Tag Archives: Lisa Marie Bowman

Live Tweet Alert: Join #FridayNightFlix For Blades of Glory!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

 

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on Twitter and Mastodon.  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, at 10 pm et, we’ve got a comedy classic, 2007’s Blades of Glory!

If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag!  It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

Blades of Glory is available on Prime!  See you there!

Music Vide of the Day: Deep Wells by Kacey Musgraves (2024, dir by Hannah Lux Davis)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh God, I know the feeling.  Especially as of late.  Kacey has a way of capturing it all and this video certainly does capture that being buried alive, slowly suffocating sensation that comes from being overwhelmed to the point you wish you could just vanish.

Enjoy!

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Highway to Heaven 1.20 “The Banker and the Bum”

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 Thursdays, I will be reviewing Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989.  The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee and several other services!

This week, Ned Beatty is not one but two characters!

Episode 1.20 “The Banker and the Bum”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on February 27th, 1985)

Wally the Waver (Ned Beatty) is an eccentric but beloved homeless man who usually spends his time sitting in and sleeping in a park.  He smiles and waves at passing people and sometimes, he’ll get a newspaper out of the trash and read up on the upcoming mayoral election.  What Wally does not know is that he only has 24 hours to live and that Jonathan and Mark have been sent to grant him his last wish.

Wally’s wish is that local businessman and politician J. Melvin Rich (also played by Ned Beatty) could discover what it’s like to struggle from day-to-day.  Melvin is running for mayor and a huge part of his platform calls for bulldozing the park and turning the land over to developers.  Jonathan grants his wish.  Suddenly, Melvin is in Wally’s body and Wally is in Melvin’s body.  While Melvin learns what its like to not have a place to sleep or a guaranteed nightly meal, Wally makes it a point to be kind to Melvin’s servants and his wife (Eve Roberts).  Wally also attends a mayoral debate (as Melvin) and announces that everyone should vote for Melvin’s opponent.

Melvin, needless to say, is not happy about any of this but his experiences getting kicked out of various establishments and being told that there’s no room for him at the shelter leads to Melvin starting to sympathize a bit with the plight with the underprivileged.  Then, as night falls, he once again switches bodies with Wally.  Now in his right body, Melvin discovers that he’s now considered to be a hero for endorsing his opponent and his previously estranged wife loves him again.  Wally, meanwhile, dies peacefully in the park, secure in the knowledge that he has saved it from being destroyed.  A jump forward reveals that Melvin goes on to become a beloved philanthropist who protects the park that Wally called home.

If this episode proves anything, it’s that Ned Beatty was a national treasure.  The story is heavy-handed and a lot of the humor is a bit too cartoonish for its own good.  Naming the greedy businessman J. Melvin Rich is a choice that is a bit too cutesy to really work.  Actually, Wally the Waver is concept that is almost too cutesy to work.  But Beatty makes both characters work, playing up Wally’s gentle eccentricity and Melvin’s genuine happiness at discovering that he’s suddenly a well-liked man.  This is an episode that would have been way too silly if not for Ned Beatty’s presence keeping things grounded.  Just as Melvin saves the park, Beatty saves the story.

Here’s The Teaser For Inside Out 2!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

2015’s Inside Out was a sincere, touching, sad, and joyful animated film.  If we’re going to be totally honest, it was the last truly great film to come out of PIXAR.  I absolutely loved it and …. it’s getting a sequel!

Normally, I’m weary of sequels to beloved films.  There’s always such a danger of tarnishing the original film’s legacy with a misplaced joke or an ill-thought plot development.  But Inside Out, which is about growing up and dealing with one’s developing emotions, is uniquely designed to be sequel-friendly.  We never stop growing and we never stop having emotions.  And, as we see in the just-released teaser for Inside Out 2, sometimes new emotions pop up out of nowhere.

Here’s the teaser for Inside Out 2!

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Monsters 1.19 “Rain Dance”

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 Monsters, which aired in syndication from 1988 to 1991. The entire show is streaming on Tubi.

This week, a rather predictable story is saved and elevated by one truly impressive monster!

Episode 1.19 “Rain Dance”

(Dir by Richard Friedman, originally aired on April 22nd, 1989)

Tonight’s episode of Monsters deals with a couple living in a shack in the middle of the desert.  Tom Solo (Kent McCord) is a self-styled treasure hunter who thinks that he can get rich by swindling the indigenous people out of their valuable artifacts.  His wife, Vanessa (Teri Copley), is sick of living in the desert and just wants to return to civilization.  Vanessa is extremely vain.  Tom is extremely smug.  It’s easy to imagine how they got together but it’s bit more difficult to understand why they’re still together.  

When an angry old woman (Betty Carvalho) shows up at the shack, she spends a few minutes yelling at Tom for trying to take advantage of her people and then complains about the drought that is destroying their land.  She says that her people found and tamed the land and that some day, the land will again belong to them.  She also gives Tom an artifact, a statue of what Tom assumes he’ll be able to get a few bucks for.  Myself, I would probably turn down the statue because it is seriously creepy.

Yikes!

