Daily Archives: August 2, 2020

Lisa’s Week In Review: 7/27/20 — 8/2/20

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The important thing, for me, is that I got my car inspected and paid the registration fee this week.  I hate having to do stuff like that and I resent the inconvenience.  But I got it done and now …. well, now, I guess I’ll just spend the rest of 2020 sitting on my couch and ordering stuff off of Amazon.

Seriously, the world’s just kind of standing still right now.

Anyway, here’s what I watched and read this week!

Films I Watched:

  1. Adopted in Danger (2020)
  2. Baby Monitor Murders (2020)
  3. The Black Castle (1952)
  4. The Comic (1969)
  5. The Crazies (2010)
  6. Deadly Daughter Switch (2020)
  7. The Encounter (2010)
  8. Engaged to a Psycho (2020)
  9. Enter Laughing (1967)
  10. Gotti (2018)
  11. Radioactive (2020)
  12. The Thin Man (1934)
  13. Tread (2020)
  14. The World, The Flesh, and The Devil (1959)

Television Shows I Watched:

  1. 9-1-1
  2. 9-1-1: Lone Star
  3. The Alienist
  4. The Bachelor: The Greatest Seasons Ever!
  5. Bar Rescue
  6. Community
  7. Cults and Extreme Beliefs
  8. Daily Mail TV
  9. Degrassi
  10. Dr. Phil
  11. Dragnet
  12. Evil Lives Here
  13. Friends
  14. Ghost Whisperer
  15. Homicide City
  16. It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia
  17. It’s a Living
  18. The Love Boat
  19. The Office
  20. Paranormal Survivor
  21. The Powers of Matthew Star
  22. Saved By The Bell
  23. Seinfeld
  24. The Simpsons
  25. Storage Wars

Books I Read:

  1. Go Ask Alice (1971) by “Anonymous”

Music To Which I Listened:

  1. Above & Beyond
  2. Adi Ulmansky
  3. Afrojack
  4. Alvin Risk
  5. Amy Winehouse
  6. Armin Van Buuren
  7. Avici
  8. BANKS
  9. Big Data
  10. Blanck Mass
  11. Britney Spears
  12. Cage the Elephant
  13. Calvin Harris
  14. The Chemical Brothers
  15. The Correspondents
  16. The Crystal Method
  17. Daft Punk
  18. deadmau5
  19. Dillon Francis
  20. DJ Snake
  21. Ennio Morricone
  22. Goblin
  23. Gwen Stefani
  24. HAIM
  25. Hardwell
  26. I DON’T KNOW HOW THEY FOUND ME BUT THEY DID
  27. Icona Pop
  28. The Interrupters
  29. Jessica Simpson
  30. Joywave
  31. Kedr Livanskiy
  32. Kid Rock
  33. Lynard Skynard
  34. Neon Indian
  35. Robyn Adele Anderson
  36. Spice Girls
  37. Steve Aoki
  38. Swedish House Mafia
  39. Taylor Swift
  40. Tove Lo
  41. UPSAHL
  42. Warren Zevon
  43. Zedd

Our Continuing Tribute to Moricone:

  1. Chi Mai (various)
  2. La Resa (The Big Gundown)
  3. Main Title Theme (Red Sonja)
  4. The Main Theme From The Cat O’Nine Tails (The Cat O’Nine Tails)
  5. Deep Down (Danger Diabolik!)
  6. The Main Theme From Autopsy (Autopsy)
  7. Main Theme From Investigation Of A Citizen Above Suspicion (Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion)

Links From Last Week:

  1. Why Comic-Con ‘At Home’ Was a Bust
  2. Have You Been ‘Wokefished’ While Dating? Here’s How to Tell
  3. 6 people who don’t deserve their Emmy nominations this year — sorry
  4. 13 people who didn’t get an Emmy nomination this year, but should have
  5. Emmys 2020 Nominations: 12 Biggest Snubs and Surprises
  6. Emmy nominations 2020: 10 surprises and snubs
  7. Gianni Russo Tells The Story Of Getting Kidnapped By Pablo Escobar After Murdering His Underboss In A Las Vegas Restaurant
  8. Buy physical media
  9. RIP, WIlford Brimley, funnier than you might think

