by Julius Erbit
This cover is from 1928.
Artwork of the Day: War Stories (by Julius Erbit)
Music Video of the Day: Liberty Rap by Plain White Rappers (1986, dir by ????)
According to the comments on YouTube, this was filmed at the Media Arts Department at Jersey City State College. Also according to the video’s description, the woman in the video was named Gena Marel but the actual vocals were performed by Ellen Gannon Leeds.
Enjoy!
Film Review: The Dog Stars (dir. by Ridley Scott)
“This world fits you, Bangley. Wake up, defend, survive.” — Hig
Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars has the scenery of an epic and the energy of someone still deciding whether to get out of bed. There is something potentially compelling about that mismatch: the world has ended, the survivors are exhausted, and being alive no longer means having much to live for. But Scott leans so heavily into melancholy that the film gradually becomes underwhelming. Even when violence interrupts the quiet, it rarely shakes the movie out of its mournful drift. What should feel like a journey through a frightening new world often plays more like a post-apocalyptic travelog, with beautiful views and occasional armed interruptions.
Adapted by screenwriter Mark L. Smith from Peter Heller’s 2012 novel The Dog Stars, the film follows Hig, played by Jacob Elordi, a pilot and mechanic living in Colorado after a pandemic has wiped out most of humanity. His wife is gone, and his remaining companions are his dog, Jasper, and Bangley, a heavily armed former military man played by Josh Brolin. Together, they occupy an abandoned airfield, where practical survival has replaced anything resembling a normal life. Hig eventually follows the possibility of a radio transmission toward other survivors, hoping there might be something beyond the routine of scavenging and keeping strangers at gunpoint.
That setup gives the film a useful emotional conflict. Bangley considers their arrangement a success because they have food, shelter, weapons, and a defensible position. Hig sees the same situation as a slower version of dying. Brolin’s hardened survivor and Elordi’s wounded optimist represent two different responses to catastrophe: shut everyone out, or risk getting hurt by reaching for someone. The problem is that the movie makes this contrast clear fairly early and then struggles to deepen it. Hig’s dissatisfaction supplies a reason to leave, but Scott’s languid treatment makes the journey feel less urgent than the decision behind it ought to be.
Elordi fits the film’s mood, giving Hig the presence of someone carrying grief through every ordinary task. His youth also makes the character’s emotional exhaustion potentially affecting: this is a man who should have decades ahead of him but cannot imagine what those years would contain. Still, the movie relies too much on the appeal of a handsome, sorrowful figure moving through picturesque emptiness. There is a difference between showing a character who feels hollow and allowing that hollowness to become the film’s dominant dramatic quality. Too often, Hig’s sadness is the atmosphere rather than something the story meaningfully tests.
Visually, Scott certainly understands the attraction of a world that has started growing over humanity’s leftovers. The landscapes are expansive, and the production uses Italian locations to stand in for Colorado, with the Dolomites taking the place of the Rockies. Yet the beauty creates its own problem. The more inviting the countryside becomes, the harder the film has to work to make its underlying danger feel immediate. Scott keeps reaching for the scale of an epic, but scale alone cannot make a succession of lonely vistas emotionally expansive. Sometimes the apocalypse looks less like a catastrophe than an unusually exclusive outdoor getaway.
There is also the unavoidable resemblance to HBO’s The Last of Us. The overgrowth, decaying infrastructure, wary survivors, and uneasy movement through abandoned spaces belong to a familiar visual vocabulary by now. The Dog Stars seems eager to exploit the appeal of that look without finding enough fresh perspective to make it distinctive. That is an aesthetic criticism, not a claim that Scott literally copied the series; Heller’s novel has its own history. But the film arrives in a crowded genre, and its lush decay too often prompts recognition rather than discovery. You know the scenery, and you can usually guess the emotional weather.
