Here Are The 2025 DGA Nominations

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Directors Guild of America has announced its nominees for the best directors of 2025.  And here they are:

FEATURE FILM
Paul Thomas Anderson – “One Battle After Another” (Warner Bros.)
Ryan Coogler – “Sinners” (Warner Bros.)
Guillermo Del Toro – “Frankenstein” (Netflix)
Josh Safdie – “Marty Supreme” (A24)
Chloe Zhao – “Hamnet” (Focus Features)

FIRST-TIME THEATRICAL FEATURE FILM
Hasan Hadi – “The President’s Cake” (Sony Pictures Classics)
Harry Lighton – “Pillion” (A24)
Alex Russell – “Lurker” (Mubi)
Charlie Polinger – “The Plague” (IFC)
Eva Victor – “Sorry, Baby” (A24)

Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 2.8 “Easy Come Easy Go”

Posted on 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 Wednesdays, I will be reviewing 1st and Ten, which aired in syndication from 1984 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on Tubi.

Time to get back to 1st & Ten.  To be honest, with all the excitement of the holiday season, I totally forgot that I was reviewing this show.

Episode 2.8 “Easy Come, Easy Go”

(Dir by Burt Brinckerhoff, originally aired on January 6th, 1987)

This is yet another episode of 1st & Ten that felt as if it was put together almost at random.

Mad Dog (Tony Longo) has a one night stand with a lawyer named Molly (June Chadwick) and he ends up becoming obsessed with her.  He shows up at a fancy cocktail party being hosted by Molly’s law firm.  “This man is stalking me!” Molly yells.  All of the men at the party are like, “Mad Dog!  You’re my favorite player!”  Now, I will say that this is a realistic portrayal of how most men act whenever they see a professional athlete but it still felt a bit icky to watch.

Jethro takes a blood test and discovers that little Tommy is not his son.  But he still wants to be a part of the kid’s life.

Yinessa sees a tabloid newspaper headline about his “nude pictures” and starts yelling at a supermarket manager for selling the paper.

Waldren is in financial trouble because he’s been tossing money around.  A group of gamblers approach him and offer to pay to shave points.  OJ Simpson (in the role of offensive coordinator T.D. Parker) tells Waldren, “I’m keeping my eye on you.”  Oh no!  LOOK OUT, WALDREN!

However, Waldren does not shave points.  Instead, he catches the ball that seals the Bulls victory in their first playoff game.  Woo hoo!  Go, Waldren!

A lot happened but, in typical 1st & Ten fashion, none of it added up to much.  It could be because the streaming episodes were edited for syndication but this is just a weird show.  Every episode feels as if their huge chunks of plot missing.

Here Are The 2025 Nominations of the Art Directors Guild

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Art Directors Guild has announced its nominees for the best of 2025!  And here they are….

BEST PERIOD FEATURE FILM
Frankenstein — Production Designer: Tamara Deverell
Hamnet — Production Designer: Fiona Crombie
Marty Supreme — Production Designer: Jack Fisk
The Phoenician Scheme — Production Designer: Adam Stockhausen
Sinners — Production Designer: Hannah Beachler

BEST FANTASY FEATURE FILM
Avatar: Fire and Ash — Production Designers: Dylan Cole, Ben Procter
The Fantastic Four: First Steps — Production Designer: Kasra Farahani
Mickey 17 — Production Designer: Fiona Crombie
Superman — Production Designer: Beth Mickle
Wicked: For Good — Production Designer: Nathan Crowley

BEST CONTEMPORARY FEATURE FILM
Bugonia — Production Designer: James Price
F1 — Production Designers: Ben Munro, Mark Tildesley
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning — Production Designer: Gary Freeman
One Battle After Another — Production Designer: Florencia Martin
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery — Production Designer: Rick Heinrichs