News From Last Week:

  1. Gotham under attack: ‘Joker’ spotted jet-skiing on the East River
  2. ‘Upstream Color’ Director Shane Carruth Accused of Abusing Ex-Girlfriend
  3. ESPN investigation finds coaches at NBA China academies complained of player abuse, lack of schooling
  4. Taylor Swift Remains Silent as Fans Doxx and Harass Music Critic Over ‘Folklore’ Review
  5. Dozens Of Former “Ellen Show” Employees Say Executive Producers Engaged In Rampant Sexual Misconduct And Harassment
  6. ‘This Is a Real Kick in the Shorts’: Small-Town Theaters Owners React to AMC’s VOD Pact With Universal
  7. NBC Insiders Say Entertainment Boss Fostered Toxic Culture, Under Investigation
  8. Alan Parker, director of ‘Midnight Express’ and ‘Mississippi Burning,’ dies at 76

Links From The Site:

  1. Jeff reviewed The Bounty Man, The Love War, Blood River, Cave-in!, Die Watching, Stranger On My Land, and Zapped!  He shared music videos from The KLF and Debbie Harry and he paid tribute to Wilford Brimley!
  2. Erin shared the covers of Fight Stories, along with: The Cautious Amorist, Tropical Spitfire, South Sea Stories, Point Venus, Jewel of the Java Sea, The Tracks, and Flame Goddess!
  3. Ryan reviewed Questions of Molten Motion, Dress Rehearsal, and Detective Double Digest!
  4. I shared music videos from BANKS, The Devil’s Daughters, The Hillbilly Moon Explosion, Los Bitchos, and Dum Dum Girls.  I shared the Emmy nominations and I paid tribute to Richard Linklater and Mario Bava.  I shared a scene from Danger Diabolik!  I shared my Oscar predictions for July!  I shared trailers for After We Collided, Kajillionarie, and Honest Thief!  I reviewed Her Deadly Groom, Deadly Daughter Switch, Gotti, The Powers of Matthew Star, Engaged to a Psycho, The Baby Monitor Murders, The Comic, Tread, and Adopted in Danger!

More From Us:

  1. Ryan has a patreon!  You should consider subscribing!
  2. On her photography site, Erin shared: 3 Trees, Garden Statue, Green Sky, Street, Blue, To The Side, and Path to Somewhere!
  3. On my music site, I shared songs from BANKS, Saint Motel, I DON’T KNOW HOW THEY FOUND ME BUT THEY DID, The Correspondents, The Interrupters, Robyn Adele Anderson, and Amy Winehouse!

Want to check out last week?  Click here!

The Crazies (1973, dir by George Romero)

Zapped! (1982, directed by Robert J. Rosenthal)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In this painfully dumb high school comedy, Scott Baio is Barney, a teen scientist who experiments on lab mice and grows specially modified orchids for his high school’s principal, Walter Coolidge (Robert Mandan, who played a lot of high school principals back in the day).  When there’s an accident in the lab, Barney develops telekinetic powers.  Barney then falls in love with the class president, Bernadette (Felice Schachter), while his best friend Peyton (Willie Aames) pursues the beautiful but vain Jane (Heather Thomas).  Barney uses his powers to make a ventriloquist act as if it’s possessed and to help Peyton rig a casino-themed frat party.  Meanwhile, Scatman Crothers plays the school’s baseball coach and has a long scene where he gets high and imagines that he’s riding a bicycle with Albert Einstein.  That’s actually kind of cool.

Zapped! is a movie where Scott Baio magically gains the power to move things with his mind and yet the most implausible part of the movie is the idea of Willie Aames being the most popular student at the high school.  Heather Thomas is believable as a cheerleader and Felice Schachter is perfectly cast as the brainy class president.  Even Scott Baio is not terrible as Barney.  But then Willie Aames shows up and we find out that he’s supposed to be a chick magnet and it becomes impossible for those watching to continue to suspend their disbelief.