The violence should complicate that prettiness, and occasionally it does. Raiders and hostile survivors puncture Hig’s wandering with reminders that an empty world is not necessarily a peaceful one. But these bursts of brutality often feel like interruptions rather than pressure building naturally inside the story. Scott alternates reflective stretches with sudden threats, yet the two modes do not consistently strengthen each other. The action briefly wakes the movie up, then the prevailing sadness settles back into place. Instead of making the quieter passages more tense, the attacks can feel like scheduled reminders that this is still supposed to be a dangerous survival thriller.
The arrival of Margaret Qualley’s Cima, a widow living with her protective father, played by Guy Pearce, gives the film a more intimate direction. Hig’s search stops being purely geographical and becomes a question of whether he can permit himself another attachment. There is a genuinely appealing idea here: after civilization collapses, rebuilding might begin with something as small as admitting what you miss. A scene involving remembered pleasures and the rediscovery of recorded music points toward a warmer, more specific film. These moments work because they give loss a recognizable shape rather than treating sadness as a general condition.
Unfortunately, the tenderness never fully resolves the film’s unevenness. Its late detour involving Allison Janney pushes toward a much stranger, more extravagant register, making the surrounding restraint feel even more conspicuous. A movie can certainly contain romance, grief, savage violence, and grotesque eccentricity, but those elements need a stronger dramatic connection than they receive here. Harry Gregson-Williams’s acoustic guitar-laden score reinforces the reflective mood, though that gentleness also contributes to the sense that the film is cushioning experiences that should leave sharper marks. Scott wants contemplation and danger to coexist; too often, they simply take turns.
What makes The Dog Stars frustrating is not its refusal to turn the apocalypse into nonstop combat. Its interest in companionship, grief, and the possibility of hope is welcome. The disappointment is that Scott gives those ideas such a uniformly subdued treatment that they lose force. This should be a story about discovering reasons to live in a world organized around staying alive. Instead, it too often settles for attractive desolation, familiar threats, and sadness presented as depth. There are touching moments and striking landscapes along the way, but the journey promises a greater emotional destination than it finally reaches.
Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 5.4 “Blue Hawaii: Part Two”
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Pacific Blue, a cop show that aired from 1996 to 2000 on the USA Network! It’s currently streaming everywhere, though I’m watching it on Tubi.
This week, things wrap up in Hawaii.
Episode 5.4 “Blue Hawaii: Part Two”
(Dir by Michael Levine, originally aired on August 8th, 1999)
In Hawaii, the California bike cops and the Hawaiian anti-drug task force decide to work together to get revenge for the death of Officer Peter Cho. “For Peter,” the bike cops say, obviously moved by the death of someone who they barely knew. They decide that the best way to take down drug dealer Michael Shane (Shawn Michaels) is with an undercover operation. Of course, the last time they tried to take down Shane with an undercover operation, Peter got shot. I swear, these idiots never learn anything. They’re kind of like the people in Michigan who are incapable of understanding that a senatorial candidate who spends the majority of his time voluntarily hanging out with anti-Semites is probably a rabid anti-Semite himself.
Luckily, Shane doesn’t learn anything either. When Cory presents herself as being a former bank employee who can hack into a bank and steal a lot of money, Shane falls for it. Or, at least, he does for a few minutes. Eventually, he figures out what’s going on and, after a tense standoff with the other cops, he makes a run for it. In one of the dumbest scenes I have ever seen, TC borrows a stranger’s bicycle so he can pedal it through the hotel while chasing Shane. I mean, I get that this is a show about bicycle cops but I’m starting to feel that TC uses bicycles the way that some people use a security blanket.
While that’s going on, Bobby considers staying in Hawaii with Claire (Kristanna Loken) but eventually, he decides not to because I imagine the only reason people were watching this show in 1999 was to see Mario Lopez chase after the bad guys. Just as with last week’s episode, this was clearly meant to be a pilot for a series that would have followed the Hawaiian cops. (Baywatch relocated to Hawaii around the same time.) As such, it’s not like Claire could have followed Bobby to California. So, I guess Bobby and Claire are done.