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
The Bad Guys 2 — Production Designer: Luc Desmarchelier
Elio — Production Designer: Harley Jessup
KPop Demon Hunters — Production Designers: Mingjue Helen Chen, Dave Bleich
The Spongebob Movie: Search for Squarepants — Production Designer: Sean Haworth; Animation Production Designer: Pablo R. Mayer
Zootopia 2 — Production Designer: Cory Loftis

I Watched Perry Mason: The Case of the Scandalous Scoundrel (1987, Dir. by Christian I. Nyby II)

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Sleazy magazine publisher Harlan Wade (Robert Guillaume) has made a lot of enemies through his scandal sheet.  He just published a story suggesting that Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) and Della Street (Barbara Hale) are more than just friends.  Well, duh!  Everyone knows Perry and Della are in love!  Perry still wants to sue him but then Harlan turns up dead in his swimming pool.  It would have been interesting if Perry had been a suspect but instead the police arrest Michelle Benti (Susan Wilder), a reporter who was recently fired by Wade.  Because Michelle is the ex-girlfriend of Paul Drake, Jr. (William Katt), Perry defends her in court.

This is another case of someone close to the Mason crew being accused of murder.  The D.A. should know better than to arrest anyone who knows Perry, Della, or Paul.  Michelle first appeared in The Case of the Shooting Star but she was played by a different actress.  It’s still good that, for once, the series actually acknowledged one of Paul’s ex-girlfriends.  I worry about Paul and the way he falls in and out of love.

This one had a good mystery and a really memorable supporting cast.  Morgan Brittany, Yaphet Kotto, Wings Hauser, and George Grizzard all played potential suspects.  I liked that this was one of those mysteries where the victim went to a party before he died and everyone there threatened to kill him at some point.  This movie also featured one of the better courtroom confessions.  Raymond Burr uses a cane in this episode and is usually filmed either sitting down or leaning against something for support.  Even though Burr obviously wasn’t feeling well, it’s nice to see him and Barbara Hale share some sweet scenes together.

Who sent Della flowers, champagne, and perfume?  Watch to find out!

Camouflage (2000, directed by James Keach)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

It’s strange to hear Leslie Nielsen drop an F bomb.

That was my main though I watched Camouflage.  Leslie Nielsen plays a hard-boiled private detective named Jack Potter who reluctantly takes on an apprentice named Matty McKenzie (Lochlyn Munro).  Mostly to get Matty, a failed stage actor, out of his hair, Jack sends him to handle a minor case in the small town of Beaver Ridge.  The minor case becomes a major case when it becomes clear that a murder is being planned.

Camouflage starts out like a typical Leslie Nielsen mockbuster, with Nielsen providing a ridiculous, Frank Drebin-style narration.  But the film itself develops into a dark comedy where Matty finds himself in a small town where everyone’s got secret.  Nielsen gives an almost-serious performance as Potter, playing him as a cynic with a tragic backstory and little patience for his protegee.  There’s a tonal imbalance between the moments of broad comedy and the more serious moments and the film doesn’t work as a result but it is interesting to see a post-Airplane! Leslie Nielsen playing things relatively straight.

One interesting thing about Camouflage is that it was written by Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson but, in the final cut, the screenplay is credited to Reginald Perry.  (The small town setting is one that Thornton used frequently in his scripts and it’s easy to imagine him playing the role of Jack Potter in alternate version of this film.)  Camouflage reportedly sat on the shelf for quite a while before it was finally given a release and Nielsen’s narration often feels like it was something that was added in post-production to try to both bring the disjointed film together and to draw in the Naked Gun fans.  I have a feeling the story behind this film is probably more interesting than the film itself.

North of the Border (1946, directed by B. Reeves Eason)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Rancher Bob “Utah” Neyes (Russell Hayden) heads into Canada to meet up with his business partner.  Unfortunately, his partner has been murdered by outlaw Nails Nelson (Douglas Fowley).  Mountie Jack Craig (Lyle Talbot) almost arrests Utah for the crime but he becomes convinced that Utah is innocent and Nails is guilty.  Along with fur trader Ivy Jenkins (I. Stanford Jolley), Craig and Utah try to break up Nails’s fur-smuggling operation.

