Yearly Archives: 2022

Monday Live Tweet Alert: Join Us For Downdraft and Rollerball!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in hosting a few weekly live tweets on twitter.  I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie!  Every week, we get together.  We watch a movie.  We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, for #MondayActionMovie, we are watching 1996’s Downdraft!  Selected and hosted by @RevMagdalen, Downdraft stars Vincent Spano and Kate Vernon in a story about computers and the damage that they do!  While the trailer below is in German, the film itself is Canadian.  That’s how you know it’s going to be good!

Following #MondayActionMovie, I will be filling in for my friends Brad and Sierra (who are on vacation this week) and guest hosting the #MondayMuggers live tweet.  We will be watching the original Rollerball, starring the great James Caan as a future athlete who is forced to choose between the comfort of selling out or the freedom of …. well, freedom.  It’s a classic sci-fi film, one that is more relevant today than ever.  We start at 10 pm et.  Here’s the trailer:

It should be fun and I invite all of you to join in.  If you want to join us, just hop onto twitter, start Downdraft at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag!  Then, at 10 pm et, start Rollerball and use the #MondayMuggers hashtag!  I’ll be there tweeting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well.  It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.  And reviews of these films will probably end up on this site at some point this week.

Downdraft can be found on YouTube while Rollerball is available on both Prime and Tubi!

Enjoy!

The Smashing Covers Of Smashing Detective Stories

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Smashing Detective Stories was a pulp detective magazine that ran from 1951 to 1956.  It featured the the usual crime-smashing stories of detectives and criminals but what was really smashing about Smashing Detective Stories were the covers.  The covers were about as pulpy as you can get!

Below is a sampling of the covers of Smashing Detective Stories.  For all but one of them, the artist is unknown.  The cover for the September, 1954 issue has been attributed to Norman Saunders and it would not surprise me if he was responsible for at least some of the others as well.

March, 1951

June, 1951

December, 1951

September, 1952

March, 1953

June, 1953

1954, March

September, 1954, by Norman Saunders

December, 1954

November, 1955

January, 1956

May, 1956

July, 1956

The Ultimate Labor Day Scene

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy and the rest of the Peanuts gang never did a special about Labor Day.  I’m sure that if they had, it would have been the only special that we would have ever needed to understand this holiday.  It would have been a September perennial, as important to the year as It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and A Charlie Brown Christmas.  Unfortunately, we never got It’s The Labor Beagle, Charlie Brown and Linus never got to explain the turn meaning of Labor Day.

Instead, the ultimate Labor Day scene comes from one of my favorite movies, Office Space.  If you’ve ever worked in an office, you can relate to this scene.

Happy Labor Day!

Music Video of the Day: Take This Job And Shove It by Dead Kennedys (1984, directed by ????)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

If this song isn’t the unofficial anthem on Labor Day, it should be.

Of course, Take This Job And Shove It is best known as a country song.  The most popular version of the song was performed by Johnny Paycheck and it spoke to the frustrations of everyone who was stuck in a bad job and who dreamed of just telling the foreman or the shift manager to go to Hell.  The song was Paycheck’s biggest hit and it was subsequently performed by many artists, some country and some not.  Dead Kennedys covered the song and, as seen in this 1984 performance at Olympics Auditorium, they added their own spin to the song.

Enjoy!

Lisa Marie’s Week In Review: 8/29/22 — 9/04/22

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

There I was, relaxing out by my uncle’s pool in my American flag bikini when, suddenly, the biggest and most violent thunderstorm in the world came along and I had to go running inside while thunder rumbled and lightning flashed all around me.  It was a two and a half minute run and I still ended up getting totally soaked.

That’s how my Labor Day weekend is going!

But no matter.  It’s been a good week.  This week, I finally started posting my Retro Television Reviews, which is something that I’ve been meaning to do for several months now.  We’ll see how it goes!  And, of course, October is right around the corner!  I know I’ve been saying this a lot but I just can’t wait for this year’s Horrorthon!

Here’s what I watched, read, and listened to this week!