Of course, it turns out that Tom is wrong about having any chance of making money of the statue.  The statue is a rain idol, one that comes to life in the middle of the night to stalk both Tom and his wife.  When confronted by the statue, both Vanessa and Tom are transformed into statues that crumble into dust.  The next morning, the old woman comes by to retrieve her idol and happily says that the rains will now come to wash away the dusty particles that were once the Solos.

Again, yikes!

Seriously, this was not a particularly complicated episode of Monsters.  From the start, it was obvious that Tom and Vanessa were going to pay for their exploitation of the natives and it was also obvious that, since neither one of them had any redeeming qualities, neither would survive the night.  And, as soon as the old woman showed up with that statue, it was pretty obvious what the instrument of their doom would be.  Vanessa was established early on as being obsessed with keeping her skin from drying out in the desert heat so I wasn’t surprised when she eventually started turning into sand.

It wasn’t surprising but it still worked because the monster was scary!

Seriously!

The end result was an effective morality take about the perils of greed and assuming you’re more clever than you actually are.  In many ways, this could have been a particularly macabre episode of The Twilight Zone or Night Gallery.  Monsters is at its best when it offers a scary monster and a dark ending and this episode certainly did that.

Here’s The Second Trailer For Love Lies Bleeding

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yes, this is an A24 film.  It seems like, every March, A24 releases a stylized genre film that is specifically designed to appeal to a very online segment of film reviewers.  It seems to be working out pretty well so I can’t blame them.

Here’s the trailer!

Retro Television Review: The Love Boat 4.1 “Sergeant Bull/Friends and Lovers/Miss Mother”

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, come aboard for season 4!

Episode 4.1 “Sergeant Bull/Friends and Lovers/Miss Mother”

(Dir by Roger Duchowny, originally aired on October 25th, 1980)

Well, it’s time for the fourth season of The Love Boat and let’s see who is going to be taking a cruise this week….

Hey, we know that guy!

Yes, it’s a young Tom Hanks, making one of his first television appearances on The Love Boat.  Tom had a sitcom coming out so ABC decided to promote the then-unknown actor by giving him a guest role on one of their most popular series.

Who does Tom play?  He plays a complete a total douchebag named Rick Martin, a former fraternity brother of Gopher’s who enjoys giving Gopher a hard time about his reputation for being “Strike-Out Smith.”  Rick makes Gopher feel so uncomfortable that Gopher impulsively claims that Julie is his girlfriend.  Julie plays along with Gopher.  This not only leads to sleazy Rick trying to steal Julie away from Gopher but it also causes Julie and Gopher to have real feelings for each other.

Yes, it is interesting to watch Tom Hanks play a sleaze but what is even more interesting, for longtime watchers of the show, is that Julie and Gopher make a surprisingly credible couple.  They actually do have a very likable chemistry together and it never seems improbable that they might end up together.  Of course, in the end, they decide to just stay friends because anything else would have upset the balance of the show.

Tom’s presence overshadows the rest of the show but there are two other stories to deal with.  Vic Tayback plays a former dill sergeant who reunites with his former recruits (Nipsey Russell, Harvey Lembeck, and Jack Somack) and who turns out to still be such a hardass that they bribe their cabin stewardess (Doris Roberts) to pursue a romance with him.  Of course, the two of them fall in love for real.  This was all a bit silly and Tayback’s drill sergeant was a bit annoying but it was nice to see him drop his guard around Doris Roberts and admit that he was only acting like a drill sergeant because that was all he had ever been.

Finally, Gwen Hutchins (Shelley Smith) boards the boat and tells Doc Bricker that she is two-months pregnant.

“Your husband must be very proud!” Doc replies, without missing a beat.

No, Gwen explains, she’s not married.  Once again, we are reminded that Doc is a walking HR nightmare.

Anyway, Gwen falls for a guy named Dennis (Dennis Cole) but she worries how Dennis will react to learning that she’s pregnant.  At first, Dennis does not react well, even asking her if she considered getting an abortion.  (She explains that she doesn’t support abortion, which definitely would not fly if this episode were made today.)  It all works out in the end but, seriously, I think she deserves better than Dennis.  Dennis Cole is an actor who I have seen in quite a few of these shows and he always seem kind of lost.  That was certainly the vibe that he gave off here.

This was an entertaining-enough episode, though almost all of the credit for that goes to the presence of Tom Hanks and the likable chemistry between Fred Grandy and Lauren Tewes.  It was definitely a good way to start off the fourth season.

Here’s The Trailer For A Quiet Place: Day One

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

A Quiet Place: Day One is coming out in June.  It’s another Quiet Place film, just without any of the characters that you actually care about from the previous two films.

“Find out why the world went silent.”

Uhmm, don’t we already know that?  Like the aliens that hunt by sound showed up so everyone had to be quiet to avoid being killed in a grisly manner?  See, this is why I’m not a fan of prequels.  A lot of times, prequels are based on the idea that people are asking question that no one is actually asking.

Anyway, A Quiet Place: Day One was not directed by John Krasinski and it does not star Emily Blunt but they both appear in the trailer.  It was directed by the guy who did Pig, which was a good film.  Honestly, this kind of feels like Chloe Zhao doing The Eternals and then vanishing.

Here’s the trailer!