Long before Prince (way too) prematurely crossed the mythical Rainbow Bridge, he crossed another bridge — specifically, Graffiti Bridge. And while this 1990 sequel to Purple Rain isn’t remembered all that fondly by many and frankly showcases His Royal Badness at his most self-indulgent, it’s far from a bad flick, features plenty of well-staged, extremely-high-energy song and dance numbers, and provides an interesting glimpse into the spiritual awakening he was going through that would go on to inform so much of the rest of his life and career.

Originally conceived of by Prince (who wrote and directed it) as a co-starring vehicle for himself and then-girlfriend Kim Basinger, their break-up necessitated a quick bit of re-casting and, I’m guessing, resulted in a budget-and-resources trim-down from Warner Brothers, but who are we kidding — given the film’s navel-gazing premise and heavy focus on music over story it was probably never…

In recent days I’ve emerged from my funk by feeling the funk — leave it to Prince to have provided his fans with the one sure-fire way of getting over his death which is, of course, by getting into his music. He wouldn’t want us to feel too blue for too long, after all — he’d rather have us all feeling decidedly purple. And what better way to not only remember, but celebrate, his extraordinary life than by witnessing the magic he created at the very height of his powers?

Granted, one could argue that said “height” lasted for decades, but for my money the best filmed record of it came in 1987 with the release of his flat-out monumental concert movie, Sign “O” The Times, directed (with a considerable amount of flair and confidence, I might add) by Prince himself with uncredited assistance from his former manager/business…

I was pleasantly surprised (enough, at any rate) by Franck Khalfoun’s remake/”re-imagining” of Maniac that he landed on my entirely unofficial and even more entirely unwritten “directors to watch” list, but here’s the thing — the fact that said “list” doesn’t actually exist means that it takes no more effort to scrub a name off it than it does to add one to it, and guess what? Khalfoun’s latest writing and directing “effort,” 2015’s i-Lived, more or less guarantees that’s exactly what I’ll be doing with his. Let the interminable bitching begin —

I barely use apps for shit, but I guess the young folks do, so who knows? Maybe for them, the idea of a flick about one of them that’s kinda/sorta haunted will have greater resonance. And maybe they won’t think this film’s protagonist, a twenty-something nitwit named — groan! — Josh (portrayed in truly cringe-worthy style…

One of the series, along with DMZ,  that made Brian Wood a “household name” among comic-book fans was his  Viking-era epic Northlanders, so when word got out that he was going to be returning to that same time period with his artistic collaborator from The Massive, Garry Brown, in tow, for a new book from Image called Black Road, folks — including yours truly — were pretty well stoked. Wood’s few carefully-chosen words on the (then-) forthcoming title indicated that it was going to be less a work of historically-plausible fiction and more just, well, completely made up, but no matter — if you feel the need to demand “accuracy” from your four-color “floppies” you’re about a hundred years too late, anyway.

Wood was going back to the proverbial well in terms of tone and temperament, to be sure, but the locales, personages, and even some…

Too often these days, up-and-coming directors (or those determined to convince us that they fit that description) try to reinvent the wheel by giving us something we’ve purportedly “never seen before” —and while ambition is great and all, many (hell, most) of them would be better served by honing their craft on the tried-and-true before going off the deep end in a vain attempt to knock our socks off. Besides, I hate to be the one to break it to you recent film school grads, but there really is nothing new under the sun anyway, and you can just as easily “find your voice” —and get the recognition you so desperately crave — by working within pre-established genre confines as you can blowing the whole damn thing up/throwing the baby out with the bathwater/pick your cliche.

Case in point : Mike Flanagan. He’s directed three feature films now (actually, I…