Films I Watched:

  1. Await Further Instructions (2018)
  2. Breakout (1975)
  3. The Burning (1981)
  4. City Killer (1984)
  5. Elvis (2022)
  6. Fantasy Island (1977)
  7. Fistful of Yen (1977)
  8. Flesh Feast (1970)
  9. Gong Shou Dao (2017)
  10. Kung Fury (2015)
  11. Never Surrender: A Galaxy Quest Documentary (2019)
  12. Zero Tolerance (1994)

Television Shows I Watched:

  1. The Bachelorette
  2. Big Brother
  3. California Dreams
  4. The Challenge
  5. City Guys
  6. Dynaman
  7. Hang Time
  8. Inspector Lewis
  9. The Love Boat
  10. Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butt-Head
  11. Night Flight
  12. The Office
  13. One World

Books I Read:

  1. Brightness Falls (1992) by Jay McInerney
  2. The Good Life (2006) by Jay McInerney

Music To Which I Listened:

  1. Adi Ulmansky
  2. Ava Max
  3. Avril Lavigne
  4. Big Data
  5. The Black Keys
  6. Britney Spears
  7. The Chemical Brothers
  8. Coldplay
  9. Commodores
  10. Falco
  11. Imagine Dragons
  12. Kid Rock
  13. The Killers
  14. Lindsay Lohan
  15. Lorde
  16. Lynard Skynard
  17. Moby
  18. Muse
  19. Panic! At the Disco
  20. Peter Schilling
  21. Saint Motel
  22. Taylor Swift
  23. Tove Lo
  24. White Stripes

Trailers:

  1. Dead For A Dollar
  2. Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey
  3. The Son
  4. Weird

Live Tweets:

  1. Zero Tolerance
  2. Never Surrender: A Galaxy Quest Documentary
  3. Await Further Instructions

News From Last Week:

  1. Actress and model Charlbi Dean Dies at 32
  2. Literary Agent Sterling Lord Dies at 102
  3. Underground artist Diane Noomin Dies At 75
  4. Months after that slap, Chris Rock says he turned down hosting the Oscars next year
  5. Brendan Gleeson Joins Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga in ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’
  6. Cate Blanchett’s ‘Tár’ Earns Ecstatic 6-Minute Standing Ovation in Venice, Generating Instant Oscar Buzz
  7. Alejandro G. Iñárritu Gets Teary-Eyed as Three-Hour ‘Bardo’ Nabs Four-Minute Standing Ovation in Venice
  8. Lindsay Lohan to Star in Netflix Rom-Com ‘Irish Wish’
  9. Rob Schneider Says Kate McKinnon’s Mournful Rendition of ‘Hallelujah’ as Hillary Clinton Is When He Realized SNL Was ‘Over’

Links From Last Week:

  1. Insert Name Minifest 2022
  2. The Last Temptation Of Tedward : Josh Pettinger’s “Power Wash”
  3. Structurally Sound : David Craig’s “Curse Of Brick”
  4. The Inspiring “Shawshank Redemption!” Stephen King’s Novella Is Voted #3 Greatest Film Ever!
  5. The World’s Common Tater’s Week in Books, Movies, and TV 9/2/22
  6. A Note to Readers: Full Disclosure (Awards Daily)
  7. Shane Gillis is going places

Links From The Site:

  1. I reviewed City Killer and episodes of California Dreams, One World, and City Guys!  I also reviewed Toomorrow, Elvis and Book Him!
  2. I shared a music video from Avril Lavigne and my week television!  I also shared an AMV of the Day!  I shared 12 Things that I’m Looking Forward to September and my August Oscar Predictions!  I shared a scene from The French Connection!
  3. Leonard shared the trailers for Weird and the new Winnie the Pooh horror film!
  4. Jeff shared music videos from Billy Idol, Weird Al Yankovic, Midnight Moscow, Queensryche, Rush, and Metallica!
  5. Erin shared Cosmic Science Fiction, Fantastic Adventures, The Body Snatchers, Second Ending, The Back Yard On A September Day, Del’s Charcoal Burgers, A Place to Hide, and Standing Behind The Waterfall!  She also shared the pin-up art of Billy DeVorss!

