screen is filled with pages from a screenplay that will never be optioned.

Light Sleeper is a continuation of some of the same themes that Schrader employed in Taxi Driver, and I won't apologize for enjoying it far more. It's got phenomenal performances and a depth that stuns me

Sadly, no. I believe you should be able to find some videos on YouTube, though

McCarthy is unfunny and one-note, but I feel the same way about Will Ferrell and most other male comedians out there. Give me someone unique like Margaret Cho or Francesca Martinez.

I still think of TAXI DRIVER as being a warm-up for Paul Schrader's much better LIGHT SLEEPER (1992). Hell, I think Schrader is generally a more interesting filmmaker than Scorsese, particularly with the films he co-wrote with his brother Leonard (BLUE COLLAR and MISHIMA).

I refuse to believe that Skolimowski would produce a bad film. The man has been so tremendously consistent since his Lodz film school days when he produced WALKOVER and IDENTIFICATION MARKS: NONE.

No, but the negatives have been appraised and are in great shape

The goal is to edit the feature and make a documentary on it, which is the optimal way to proceed with the material and not alienate purists

In much more significant news, Netflix is trying to gain the distribution rights to Orson Welles' The Other Side of the Wind. Fingers crossed.

End of Days? You mean Stigmata, right? "Por que es mi nombre importante?"-El Diablo

I'm incredibly disappointed that you didn't ask about THE KEEP or COOL WORLD.

Peter Hyams is wildly uneven, but he did invent the buddy cop picture with the excellent BUSTING (1972) and further refined it with RUNNING SCARED (1986)

I enjoyed seeing Anthony Stewart Head getting killed by Bob Hoskins (playing a priest, no less) in Mike Hodges' A Prayer for the Dying (1987)

Sounds interesting, but I think many of Jon Jost's films have also employed just a single camera person/boom operator and cost four figures to produce. They're also very well-constructed and complex works.