Not much really happens in Zapped!  Even after he gets his powers, Barney is frustratingly passive character who just does whatever Peyton tells him to do.  Barney uses his powers to help Peyton show up Jane’s college boyfriend and he uses his powers to help Peyton win games at the school carnival and then Barney uses his powers to help out Peyton when Jane’s boyfriend tries to beat him up.  Maybe Barney needs to get new friends.  The only time Barney uses his powers for himself is when he’s playing baseball and he makes the ball stop in mid-air so that he can hit it.  Somehow, no one watching the game seems to find it strange that the baseball stops in mid-air.  The movie ends with a take on Carrie.  Barney uses his powers to blow off everyone’s clothes at prom.  It’s all to help Peyton, of course.

Zapped! supposedly has a cult following, probably composed of people who were 13 when they first saw it and who only remember the sweater scene with Heather Thomas and the final prom scene.  (Or they’re remembering the famous poster, which is a lot more fun than anything that actually happens in the movie.)  Other than that, this is one of the most boring films ever made.  Perhaps the only interesting thing about the movie is that Heather Thomas sued the production when they failed to acknowledge that a body double was used for Jane’s nude scenes.

On a positive note, Zapped! did give us this classic Onion headline:

 

Song of the Day: Main Theme From An Investigation Of A Citizen Above Suspicion by Ennio Morricone

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Well, we’re starting in on the final week of our tribute to Ennio Morricone so today, I want to share one of his most important compositions.

The 1970 film, Investigation Of A Citizen About Suspicion, was a dark satire about police corruption and murder in Italy.  It was not only critically acclaimed but it also won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.  (That award is now known as Best International Film.)  The success of this film showed that Morricone was more than just a composer of epic Western themes and it also introduced his music to a whole new group of filmgoers.

Here is Morricone’s Main Theme From Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion:

Previous Entries In Our Tribute To Morricone:

  1. Deborah’s Theme (Once Upon A Time In America)
  2. Violaznioe Violenza (Hitch-Hike)
  3. Come Un Madrigale (Four Flies on Grey Velvet)
  4. Il Grande Silenzio (The Great Silence)
  5. The Strength of the Righteous (The Untouchables)
  6. So Alone (What Have You Done To Solange?)
  7. The Main Theme From The Mission (The Mission)
  8. The Return (Days of Heaven)
  9. Man With A Harmonic (Once Upon A Time In The West)
  10. The Ecstasy of Gold (The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly)
  11. The Main Theme From The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly)
  12. Regan’s Theme (The Exorcist II: The Heretic)
  13. Desolation (The Thing)
  14. The Legend of the Pianist (The Legend of 1900)
  15. Theme From Frantic (Frantic)
  16. La Lucertola (Lizard In A Woman’s Skin)
  17. Spasmodicamente (Spasmo)
  18. The Theme From The Stendhal Syndrome (The Stendhal Syndrome)
  19. My Name Is Nobody (My Name Is Nobody)
  20. Piume di Cristallo (The Bird With The Crystal Plumage)
  21. For Love One Can Die (D’amore si muore)
  22. Chi Mai (various)
  23. La Resa (The Big Gundown)
  24. Main Title Theme (Red Sonja)
  25. The Main Theme From The Cat O’Nine Tails (The Cat O’Nine Tails)
  26. Deep Down (Danger Diabolik!)
  27. Main Theme From Autopsy (Autopsy)

Music Video Of The Day: Rush Rush by Debbie Harry (1983, directed by ????)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Remember when we used to drive around Liberty City listening to this song?

Even though Rush Rush may be best known to some for its use in Grand Theft Auto III, it was actually first recorded for the soundtrack of Scarface.  This was Debbie Harry’s second collaboration with producer Giorgio Moroder.  Their first collaboration was Call Me, which shot to number one on the charts.  Rush Rush was slightly less popular, peaking at #105 in the U.S.

The video features people watching and reacting to footage of Debbie Harry.  Interestingly enough, this video came out around the same time as David Cronenberg’s Videodrome, which featured James Woods doing the same thing.

Enjoy!