There is one odd moment where Bobby and Claire are talking about the undercover operation that got their colleague Peter killed. Bobby says that all he could think about was that, if anything happened to Claire, he’d never forgive himself. Claire says she was thinking the same thing about Bobby. Umm, hello? Peter’s dead! Remember all of that “For Peter” nonsense? I swear, bicyclists are so self-centered.
There’s another moment where TC gets a call from Monica, who is still in California. She informs him that there’s a guy running for mayor who says he’s going to eliminate the bicycle patrol because it’s a waste of money. I want to vote for him!
Song of the Day: Miracle of Love by Push
Today’s song of the day comes from the American Anthem soundtrack.
Steve Tevere has thrown a tripus!
When Hell Broke Loose (1958, directed by Kenneth G. Crane)
When the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, bookie Steve Borland (Charles Bronson) sees it as a business opportunity. He can make a lot of money off the men going to war, and his draft number is so low that he’s sure he’ll never have to serve himself. But when he gets arrested for fraud, he agrees to enlist to avoid jail. To his shock, the judge orders Steve to be taken straight to an enlistment station.
Serving overseas, Steve isn’t much of a soldier. No one trusts him or his work ethic. His superiors view him as an unpatriotic nuisance. When Steve meets and falls in love with a German woman named Ilsa (Violet Rensing), he discovers that her brother, Karl (Richard Jaeckel), is a member of Germany’s werewolf corps and that he’s planning something big. Can Steve get his superiors to believe him before Karl launches an assassination attempt on General Dwight D. Eisenhower?
Charles Bronson got an “Introducing” credit for this film, even though he had appeared in at least 25 films before When Hell Broke Loose was released. This was one of his first starring roles, but those looking forward to seeing Bronson in a tough combat role will be disappointed. There’s not much action in this film, at least not until the final five minutes. There is a lot of stock footage used in an unsuccessful attempt to make Bronson look like he’s in Europe instead of a Hollywood sound stage.
It’s definitely not one of Bronson’s best, but it is interesting to see Bronson playing a less-than-savory character here. Until he falls in love with Ilsa, Steve is lazy and refuses to put his life on the line. Bronson even smiles and jokes around in the film, but he’s only smiling because he thinks he’ll never have to serve in combat. Luckily, once he realizes that he has a chance to save Eisenhower, he becomes the Bronson that we all know and trust.
When Hell Broke Loose is forgettable, and I doubt anyone who watched it in 1958 realized they were watching someone who would eventually be one of the biggest stars in the world. But it’s a reminder that everyone started somewhere. No one can say that Charles Bronson didn’t pay his dues.
Film Review: Godzilla Minus One (dir. by Takashi Yamazaki)
“Everyone who survived the war is meant to live.” — Noriko
The most terrifying thing in Godzilla Minus One isn’t necessarily the monster’s roar. It’s the anticipation—the awful stretch of time when people realize something unstoppable is coming and there’s nowhere safe to go. Takashi Yamazaki’s 2023 film understands that dread, but its real trick is making the quieter scenes feel just as haunted. Godzilla threatens a country already struggling to recover from catastrophe. For the people trying to rebuild their lives, the creature brings another unbearable possibility: that everything they’ve survived, and everything they’ve managed to put back together, could disappear all over again. The destruction matters because the movie takes the time to show us what’s being destroyed.
The film follows Koichi Shikishima, a young kamikaze pilot who lands on Odo Island in the closing months of World War II, claiming his plane needs repairs. The mechanics find nothing wrong with it; he’s trying to escape a mission that demands his death. That night, Godzilla attacks the base. Koichi freezes when he has an opportunity to fire the plane’s guns, and only he and lead mechanic Sosaku Tachibana survive. When Koichi returns to a Tokyo devastated by firebombing, he carries that failure home like luggage he can’t put down. His parents are dead, his neighborhood is barely recognizable, and being alive feels less like good fortune than another reason for shame.
