Late Night Retro Television Review: Check It Out! 3.16 “My Hero, Mr. Bannister”

Posted on May 10, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Saturdays, I will be reviewing the Canadian sitcom, Check it Out, which ran in syndication from 1985 to 1988. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi and Peacock!

This week features some adorable kittens!

Episode 3.16 “My Hero, Mr. Bannister”

(Dir by Jayne Schipper, originally aired on January 3rd, 1988)

Stockboy Derek (Andrew Miller) admires Howard and decides that, in order to be like his idol, he’s going to drop out of high school and devote himself to becoming manager of a grocery store. Howard has to show Derek has stupid that would be. Fortunately, Derek comes to his senses by the end of the episode. No one wants to grow up to be Howard.

This was a weird episode, largely because everyone acted as if Derek was a regular member of the cast despite the fact that this was only his second appearance on the show. (He appeared earlier in the season, in yet another episode that was devoted to his character.) One of the oddest things about this season is that it keeps introducing characters who seem like they’re going to be regulars — Howard’s brother, the executive from the company that bought Cobb’s — but who then never show up again. Or in Derek’s case, they showed up on more time. Seen today, all of these episodes feel like backdoor pilots for shows that were never actually put into production. That doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily bad episodes, of course. While Derek’s storyline was a bit forgettable, the third season has still been a marked improvement over the first two.

This episode featured a B-plot about an adorable cat named Marvin who decided to live in the store with “Mrs. Marvin.” They had kittens! And the kittens were adorable. I’m a cat person so I enjoyed that. Otherwise, this episode was fairly forgettable.

4 Shots From 4 Films: The Chow Yun-Fat Edition!

Posted on May 10, 2025 by Bradley Crain

Chow Yun-Fat has been in so many interesting movies, from underrated Hong Kong Films, to multiple Oscar Winners, to big budget Hollywood fluff! As we continue to move forward to his 70th birthday on May 18th, 2025, I celebrate some of his performances that I find quite interesting!

TIGER ON BEAT (1988)

FULL CONTACT (1992)

CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (2000)

PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN: AT WORLD’S END (2007)

Street Fighter (1994, directed by Stephen E. de Souza)

Posted on May 10, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

What does the M. stand for in M. Bison?

Originally, it was supposed to stand for Mike but my theory is that it stands for Marvelous because how else can you describe Raul Julia’s performance as the villain of Street Fighter? Julia was dying of stomach cancer when he played Bison, a condition reflected by his gaunt appearance. But Julia still obviously threw himself into every scene, delivering every melodramatic line as if it was the most important piece of dialogue that he had ever been trusted with delivering. As a film, Street Fighter is an overedited mess that features one of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s worst performances. Raul Julia saves it, though. He gets some of the worst lines and transforms them into the best lines through sheer determination. That man could have read the phone book and made it interesting.

Jean-Claude Van Damme is Col. Guile in this early video game adaptation. This isn’t one of Van Damme’s better performances. He doesn’t really play the Guile from the game. Instead, he’s just Van Damme with a blue beret and an American flag on his bicep. Far better are Damian Chapa as Ken and Bryon Mann as Ryu, even though neither gets to do as much as a fan of the game would want them to. Ming-Na Wen is a promising Chun Li but, instead of focusing on her fighting skill, the movie gets bogged down in trying to set her up for a sequel that would never come. Are you a fan of Cammy? Don’t get excited because all Kylie Minogue does is ask Guile if he’s okay. I did like Wes Studi as Sagat and Gregg Rainwater and Peter Tuiasosopo as T. Hawk and Honda but it still feels like only Raul Julia gives a performance that can compete with the video game version of his character.

There were four editors credited for Street Fighter and maybe that explains why the fights are a mess and the plot is impossible to follow. It’s a video game adaptation and I don’t demand much but I would like to know who is winning each fight. The film’s visual scheme, meant to duplicate the look of the game, showed some promise but the editing gave the movie a frantic feel that made it difficult to really appreciate the production design.

There’s never really been a good Street Fighter film but I still think it could happen with the right cast and crew. If Mortal Kombat could (eventually) be turned into a decent movie, why not Street Fighter? I still don’t think anyone will ever top Raul Julia as M. Bison, though. Raul Julia made you believe in Pax Bisonica!

“And peace will reign and all humanity will bow to me in humble gratitude.” — M. Bison

Retro Television Review: 3 By Cheever 1.3 “The Five Forty-Eight”

Posted on May 10, 2025 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 Saturdays, I will be reviewing 3 By Cheever, which ran on PBS in 1979. The entire show can be purchased on Prime and found on YouTube.

This week, we finish up 3 By Cheever with an adaption of one of his best-known short stories.

