I spent my movie nights this week on two westerns: The Missouri Breaks, and Roy Colt and Winchester Jack. I’d watch more westerns if it weren’t for the ever-present tripwire. Actual cowboys would never treat their horses the way movie people treat them. I can’t look at the screen when the horses invariably start…

I spent my movie nights this week with Marco Ferreri. Seeking Asylum on Monday night, and Tales of Ordinary Madness on Thursday night. I’ve been using my movie nights lately to clear out a lot of movies in the periphery. They’re all over the place here, stacked on shelves indiscriminately with books, in cabinets, and…

I spent my movie nights this week with Peter Greenaway: A Zed and Two Noughts and Belly of an Architect. For snacks I had leftover Halloween candy with the first, and a salsa pizza and lemon lime Koolaid with the second. In so far as my week is to be judged by these choices, I would call the week a success.

I spent my last Halloween movie night with The Blood Beast Terror. It was precisely what I had expected from its vintage: no better, no worse. In any event, Peter Cushing makes everything watchable. I don’t really have favourite anythings, but I suppose at gunpoint I would call Mr. Cushing my favourite actor. If you…

I spent my two Halloween movie nights this week with Vincent Price: Theatre of Blood and Madhouse. Slasher movies aren’t really my thing, but I’m committed this Halloween to only watching movies I’ve never seen and there just aren’t any ghost movies left! My Halloween is starving for something supernatural. I’m only…

I spent my two Halloween movie nights this week with Shelley Winters: What’s the Matter with Helen, and Whoever Slew Auntie Roo. I’m pretty sure I’d seen Auntie Roo a long time ago, and that it might have been the movie that gave me my lifelong obsession with dumbwaiters. I’m certain there’s one hidden in our walls. …

This was a very busy week. We had the attics and walls insulated. The house is a mess but I watched two movies anyway, two more Halloween movies: Gorilla at Large, and Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu. Gorilla at Large isn’t much of a Halloween movie, I chose it mostly because I was tired, it was handy, and I really just…

My movie nights this week, and for the rest of the month, will all be spoooooky because of Halloween. This week I watched The Long Hair of Death and Mystery on Monster Island. Long Hair of Death was first rate Italian Gothic. The cast and crew had anglo pseudonyms that all read more or less as Charles Andrew…

I spent my movie nights this week with Beast from the Haunted Cave, and The Nun. The Nun is a good counterpoint to Dialogue of the Carmelites, my favourite story set in a convent. I think Jacques Rivette must have had Carmelites at least partly in mind, as it had been made into a movie only a few years earlier, and…

Everything is in disarray here, but I managed my two movie nights to spite the universe. I watched The Hellfire Club on Monday and First Spaceship on Venus two nights ago. I spent most of Hellfire Club struggling to figure out where I’d seen one of the actors. It was a young Compo!

I spent my movie nights for the last two weeks on El Cid, in which a dead Charlton Heston defends Valencia from Herbert Lom covered in Kiwi boot polish, and on Onibaba. These movies make conflicting arguments. One is a celebration of honour and duty to King, Country, and the Eternal, and the other is a rejection of…

I spent my two precious movie nights this week on The Beast Must Die, in which the world’s worst hunter hunts the world’s worst werewolf, and The Amazing Transparent Man, in which ...??? While staring blankly at the screen during The Amazing Transparent Man, one of the many arbitrary thoughts that crossed my mind…

I’m irritating everyone around me with my apocalyptic visions of the approaching cold. “It’s still August,” they say. “There’s another month of summer,” they say. “Just get a pair of electric socks,” they say.

I’m already resigned to the retreat of summer, the only season in which I feel comfortable, so I’m gathering acorns and insulating the nest for the coming nine months of winter. My mind is elsewhere, so for the next while, movie nights will just be whatever.

Yeah, Picard’s delivery is constantly saving the dialogue! I like him best when he’s irritated. He’s hilarious when he’s getting annoyed. He does irritated so well. Thankfully the Trek universe has no shortage of moron planets!

My summer with Jean Cocteau concluded these last two weeks, with The Eternal Return, Thomas the Imposter, Testament of Orpheus, and Villa Santo Sospir. The last two are roughly the same thing, statements of artistic purpose, one professionally made, the other a home movie. Eternal Return is Tristan and Isolde, a big…

Yeah, that is kind of how I feel about it now! I really like the show as a whole, but the actual individual episodes and irritating moments within episodes regularly test my patience. I think it says something about the cast, I like having spent time with these characters.

Thank you for saying that! I try to not give much of an opinion on things, since I’m not a good gauge of what’s good or bad. Belle et la Bete seems to me a good starting point, and its readily available. Even though its not Cocteau’s story, his style is well on display. As well as actors he uses again and again, and…

Thank Heavens for the Borg!  Just having them arrive kept me going, knowing things would eventually improve.

I had almost convinced myself the Space Irishmen episode didn’t actually happen but there it was again in the clips show. For sheer unwatchability, my choice of worst ever is the Piscopo/Space Rogue episode. I have never wasted an hour so thoroughly. No highs, no lows, not one moment of original thought, no nothing.…