Artwork of the Day: Detective Story Magazine (by John Coughlin)

Posted on July 27, 2026 by Dazzling Erin

by John Coughlin

This cover is from 1930.

Music Video of the Day: Ship of Fools by Robert Plant (1988, directed by ????)

Posted on July 27, 2026 by Jedadiah Leland

Ship of Fools was the second single to be released from Robert Plant’s fourth solo album, Now and Zen. Now and Zen was the most financially and critically successful of all of Planet’s solo albums, though Plant himself has said that he feels that the album’s music “got lost in the technology of the time.” I would be disappointed if Robert Plant didn’t decry “the technology of the time” but, in this case, he’s being too hard on himself. Now and Zen is a very good album.

This song is mood piece, a love song. In the video, Plant appears to be singing in the rain and it works. The song was later used in “Freefall,” the final episode of Miami Vice, the show that epitomized the 80s and the technology of the time like no other.

Enjoy!

Guilty Pleasure No. 124: No Escape (dir. by Martin Campbell)

Posted on July 26, 2026 by Arleigh

So, No Escape is a movie that, if you’re a fan of mid-90s action flicks, you’ve probably stumbled across on late-night cable at some point. Directed by Martin Campbell, a guy who would go on to resurrect James Bond with GoldenEye, this 1994 sci-fi romp is a strange, almost forgotten artifact from a time when every action movie seemed to be set in a grim, corporate-run future. It’s a movie that borrows so heavily from its predecessors that you could make a drinking game out of spotting the references, yet it does it all with such earnest, sweaty commitment that it’s hard to completely hate. It’s a film that, in a perfect world, should have been a genre classic, but its own bloat and inconsistent rhythm drag it down to the level of a solid, slightly-defective guilty pleasure.

The setup is pure B-movie gold. It’s the year 2022, which felt super futuristic back then, and the world has privatized its prison system. Ray Liotta stars as Captain Robbins, a man sentenced to life on the brutal island prison of Absolom after he kills his commanding officer. The premise of a super-max prison on a remote island, a “civilized” versus “savage” faction of inmates, and a hero who just wants to escape is a greatest-hits medley of Escape from New York, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, and Papillon. The film’s villain, Marek, played by a gloriously over-the-top Stuart Wilson, leads a tribe of leather-clad maniacs called the Outsiders, while Lance Henriksen’s Father leads the peaceful, agrarian community of Insiders. Our hero is thrust between them, forced to navigate tribal politics while plotting his getaway. It’s as familiar as an old pair of boots, but there’s a comfort in that familiarity, a sense that you know the beats and can just enjoy the ride.

And for a while, the ride is genuinely fun. Campbell, who clearly has an eye for widescreen spectacle, makes the lush Australian location look both beautiful and hostile. The production design is actually one of the film’s strongest assets; the Outsiders’ camp is a junkyard nightmare, while the Insiders’ village is a quaint, shanty-town paradise built from salvaged scrap. It gives the film a distinct, tactile feel that a lot of sterile sci-fi movies lack. Liotta is perfectly cast as the tough, morally ambiguous soldier. He brings a rough, cerebral quality to the role, making Robbins feel like a guy who’s seen too much and is just plain tired. Stuart Wilson, meanwhile, hams it up as the villain Marek, delivering a performance so broad and gleefully evil that he borders on self-parody, but in a way that’s weirdly compelling and provides some much-needed comic relief. The film feels like it’s building to something great, a tense and explosive showdown between these two drastically different tribes.

The problem is that No Escape simply does not know when to stop. This is a movie with a lean, mean premise that somehow stretches itself out to nearly two hours, and you feel every single minute of the back half. The pacing is wildly inconsistent, lurching between tense survivalist stuff, full-blown action set pieces, and stretches of world-building exposition that just sit there and deflate the momentum the film worked hard to build. There are entire sequences that feel like they exist purely to pad the runtime, and by the time the third act rolls around and Robbins is organizing his prison-break uprising, you’re less excited by the payoff and more just relieved that the movie is finally getting somewhere. A tighter edit, trimming maybe twenty to thirty minutes of the connective tissue, would’ve turned this into a genuinely great B-movie instead of a good one hamstrung by its own indulgence.