Episode 1.3 “The Five Forty-Eight”

(Dir by James Ivory, originally aired on James Ivory)

Laurence Luckinbill stars as Blake, a business executive who rides the train into the city for work and then back to the suburbs when it’s time to return to his perfect home. One day, as Blake heads to his train, he comes to be aware that he’s being followed by his former secretary, Miss Dent (Mary Beth Hurt). Blake is concerned because Miss Dent made quite a scene when she was fired from her job a little while ago. Of course, a part of the reason why she was so upset was because Blake had earlier seduced her, something that he has a habit of doing when it comes to his secretaries. On the train, surrounded by neighbors (including one that Blake can’t stand because of his long hair), Blake finds himself sitting next to Miss Dent. She explains that she has a gun in her purse. As the train heads for its destination, Blake’s confident facade crumbles and he is soon as humiliated by his former secretary as she was by him. And yet, this being a Cheever story, one wonders if Blake is even capable of realizing why any of this is happening to him.

The final episode of 3 By Cheever was an adaptation of one of John Cheever’s best short stories. As directed by James Ivory, this adaptation can feel a bit overdrawn. The short story, for instance, opens with Blake on an elevator, already preparing to head home on the train. Ivory’s adaptation opens with Blake at the start of his day and we see a lot of things — like Blake’s antagonistic relationship with his long-haired neighbor — that Cheever simply mentioned. It takes a while for Miss Dent to finally sit down next to Blake and Ivory doesn’t do much to build up any sort of suspense while we’re waiting.

On the plus side, the film reveals Ivory’s skill when it comes to working with actors as both Luckinbill and Mary Beth Hurt give excellent performances. Luckinbill goes from being oily and overconfident to being a neurotic mess by the end of the show while Hurt does the opposite, going from being meek to commanding. Both the original short story and Ivory’s adaptation succeed in making you wonder what the future could possibly hold for either one of the two characters. They both seem to reach a point of no return and it’s hard to imagine Blake going back to his suburban home and his train rides and his motel hook-ups but, then again, this is a Cheever story so the implication is that he does just that, untouched by the fact that he nearly lost his life due to his own behavior. As for Miss Dent, she reclaims her self-respect by going to an extreme.

This was the last episode of 3 By Cheever. This was an interesting series of adaptations, even if Cheever’s prose does seem to work best on the page than literally translated to film. Next week, a new series will being in this spot.

Scenes I Love: The Third Man

Posted on May 10, 2025 by Arleigh

“Holly, I’d like to cut you in, old man. There’s nobody left in Vienna I can really trust, and we’ve always done everything together. When you make up your mind, send me a message – I’ll meet you any place, any time, and when we do meet old man, it’s you I want to see, not the police. Remember that, won’t ya? Don’t be so gloomy.

After all it’s not that awful. You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly.”

Orson Welles has been a giant of the film industry since he first stepped foot in it with his masterpiece Citizen Kane. He has been lauded as one of the greatest filmmakers and his innovation in the techniques of filmmaking continues to influence past, present and future filmmakers.

Yet, he wasn’t just a great director but a great writer and producer. He was also a great actor both on-screen, and previously, on stage where he honed his craft. He has had some memorable moments in all the films he’s acted in (even his final film which was the cult classic animated film feature Transformers: The Movie, where he was the voice of a planet-devouring transforming robot planetoid).

It is his brief but great monologue past the halfway mark of the classic noir film The Third Man that is my choice for Scenes I Love and another entry in the “Great Film and TV Monologues” series.

Welles plays the amoral Harry Lime who meets up with his childhood friend Holly Martins. As they ride the famous Wiener Riesenrad in Vienna, Welles waxes poetic about the insignificance of people, in general. How, from the the heights of the Riesenrad, people looked like little dots and would one dot or a group of them be missed if they suddenly stopped moving.

Yet, it is when Lime and Martins exit the ride that Welles’ as Harry Lime performs what is considered one of the greatest monologues ever put on film and, most likely, one of the briefest. It is a philosophical observation on the cynics take on the violent nature of man and how it affects society.

The monologue itself wasn’t written by the film’s writer, Graham Greene, but was inserted in the script by Orson Welles himself. The Third Man was one of the greatest films ever produced even without Welles’ contribution as a writer, but we should be all glad that he decided to add this brief monologue which helps explains the character of Harry Lime and the meaning of the “third man”.

Great Film and TV Monologues

Song of the Day: Theme From The Third Man by Alex Karas

Posted on May 10, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s song of the day is the haunting zither theme of The Third Man. Whenever I hear this music, I immediately think of Orson Welles, emerging from the shadows with that charming smile on his face. I also think about poor Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), being chased through Vienna by that little kid who wouldn’t stop yelling at him. And, of course, there’s that famous final shot….

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special David MacKenzie Edition

Posted on May 10, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to Scottish director, David MacKenzie! It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 David MacKenzie Films

Young Adam (2003, dir by David MacKenzie, DP: Giles Nuttgens)

Starred Up (2014, dir by David MacKenzie, DP; Michael McDonough)

Hell or High Water (2016, dir by David MacKenzie, DP: Giles Nuttgens)

Outlaw King (2018, dir by David MacKenzie, DP: Barry Ackroyd)

Live Tweet Alert: Watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre With #ScarySocial!

Posted on May 10, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in 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 #ScarySocial, I will be hosting the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre!

If you want to join us on Saturday night, just hop onto twitter, start the film at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! The film is available on Prime! I’ll be there co-hosting 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!