Ryunosuke Kamiki makes Koichi’s suffering convincing without turning him into an endlessly sympathetic victim. He can be distant, defensive, and frustratingly unwilling to accept the affection offered to him. There’s something painfully believable about that. His problem isn’t that nobody cares whether he lives; it’s that he can’t understand why they should. Kamiki gives the impression of someone who is constantly holding part of himself back, as though fully participating in life would mean forgetting the dead. Even in moments of relative comfort, Koichi seems prepared for happiness to be taken away—or to discover that accepting it was a mistake.
That discomfort becomes especially affecting when he shares his damaged home with Noriko, played by Minami Hamabe, and Akiko, an orphaned baby she has taken into her care. Their household begins as an improvised arrangement, but gradually develops the rhythms of a family. Yamazaki understands how much emotional weight ordinary routines can carry in a story like this. Having someone to feed, somewhere to sleep, and a reason to come home becomes meaningful precisely because those things are no longer guaranteed. Koichi helps create that security, yet struggles to recognize himself as someone entitled to enjoy it. He’s building a future while keeping himself at a distance from it.
The brilliance of Yamazaki’s script is that Godzilla isn’t Koichi’s only enemy. There’s also his guilt—the corrosive belief that because he lived when others died, he has forfeited the right to happiness. The film doesn’t treat that belief as evidence of hidden nobility. It shows how guilt can become a closed system, turning every good thing into another accusation. If Koichi finds work, companionship, or affection, he’s reminded that others never got the same chance. Survival stops being an event and becomes a debt he can never repay. That makes his struggle more complicated than simply finding the courage he lacked during the attack on Odo Island.
His experience also opens onto the larger emotional landscape of a nation’s survivors. The people around him are rebuilding in spaces defined as much by absence as by what remains. Homes, families, and entire neighborhoods have been broken apart, leaving the living to decide what can be recovered and what must be carried. Not everyone expresses Koichi’s particular shame, and that distinction matters. The film doesn’t need every survivor to respond identically for his anguish to have collective resonance. Instead, his story offers one way into the question that can haunt people after mass catastrophe: why did I get another day when so many others didn’t?
That question gives the film a particular connection to the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Koichi and Noriko aren’t identified as survivors of those atomic bombings; their immediate losses belong to Tokyo’s destruction. Still, the radioactive monster invites a broader reading that reaches beyond their individual experiences. Godzilla becomes a way of imagining the terror of catastrophic violence returning, even after people have begun trying to live with its consequences. The collective survivor’s guilt suggested here isn’t a claim that every Japanese person felt the same thing. It’s an acknowledgment that rebuilding a country also means living beside losses that reconstruction alone cannot repair.
The Ginza attack brings that historical shadow into terrifying focus. Godzilla’s heat ray produces a blinding explosion and devastating shock wave, making the sequence feel less like a conventional monster rampage than an eruption of atomic nightmare. The spectacle is overwhelming, but its emotional force comes from how suddenly a populated place becomes a landscape of destruction. Yamazaki makes the connection through imagery rather than stopping the movie to explain it. Godzilla’s radioactive origins preserve the atomic horror associated with the original Godzilla, while Koichi’s story brings us close to the burden left with the living. The catastrophe doesn’t end when the immediate violence stops.
It’s important, though, not to confuse survivor’s guilt with collective responsibility for Japan’s wartime aggression. Yamazaki concentrates on ordinary people’s suffering rather than offering a comprehensive historical reckoning. That gives the film a clear emotional focus, although it also leaves difficult parts of the larger picture outside the frame. Its strongest criticism concerns the treatment of human lives as expendable. Koichi has absorbed the idea that his death would have been more valuable than his continued existence. The movie asks us to recognize the cruelty of that assumption. A country cannot genuinely rebuild if its people are still being taught that dying is the best thing they have to offer.
What keeps these ideas from becoming abstract is the companionship Koichi finds among his mine-clearing crew. Their work is dangerous, but their conversations and contrasting personalities give the film room to relax. The humor doesn’t erase what they’ve experienced; it shows that grief and ordinary human silliness can occupy the same space. These men offer Koichi something different from either pity or judgment. They give him a place in a group, practical responsibilities, and relationships that aren’t entirely organized around his worst memories. Recovery starts to look less like a private breakthrough and more like the slow experience of being needed by other people.