That’s really the frustrating thing about No Escape. Everything that makes prison-island and dystopian-exile movies fun is present and accounted for here: a charismatic antihero, a nasty villain, a societal allegory bubbling under the surface, brutal action, and a satisfying underdog uprising. Campbell clearly understood the assignment and delivered those elements competently, sometimes even excitingly. But competent execution of familiar beats can only carry a movie so far when the film refuses to trim the fat, and the sluggish, uneven pacing keeps dragging you out of scenes that should be gripping. It’s the kind of movie that probably could’ve stood shoulder to shoulder with its genre influences if someone in the editing room had been a little more ruthless.

As it stands, No Escape lands squarely in guilty-pleasure territory. It’s not a film you’d necessarily recommend to someone as an essential genre entry, but if you’re already the type who loves this stuff, the dystopian island prisons, the tribal factions, the gruff antihero clawing his way toward freedom, there’s a lot here to enjoy despite the flab. It wears its influences on its sleeve, executes them with more skill than it probably gets credit for, and then undercuts itself by overstaying its welcome. Somewhere in this movie is a tight, mean ninety-minute action flick that could’ve been a minor classic. Instead we got a longer, baggier version that’s still worth a watch on a lazy afternoon, just with the fast-forward button within easy reach for the slower stretches.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life On The Street 5.18 “Double Blind”

Posted on July 26, 2026 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 Homicide: Life On The Street, which aired from 1993 to 1999, on NBC! It can be viewed on Peacock.

This week, Bayliss and Pembleton are partners again and again, they find themselves on two different sides of the same case.

Episode 5.18 “Double Blind”

(Dir by Uli Edel, originally aired on April 11th, 1997)

Where do I put my hate? Tim Bayliss asks his Uncle George (Robert Bornarth) at the end of this week’s episode.

Uncle George is the man who abused Bayliss when he was younger. The final few minutes of this episode features Bayliss tracking down George to the decrepit house that George calls home. Stepping aside, Bayliss sees that George is now an old man with a persistent cough. The messy house is full of empty liquor bottles. George is a pathetic, frightened old man and it’s obvious that he doesn’t have much longer to live.

Bayliss has just finished investigating the case of a chef who was found shot to death in his home. It quickly became obvious that the chef was abusive and that he was shot and killed by his teenage daughter (Monica Keena). Pembleton sees it as justifiable homicide but Bayliss says that it doesn’t matter that the victim was a terrible person. The fact that he was shot three times (twice after he was already on the ground) proves that it was a deliberate execution. For once, Bayliss is the one saying that the law is the law while Pembleton is the one worried about the human cost of their investigation. It’s such a reversal in their usual pattern that Pembleton has to laugh. And yet, it works. Having found his previously lost faith, Pembleton now believes that there is more to existence than the letter of the law. Pembleton also realizes that Bayliss wants to call it a murder because, deep down, he wishes he had done the same thing to his uncle. The victim’s daughter did what Bayliss could never bring himself to do.

It’s an interesting storyline, featuring great work from Andre Braugher and especially Kyle Secor. Unfortunately, this episode had a few other plotlines that weren’t quite as interesting. Kellerman and Cox continued their tentative, emotionally-damaged romance, with Kellerman finally confessing that he was suicidal when Cox last visited him on his boat. Meanwhile, Lewis supported former patrolman Chris Thormann (Lee Tergesen) when the man who blinded him came up for parole. The Lewis storyline was a sequel to a first season episode and I appreciated that the show made an effort to maintain continuity. That said, it just wasn’t that interesting of a story.

Still, that final scene with Bayliss and his uncle was undeniably powerful. Seriously, what is Bayliss going to do with all of his hate? There are no easy answers.

Song of the Day: Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand by Primitive Radio Gods

Posted on July 26, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Some songs just perfectly capture the mood.

Scenes That I Love: Danny Meets The Girls In Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining

Posted on July 26, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s scene that I love comes from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.

Stephen King can whine about this film all that he wants. It’s one of the few adaptations of his novels that can still scare the view even after numerous rewatches.

These two still freak me out.

6 Shots From 6 Films: Special Stanley Kubrick Edition

Posted on July 26, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More 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!

On this date, 97 years ago, Stanley Kubrick was born in New York City. The rest, as they say, is history.

In honor of one of the world’s greatest directors, here are….

6 Shots From 6 Stanley Kubrick Films

The Killing (1956, dir by Stanley Kubrick, DP: Lucien Ballard)

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964, dir. Stanley Kubrick, DP: Gilbert Taylor)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, dir by Stanley Kubrick, DP: Geoffrey Unsworth)

Barry Lyndon (1975, dir by Stanley Kubrick, DP: John Alcott)

The Shining (1980, dir by Stanley Kubrick, DP: John Alcott)

Full Metal Jacket (1987, dir by Stanley Kubrick, DP: Douglas Milsome)

Artwork of the Day: Amazing Stories (by Frank R. Paul)

Posted on July 26, 2026 by Dazzling Erin

This cover is from 1927.