More From Us:

  1. At her photography site, Erin shared Squirrel, Sunset, Glitz, Clouds 5, Clouds 6, Clouds 7, and Clouds 8!
  2. At Pop Politics, Jeff shared Decline, About Alaska, RIP Mikhail Gorbachev, Frankenstein’s Monster Meets Spider-Man, and Happy Birthday Elliott Gould!
  3. At my music site, I shared songs from Muse, The Killers, The Black Keys, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Coldplay, and Avril Lavigne!
  4. I wrote about Big Brother for the Big Brother Blog!
  5. At Reality TV Chat Blog, I shared Week 8 Veto Meeting Results, Set In Stone, It’s Time To Open Up The Diary Room For Week 8, About Tonight’s Eviction, Week 9 Nominations, and Week 9 Veto Results!
  6. At my online dream journal, I shared Last Night’s Searching A Warehouse with Larisa And Her Man Dream, Last Night’s Interrupted Party Dream, Last Night’s Fragment of a Dream, Last Night’s Watching A Movie While In The Shower Dream, Last Night’s Invasion of the Cats Dream, Last Night’s Weird Trivia Dream, and Last Night’s Dance Class Dream!  Feel free to let me know what it all means!
  7. At SyFy Designs, I shared Get Out There and Celebrate and Tired, I Am!
  8. For Horror Critic, I reviewed The Day Time Ended!

Want to see what I did last week?  Click here!

Retro Television Review: City Killer (dir by Robert Michael Lewis)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay.  Today’s film is 1984’s City Killer.  It  can be viewed on YouTube!

Leo Kalb (Terrence Knox) has come to Chicago.  In many ways, Leo would appear to have a lot going for him.  He’s intelligent.  He’s reasonably good looking.  He served honorably in the military.  Despite his intelligence, he comes across as being a bit of an innocent in the big city.  He’s got a good job, working as an electrician.  It might not be glamorous work but there’s always something appealing about a man who knows how to work with his hands.

Unfortunately, all of those appealing qualities are negated by the fact that Leo’s a loon.  The main reason he’s come to Chicago is to stalk Andrea McKnight (Heather Locklear).  The main reason that Andrea moved to Chicago was to get away from Leo.  Like Leo, Andrea has found some success in Chicago but that’s all turned upside down when Leo calls her and says that he wants to get back together.  Andrea doesn’t want anything to do with Leo so Leo starts blowing up buildings.

That’s right, he starts blowing up buildings.  He also announces that he wants the city of Chicago to pay him an exorbitant amount of money.  He wants a helicopter to fly him to the airport.  He wants to take an airplane to South America, where his bomb-building skills will presumably be put to good use by the The Shining Path.  And he wants Andrea to come with him.  As become clear, the money and the plane are really just red herrings.  Mostly, he just wants Andrea.  The press calls him the Love Bomber.

Lt. Eckford (Gerald McRaney) is assigned to try to negotiate with Leo and also to keep an eye on Andrea.  Needless to say, Andrea takes one look at Lt. Eckford’s powerful mustache and she starts to fall in love with him.  Eckford, meanwhile, starts to fall Andrea, even though he’s a bit older than her and there’s a paternal element to the way that he talks to her that just makes the whole thing feel kind of icky.  (That said, if a mad bomber is blowing up the city just because you won’t date him, it’s perhaps understandable that you would fall for the first person who could not only provide protection but who also didn’t try to make you feel guilty about what was going on.)  Leo senses that Andrea and Eckford are falling in love and he becomes determined to blow up even more stuff.

City Killer is a bit of ridiculous film.  The main problem is that the viewer is asked to believe that, even though Leo is the most wanted man in Chicago and is dominating all the headlines, he could still safely wander around the city and wire building to explode without anyone noticing.  The film presents itself as being a police procedural but one gets the feeling that police must be incredibly incompetent for Leo to successfully blow up so many buildings.  That said, Gerald McRaney is a properly sturdy hero and Terrence Knox is convincingly unhinged as Leo, begging Andrea to love him even while threatening to blow up the very building on which she’s standing.  Heather Locklear doesn’t got to do much, other than answer the phone and look upset whenever a building explodes, but she does it well.  As a veteran TV actress, she knew how to embrace the melodrama and, when you’re appearing in a film like City Killer, that’s the best thing you can do.

Music Video of the Day: Bois Lie by Avril Lavigne, feat. Machine Gun Kelly (2022, dir by Nathan James)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yay!  Avril’s back!  The song is called Bois Lie and it’s about how boys lie.  But Machine Gun Kelly says that girls lie too.  One good thing about being a star is that you can still get away with singing songs like this even when you’re nearly 40.