Of course, none of this would work as well if Godzilla weren’t genuinely frightening. Yamazaki strips away the comfortable familiarity that can come with such a recognizable screen icon. This creature feels brutally indifferent to the people below him. His lumbering movement gives him weight, while his capacity for sudden destruction makes that apparent sluggishness deceptive. The sea sequences are particularly effective because they make the imbalance so clear: a small boat, a handful of men, and an enormous animal that renders their equipment almost laughably inadequate. The tension comes from that vulnerability, not simply from the size of the effects.
The visual work is impressive beyond its reported budget of less than $15 million, and the film’s Oscar for Best Visual Effects feels easy to understand. But “good for the money” is too small a compliment. What matters is how the effects serve the staging. Yamazaki keeps finding human perspectives that make Godzilla’s scale legible and frightening. The monster isn’t just a large object occupying the frame; he changes the meaning of everything around him. A boat becomes a fragile shell. A street becomes a trap. Buildings that might have suggested the return of normal life become reminders of how quickly security can vanish.
The eventual operation against Godzilla brings the film’s practical and emotional concerns together. With direct American intervention withheld amid tensions with the Soviet Union, civilian initiative and the experience of former naval personnel become crucial. Kenji Noda’s plan depends on cooperation, specialized knowledge, and people willing to trust one another under extraordinary pressure. Just as importantly, the film questions the assumption that taking on a dangerous task requires embracing death. Its emphasis on trying to bring people home gives the mission a different character from the wartime thinking that has damaged Koichi. Ingenuity matters, but so does refusing to treat participants as disposable.
The film isn’t flawless. Some speeches underline themes that the performances have already made clear, and the final operation asks for a generous attitude toward its logistics. Noriko also deserves more development beyond her importance to Koichi’s emotional journey. Her presence is affecting, but there are moments when the film seems more interested in what she represents to him than in her own interior life. Even so, its sincerity carries considerable weight. Yamazaki isn’t embarrassed by tenderness or afraid to let an emotional moment land without cushioning it with a joke. The movie earns much of its intensity by allowing us to care openly.
That’s what gives Godzilla Minus One its staying power. The monster supplies the terror, but the people give that terror meaning. Every fragile connection they form becomes an argument against the idea that the war has already decided the rest of their lives. Yamazaki delivers the destruction expected of a kaiju movie while making an ordinary future feel like its greatest imaginable prize: a home, a family, work to do, someone waiting for you. Beneath all the noise is a gentler, more difficult question: how do you honor the people who never came home without surrendering your own chance to live? The film is strongest when it gives that question room to linger.
Charles Bronson’s MAN WITH A CAMERA (TV Series) – S1, E9: Two Strings of Pearls!
This episode, which originally aired on December 12th, 1958, opens in Rome, where Mike Kovac (Charles Bronson) is about to catch a plane back to the United States. While there he bumps into a beautiful young lady named Betty (Audrey Dalton) with whom he had a brief love affair five years earlier. But now she’s going by the name Sharon Rodgers, and she’s with her uncle Jonathan (King Calder) and her sister Mona (Elaine Edwards). What’s worse, she pretends that she doesn’t know who Mike is at all. This doesn’t set well with our ace photographer, whose offended voiceover states “I don’t mind girls popping up out of my past, but I don’t like them changing their names and pretending they don’t know me anymore.” As Mike investigates the situation more closely, he comes to realize that good ole Uncle Jonathan is using the girls to pull a con on a jewelry dealer named Bartolo (Alberto Morin). While Mike still has feelings for Betty / Sharon, he can’t abide a thief, a cheat, or a con artist, so he’ll do whatever he has to do to bring them down.