Music Video of the Day: My Life by Billy Joel (1978, directed by Steve Cohen)

Posted on July 26, 2026 by Jedadiah Leland

This is one of Billy Joel’s best-known songs. For people who grew up at the right time, it will always be remembered as the theme song from Bosom Buddies. (Unfortunately, due to licensing issues, the song does not appear on the show’s DVD release and it has recently been removed by syndicated airings. All ten of Bosom Buddies‘s fans were very disappointed.) In the background of this song, you can hear Chicago’s Peter Cetera and Donnie Dacus contributing backing vocals.

This video was directed by Steve Cohen, who directed several videos for Billy Joel in the late 70s and the early 80s.

Enjoy!

Review: Ball x Pit

Posted on July 25, 2026 by Arleigh

have been playing Ball x Pit way too many times. It is the kind of game that sinks its hooks into you, not through a gripping narrative or photorealistic graphics, but through a pure, unfiltered gameplay loop that is as addictive as anything I have played in years. Developed by Kenny Sun and published by Devolver Digital, this title takes the classic, almost primordial concept of Breakout and smashes it together with the modern, progression-driven obsession of a roguelike, all while throwing in a dash of bullet-hell chaos and even a little bit of base-building for good measure. The result is a game that feels both immediately familiar and utterly fresh, a bizarre and brilliant genre stew that has completely consumed my gaming time.

At its core, the action in the pit is a frantic, vertical-scrolling brawl. You control a hero at the bottom of the screen, and from above, relentless waves of blocky enemies march downwards. Your only defense is a stream of magical balls that you launch upwards, watching them bounce off walls and foes alike. The key is to angle your shots to get the most bounces for maximum damage, a concept straight out of the Arkanoid playbook. But where it gets wild is the roguelike layer. Enemies drop XP gems, and with each level-up, you are presented with a choice of new abilities or perks. This is where your build starts to take shape. You might pick a fireball, a ball that spawns smaller “baby” balls on impact, or a passive perk that causes enemies to explode upon death. This system, highly reminiscent of Vampire Survivors, is where the “bullet hell” moniker comes into play, as your screen eventually becomes a chaotic, beautiful mess of ricocheting projectiles and particle effects.

The true genius of Ball x Pit, however, lies in its fusion and evolution mechanics. You have limited slots for your special balls, but the game frequently drops items that allow you to merge two existing balls into one powerful, combined version. This frees up a slot and creates something new and often devastating, like a laser that also causes bleeding damage. Deciding which balls to fuse, and which passive abilities to stack to support them, is a constant, engaging puzzle that makes every run feel distinct. As one review perfectly described it, the game is a laboratory of damage-dealing, where the question of who do I want to be for this run drives the entire experience. With over fifteen unique characters and dozens of possible evolutions, the strategic potential is huge.

Just when you think you have got the loop figured out, you return to the surface, and the game completely switches gears. The resources you have gathered in the pit are used to rebuild the fallen city of New Ballbylon in a clever base-building minigame. You place farms, quarries, and forests on a grid and then, in a brilliant twist, you harvest them by launching your own heroes into the town like they are balls in a game of Peggle. They bounce off buildings and collect resources, which you then use to construct permanent stat-boosting buildings and unlock new characters. This dual-loop structure is relentlessly compelling. A fifteen-minute run in the pit is always followed by a quick visit to the city to manage your resources and feel your power grow, which in turn makes you eager to dive back into the pit.

It is this frictionless cycle of action, reward, and progression that makes Ball x Pit so dangerously addictive. It is the perfect game for a quick session, but its just one more run hook makes it nearly impossible to put down. Some critics have noted that the base-building can feel a bit tedious and that the game can become too easy once you have unlocked a powerful build, but these are minor complaints against the sheer, joyful momentum of the experience. It is a game that respects your time with its short runs, rewards experimentation, and consistently makes you feel like a genius when a risky fusion pays off. Ball x Pit is more than just a good game; it is a masterclass in game design that understands the core appeal of a simple, satisfying mechanic and builds a sprawling, intricate, and endlessly replayable world around it. It is a cheap, chaotic, and utterly brilliant time sink that I wholeheartedly recommend.