As for this video, it was shot during Machine Gun Kelly’s Mainstream Sellout Tour.  This is one of those “look how much fun we have on tour” videos.  To be honest, both the song and the video have kind of a Degrassi feel to it.  So, if you ever wondered what it was like when Ashley and Craig went on tour together, this video is probably a good indication.  Of course, I imagine Ashley and Craig would end the performance by having a massive fight onstage and breaking up every night.

Enjoy!

Lisa Marie’s Week In Television: 8/28/22 — 9/03/22

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I spent most of this week watching old TNBC shows from the 90s.  That was my choice and stand by it.

Allo Allo (PBS, Sunday Night)

Michelle needed to send microfilm to London and the cafe needed to prepare for a parade.  Meanwhile, with the outcome of the war now becoming obvious, the Germans made plans to assassinate Hitler and escape from France.

PBS is currently showing the final episodes of Allo Allo.  There’s only two episodes left and, to be honest, it’s kind of obvious that the show itself was more than ready to be wrapped up by the time it started its 9th series.  Watching this week’s episode, it was hard to shake the feeling that everyone appeared to have just been going through the motions.  (I recently read that Gorden Kaye, who played Rene, was recovering from a serious car accident, which perhaps explains why he seems a bit more subdued than usual.)  Still, Officer Crabtree’s “Good moaning” will always make me laugh, as will Michelle’s “I shall say this only once.”

The Bachelorette (ABC, Monday Night)

The men tell all!

They didn’t tell enough as far as I’m concerned.  They should have just sent all the other men home and interviewed Meatball for two hours.

Big Brother (CBS and Paramount+, Everyday)

I’ve been writing about Big Brother at the Big Brother Blog!  This week, Kyle was voted out after having his game exposed by Michael and Brittany.  Because Kyle’s plan was to target all of the black players because he was convinced they were going to form their own Cookout-style alliance, Kyle was worried that he would be booed when he left the house.  I’m not sure if the audience booed him or not.  It actually sounded like production abruptly turned off the audience microphones as soon as Kyle stepped through the front door.  Julie Chen Moonves got to pretend that she was a serious journalist during her seven-minute exit interview with Kyle.  Then Julie cheerfully announced that Zingbot would be on Sunday’s show.

California Dreams (YouTube)

This week, I watched and reviewed 18 episodes of California Dreams.  You can read the first of those reviews here!

The Challenge (CBS, Wednesday Night)

Tyson and Enzo survived another week, so I’m happy.

City Guys (Tubi)

I watched 19 episodes of City Guys this week and I wrote and scheduled reviews of all of them.  You can read the first two by clicking here!

Full House (MeTV, Sunday Evening)

Uncle Jesse decided to skip the Tanner Family Reunion because he needed to work on a song.  Michelle got mad and, as usual, everyone had to rearrange their lives to placate that demented little troll doll.  “Uncle Jesse’s not nice nice anymore!” Michelle said.  No, Uncle Jesse has a job because he’s a freaking adult.  Considering that Jesse has spent the majority of the show either mooching off Danny or Becky, everyone should have been encouraging him to actually do some work on his own for once.

This was followed by a terrifying episode in which Joey auditioned for a children’s show with the help of a big chipmunk doll.

Hang Time (YouTube)

I have been watching episode of this show and scheduling reviews.  Look for my review of the first two episodes on Monday!  The main thing that I’ve learned from watching Hang Time is that I don’t know a thing about basketball.

Inspector Lewis (YouTube)

On Wednesday, I watched another episode of Inspector Lewis.  Lewis and Hathaway were investigating a series of murders surrounding a fake medium.  Hathaway spent most of the show wearing a neck brace and contemplating the mysteries of existence.  Lewis, as usual, was much more pragmantic in his approach.

The Office (Weekday Evening, FaveTV)

I watched two episodes on Wednesday.  First, I watched the second part of the episode in which Pam and Jim got married in Niagara.  This was followed by the notoriously silly episode in which Michael became convinced that a pushy insurance agent was a member of the Mafia.

One World (Tubi)

I watched and reviewed 18 episodes of One World this week!  You can read the first of those reviews by clicking here!

Open All Hours (PBS, Sunday Night)

Granville threatened to go back to school so Arkwright locked him in the cellar.