“Two Strings of Pearls” is a love episode. There are scenes where Mike and Betty discuss their relationship all those years ago, including the wonderful times they shared on that Transatlantic Crossing, and then the heartbreak they both felt when Betty decided not to show up for their planned meeting at the Savoy Hotel in London. Mike, who has had a hard time getting over her, just wants to know why she chose not to meet him. Betty, who we now know really is named Sharon, can’t put her reasons into words other than she just seemed to know their lifestyles weren’t compatible. I have to admit that she’s correct since Kovac is a boy scout, and she’s a working cog in a con artist operation. Just look at how this operation plays out… once Mike learns that they’ve targeted the jeweler Bartolo, he gives Betty a quick chance to get out, and when she hesitates, he sets out to make sure they all go to prison. Score one for female intuition!
“Two Strings of Pearls” is a solid episode, but I must admit that I enjoy it more when the series focuses on solving crimes and battling bad guys than when it focuses on the regrets of lost love. While Bronson and Audrey Dalton work fine together as the former sweethearts, both of my favorite scenes involve Kovac’s interactions with Barnes, Uncle Jonathan’s henchman, played by veteran character actor Bert Remsen. First, Barnes pushes Kovac into a swimming pool at a lovely garden party they’re both attending. This doesn’t set well at all with our hero who gets really pissed. Later, during the episode’s exciting conclusion, Kovac squares the ledger when he chases Barnes across the airport runway and executes a perfect form tackle before he can get away with the money. Sadly, Kovac has to face Sharon one last time as she’s arrested and going to jail. Oh well, she made her choices!
Retro Television Review: Saved By The Bell: The New Class 2.25 and 2.26 “Goodbye Bayside”
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Saved By The Bell: The New Class, which ran on NBC from 1993 to 2o00. The show is currently on Prime.
This week, season 2 comes to a close with a two-part epiosde!
Episode 2.25 and 2.26 “Goodbye Bayside”
(Dir by Don Barnhart, originally aired on December 31st, 1994)
“Kids can make a difference!” is the message of the second season finale of Saved by the Bell: The New Class, and technically that is true. Right now, as I write this, a bunch of young people in Michigan are casting their first-ever vote for a 4’8″ anti-Semitic weasel. The kids can make a difference, but maybe they shouldn’t, because kids are stupid.
Luckily, the kids attending Bayside in 1994 weren’t spending all of their time listening to Nazi-adjacent Twitch streamers. When they said they wanted to make a difference, all they meant was that they wanted to save their school from J. Walter McMillan (Victor Brandt), the real estate tycoon who spent five million dollars to purchase the school from the school board. McMillan is planning on having the school torn down, and he’s even planning on doing it before prom! Mr. Belding is losing his job. Screech is going to have to do his work-study at another school. Megan will be going to private school, which would actually probably increase her chances of getting into a good college — so yay, Megan! Meanwhile, Bobby, Brian, and Lindsay will be transferring to Lincoln High. (Given that Brian is supposedly a foreign-exchange student, shouldn’t he be going back to Switzerland at some point?) Rachel and Tommy D are going to Valley. “I don’t talk to people from Valley!” Tommy says. “Now I can’t even talk to myself!”
(Oh, Jonathan Angel. So often your performance as Tommy D was the sole pleasure to be found on this show.)
The kids decide it’s time to protest! It’s also apparently time for Screech to pretend to be an attorney so he can sabotage the deal. (I guess James the Actor finally realized it was kind of dumb to spend all of his time hanging out with a bunch of stupid high school kids.) This is what drives me crazy about Saved by the Bell: The New Class. There is no reason to believe that Screech could successfully pretend to be a lawyer. But that’s what the Gang goes with! Screech introduces himself to the School Board as “I.M. Slick, attorney,” and no one notices that he looks and sounds exactly like Belding’s assistant. Then Screech introduces himself to McMillan as “I.M. Slicker, attorney,” and it doesn’t occur to the very wealthy and very connected McMillan that he’s never heard of this guy before. Mr. Belding eventually discovers what Screech is up to and he puts a stop to it.
