Monthly Archives: November 2017

Art Profile: The Many Adventures of Steve Holland

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Who was Steve Holland?

He was one of the most familiar faces in the world of the pulps.  An actor and a model, Holland’s rugged good looks inspired a countless number of magazine and paperback covers.  Over the course of his career, Holland served as the model for everyone from tough private investigators to prehistoric warriors to futuristic adventurers to suburban husbands.

Check out just a few of the adventures of Steve Holland below:

by David Bergen

by James Elliott Bama

by George Wilson

by Jack Faragasso

by Stanley Borack

by Mort Kunstler

by Robert Maguire

by Robert Maguire

by Stanley Borack

by Victor Prezio

Music Video of the Day: Something by Lasgo (2001, directed by Alex Diezinger)

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Lisa’s off the grid tonight so I’m filling in with the today’s music video.  Before she left, she told me to “just pick something.”

Can you tell where this is heading?

Most of this video takes place at a train station.  As a photographer, I love train stations.  Train stations are a romantic link to the past and you’re less likely to get in trouble for taking pictures near a train station than you are near an airport.

Unfortunately, I don’t live near any romantic train stations.  Here’s the closest thing that we have to a romantic train station down here:

It’s a nice station and I’ve taken some good pictures there but there’s nothing really romantic about it.

That’s why I like the train station in this video.  According to Wikipedia, this was filmed at a station in Prague.  It looks like it would be a great place to hang out with my camera and people watch. That would be something!

Enjoy!

A Movie A Day #321: The Baby Doll Murders (1993, directed by Paul Leder)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Naked women are turning up murdered in Los Angeles.  The only clue that the crimes are connected: the baby doll that is left beside each body.  Can detectives Louis (Jeff Kober) and Larry (Bobby Di Cicco) solve the case while also dealing with issues in their own private life?  Louis’s girlfriend (Melanie Smith) is worried that Louis is becoming obsessed with is work and that he is not willing to commit to their relationship. Larry is upset because he suspects his wife is keeping a secret from him.  Their chief (John Saxon) wishes they would just solve the case, especially when the killer targets his own daughter.  The problem is that Louis is so driven and prone to violence that he has managed to get himself suspended from the force.  Why does that always happen to good cops?

The Baby Doll Murders is a straight-to-video thriller that used to be popular on cable, back in the Skinemax days.  Probably the most memorable thing about the film is the absurd lengths it goes to find an excuse for every woman in the film to have at least one topless scene before being attacked by the baby doll murderer.  Otherwise, it is a predictable movie with a better than average cast.  A talented character actor, Jeff Kober gets a rare lead role here and Bobby Di Cicco has some good moments as his neurotic partner.  Any film that features John Saxon as an authority figure can not be considered a total loss.  Saxon does not get much screen time but he does get all of the best lines.  When Kober theorizes that the murderer might have a political agenda, Saxon snaps back, “Now, wait a minute, Louis,” a lot of people have the same beliefs as the baby doll murderer and, “not all of them are killers!”  Saxon delivers his lines like a champ.

Artwork of the Day: America 3000

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

America!

Back toe beginning?  Of just the country or of humanity itself?  Judging from this poster, it looks like both.  Are there any post-nuke adventures that aren’t outrageous?  It’s a legitimate question, I think.

Anyway, this is a poster for a film that came out in 1989.

Get A Load Of This “Malarkey”

Posted on by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)'s avatarRyan C.'s Four Color Apocalypse

To the extent that Filipino cartoonist November Garcia is a “known quantity” in  American small-press comics, it’s for her Hic And Hoc-published book Foggy Notions from a couple of years back, but now that John Porcellino is stocking the first two issues of her self-published autobio series Malarkey at Spit And A Half, I’m sincerely hoping that a lot more attention is in store for her. 2017 was a breakthrough year for the likes of Emil Ferris, Ben Passmore, Eric Kostiuk Williams, Katie Skelly, and other formerly-emerging talents — if I had to place a wager on the first person to “break through” in 2018, it could very well be Garcia.

I confess to not being terribly “plugged in” to the contemporary cartooning scene in the Philippines, but I know that the country’s rich tradition of woodcut art heavily informed the work of such “Big Two” luminaries as Alfredo Alcala…

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A Movie A Day #320: Dangerously Close (1986, directed by Albert Pyun)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Vista Verde, an exclusive suburban high school in California, has a problem.  Some of the students have a bad attitude.  Some of them are experimenting with drugs.  Graffiti is showing up all over the school.  What better way to return peace to Vista Verde than for a bunch of WASPy rich kids and other jocks to organize into a secret vigilante force?  The headmaster thinks that it’s a great idea and soon “The Sentinels” are holding mock trials and shooting the other students with paintball guns.  One bad kid even turns up dead.  Graffiti is no joke.

The leader of the Sentinels is a rich kid named Randy (John Stockwell, who also co-wrote the script).  Randy knows the importance of good PR so he befriend the editor of the school newspaper, Donny (J. Eddie Peck).  Donny may not be rich but, because of his amazing journalism skills, he has been allowed to attend Vista Verde as a magnet student.  At first, Donny is skeptical of The Sentinels but he soon finds himself seduced by not only Randy’s wealthy lifestyle but also by Randy’s beautiful girlfriend (Carey Lowell).  Meanwhile, Donny’s friend Krooger (Bradford Bancroft) not only listens to punk music but also has a mohawk so he naturally becomes the latest target of the Sentinels.

A teen film with a conscience, Dangerously Close was one of the better films to come out of the Cannon Group in the mid-80s.  The script is smarter than the average 80s teen film and Albert Pyun’s slick direction captures the appeal of being young and rich in the suburbs.  Stockwell, Peck, and Lowell all give better than average performances  and there is actually some unexpected depth to Stockwell and Peck’s friendship.  Stockwell does not play Randy as just being a typical rich villain.  Instead, he is someone who thinks he’s doing the right thing even when he’s not.

The cast is full of faces that will be familiar to anyone who has ever been a fan of 80s high school films.  Keep an eye out for Thom Matthews, Don Michael Paul, Gerard Christopher, Miguel Nunez, Jr., and DeeDee Pfeiffer, all doing their part to keep the halls of Vista Verde safe.

 

Book Review: WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE CASABLANCA by Noah Isenberg (W.W. Norton 2017)

Posted on by gary loggins

gary loggins's avatarcracked rear viewer

CASABLANCA was released seventy-five years ago today, and The Cult of Casablanca is stronger than ever! The film resonates with young and old alike in its themes of lost love, redemption, and answering to a higher moral authority. Noah Isenberg’s latest book, WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE CASABLANCA: THE LIFE, LEGEND, AND AFTERLIFE OF HOLLYWOOD’S MOST BELOVED MOVIE, takes a look behind the Silver Screen to track the history of the film  from its beginnings through its continuing popularity today.

Isenberg, a professor of film studies at The New School and author of the definitive EDGAR G. ULMER: A FILMMAKER AT THE MARGINS (2014), gives the reader a three-pronged look at the film. In the first, he meticulously delineates the screenplay’s roots, from its birth as the play Everybody Comes to Rick’s by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, to the adaptation by brothers Julius and Philip Epstein, to the contributions of writers…

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Artwork of the Day: You Will Always Have A Full House When You Show Fantomas!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I was doing some research on the history of French cinema for an upcoming series of reviews and I came across this charming little advertisement from 1916. I guess this was sent to theater owners to encourage them to show Fantomas.

Would  I show Fantomas is I got this in the mail?  I sure would!  I’d even hire someone to dress up like Fantomas and deal cards outside the theater.  If only I had been born 100 years earlier…