While I was watching it, I thought this movie seemed even more familiar than the usual Poverty Row western.  I realized that’s because I had actually seen Russell Hayden and most of the rest of the cast in another movie that had a similar plot, right down taking place on the other side of the border.  That other movie was called ‘Neath Canadian Skies.  Both it and North of the Border are among the four Canadian western films that Robert Lippert produced in 1946, all of which starred Russell Hayden and were directed by B. Reeves Easton.  Supposedly, it took 20 days to shoot all of them.

As for North of the Border, it’s only 42 minutes long and none of those minutes are wasted.  There’s all of the usual horse chases and gunfights that fans want from these films.  For me, the most interesting thing about the film was getting to see Lyle Talbot play something other than a boring authority figure.  Also, this film features Inez Cooper, a pretty redhead who had a short career but whose beauty and personality as well-remembered by fans of Poverty Row westerns.  She plays the love interest in this one and there’s no doubt that most men would give up living in Utah for her.

Retro Television Review: The Love Boat 7.1 and 7.2 “China Cruise: The Pledge/East Meets West/Dear Roberta/My Two Dumplings”

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 Wednesdays, I will be reviewing the original Love Boat, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986!  The series can be streamed on Paramount Plus!

This week, we begin season 7!

Episodes 7.1 and 7.2 “China Cruise: The Pledge/East Meets West/Dear Roberta/My Two Dumplings”

(Dir by Robert Scheerer, originally aired on October 1st, 1983)

It’s time for season seven of The Love Boat!

Gopher has been promoted to head purser.  For six seasons, he was assistant purser and I always wondered who the head purser was.  Apparently, there wasn’t one because Stubing promoted him without firing anyone.  It’s possible that I just don’t know how cruise ships work.

The Love Boat crew starts off the season with a cruise around China!  I guess the old saying is true — only Stubing could go to China.  I kept waiting for Stubing to announce that he recognized Taiwan as an independent nation but he didn’t.  I was a little bit disappointed by that.  Instead, Stubing and the crew saw the sights.  There’s a panda bear!  There’s the Great Wall of China!  There’s a bunch of young people all singing, almost as the future of their loved ones depended on doing a good job!  In fact, this premiere episode is really more about seeing the sights of China than it is about any of the drama playing out on the boat.  I guess that makes since.  This episode aired in the pre-Internet age of 1983, so for the audience, this really was a chance to see a world that they probably couldn’t otherwise experience.  It’s not like they could go on YouTube and do a search for China or something like that.  It was up to The Love Boat to open up the world!

That said, Chinese medicine came in for a bit of criticism.  Susan Anton played a woman who didn’t trust doctors and who thought buying a Chinese symbol for good luck would keep her safe.  However, when she suddenly had intense stomach pain, it was up to Doc to save her life.  Where’s your good luck charm now!?

Linda Evans played a woman who fell in love with Lee Majors, little suspecting that Majors was the author of the “Dear Roberta” advice column.  Some of “Roberta’s” advice led to Evans divorcing her previous husband.

Lee Horsley played a man with two girlfriends (Erin Moran and Pat Klous).  Uh-oh!  They all ended up on the boat at the same time!

Finally, Ursula Andress played a dying woman who fell for a mysterious but charming passenger (John Forsythe).  Unfortunately, Forsythe had a warrant out for his arrest and Detective Michael Constantine was determined to take him into custody.  This story was unique in that it had an unhappy ending!  While the crew had a few unhappy endings (Remember when Julie was left at the altar?), this was the first time that things didn’t work out for a passenger.

Was this a good episode?  It was, strictly from the point of view that I like The Love Boat crew and I enjoy spending time with them.  This episode was occasionally a bit too much of a travelogue but the Andress/Forsythe story carried some weight.  All in all, it was a decent start for season 7.