However, Mr. Belding doesn’t say anything when Rachel pretends to be the school nurse and tells McMillan that the entire school is under quarantine due to a measles outbreak. McMillan says that he’ll hold off on demolishing the school until the measles outbreak has ended. To me, it seems like the perfect time to demolish the school would be during a measles outbreak, but what do I know. Belding and the kids discover that McMillan went to Bayside in the ’50s, so they decide to throw a 1950s prom to try to convince McMillan to spare the school. Belding and Screech both dress up as Elvis.
McMillan comes to the prom but he’s not impressed — and really, why should he be? Slater (Mario Lopez) and Lisa Turtle (Lark Voorhies) both suddenly walk into the gym and demand that McMillan not tear down the school. The audience goes wild. Then Sandy Bennett (Aileen Fitzpatrick) shows up. Sandy was once the girl on whom teenage McMillan had a crush. Seeing Sandy is enough to get McMillan to change his mind about a five-million-dollar business deal. Sandy says that her nephew insisted that she had to save Bayside. Who is her nephew? A long-haired Zack Morris (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) steps into the gym and the audience goes wild again.
And it is nice to see Mario Lopez, Lark Voorhies, and Mark-Paul Gosselaar back at Bayside. It’s also interesting to note that none of them seem to be particularly enthused about seeing Dustin Diamond again. (Gosselaar has said that shooting this episode was the last time he ever saw Diamond.)
Bayside is saved! Season two comes to an end with a two-parter that was dumb but crowd-pleasing. (Slater will make at least one more New Class appearance. This episode was it for Zack and Lisa until the short-lived Peacock revival.) This episode was also the final episode for Christian Oliver, Spankee Rodgers, and Bianca Lawson. Next week, when we start season three, Brian, Bobby, and Megan will all be gone and they’ll never be mentioned again. We can assume Brian went back to Switzerland and Megan probably did go to that private school. As for Bobby, who knows? What I can tell you is that the season three cast will feature some of the actors and characters who are the most regularly associated with Saved by the Bell: The New Class.
For now, let’s just be happy that Bayside High School has been saved… again.
Bradley’s Book Reviews looks at BRONSON’S LOOSE and BRONSON’S LOOSE AGAIN, by Paul Talbot!
Charles Bronson was an extremely private man. Based on that, there’s never been an authorized biography of the legendary tough guy to give us real insight into the man behind the movies. As such, us fans have been left to piece together as much as we can about him through his rare interviews, the books written by Jill Ireland (Life Wish and Life Lines), and the stories shared by those who knew him and worked with him.
I remember feeling like I had found a lost treasure back in 2006 when I was browsing Amazon and came across, “Bronson’s Loose! The Making of the Death Wish Films” by author Paul Talbot. I immediately ordered the book and dove right in when it arrived on my doorstep a few days later. The book serves as a behind the scenes pass to the sets of all five of the Death Wish films. Talbot had been able to secure a key interview with Director Michael Winner, as well as many of the actors and crew in each of the films. I remember being so fascinated as I felt like I was truly learning about my favorite actor for the first time from those who worked with him. The book paints an interesting portrait of a complicated man, who seemed to draw such diverse reactions depending on who’s being interviewed.
And then a decade later, Talbot released a second book, “Bronson’s Loose Again! On the Set with Charles Bronson.” This book took the format of the first one and added chapters on many of Bronson’s other films, going as far back as HARD TIMES, and then carrying all the way through to his final TV films with the FAMILY OF COPS series. Once again, Talbot had secured key interviews with various actors across films, including Robert F. Lyons, Jan Gan Boyd, and so many others. Once again, it’s a treasure for those of us looking for more information.
Of course, if you have any interest in Charles Bronson, the actors and directors he worked with, or behind-the-scenes access to movie sets, these books are must haves. I’ll read them through completely from time to time just for fun, and they’re also an invaluable resource if I want to know more about specific movies.
And to top all of this off, I was able to meet Paul Talbot and get personally autographed versions of these books back in 2022 at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater. Paul is a real gentleman, and even though I may have come across as a little too star struck, he couldn’t have been more gracious to me and my wife!
