As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly watch parties. On Twitter, I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday and I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday. On Mastodon, 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, I will be hosting #FridayNightFlix! The movie? 2011’s Super Shark!
If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, find Super Shark on Prime, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag! I’ll be there happily tweeting. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
With today being May Day, it seems appropriate that today’s song of the day should be this blistering attack on Che Guevara, a racist and misogynistic sociopath who far too many people view as being a hero just because his face looks good on a t-shirt.
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy 77th birthday to director John Woo, the man who did the most to popularize the idea of the slo mo of doom!
Today’s scene that I love comes from Woo’s 1997 film, Face/Off. In this scene, Nicolas Cage and John Travolta purse each other in speedboats. The action is wonderfully over-the-top. Throughout this film, Cage and Travolta both do what they do best in this scene and so does John Woo.
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!
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy birthday to Texas’s own Wes Anderson! It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Wes Anderson Films
Bottle Rocket (1996, dir by Wes Anderson, DP: Robert Yeoman)
Rushmore (1998, dir by Wes Anderson, DP: Robert Yeoman)
Moonrise Kingdom (2012, dir by Wes Anderson, DP: Robert Yeoman)
Asteroid City (2023. dir by Wes Anderson, DP: Robert Yeoman)
The last time I wrote about my “thoughts on the culture,” I wrote about the Olympics, the senatorial primary between James Talarico and Jasmine Crockett, and the controversy over the BAFTA awards. I can remember that, shortly after I scheduled the post, the Iranian War started up and I had to quickly amend my post to mention it.
In my mind, it seems like that all happened a year ago. Imagine my surprise when I looked at the date of the post and I saw that it was published on March 2nd. A lot can happen in two months! With our current news cycle, a week can feel like a month and a month …. well, you get the idea.
It’s May Day!
It’s the first of May. For centuries, May Day was observed as a time of rebirth and a celebration of nature. It was the true Earth Day. Then the communists decided to take it over and turn into a celebration of their totalitarian ideology. International Workers Day, as it is officially known, is a day largely celebrated by people who are rich enough that they don’t have to work. Since 1992, this day has also been known as Worthy Wage Day. Again, the majority of the people celebrating have never actually lived paycheck-to-paycheck. My father, on the other hand, definitely valued each paycheck that he got and he considered unions to be a “pain in the ass.”
In the 1950s, The United States responded to the communist takeover of May Day by establishing two new holidays, Law Day and Loyalty Day. To be honest, both of those sound like communist holidays as well. It’s easy to imagine George Orwell imagining a mandatory Loyalty Day.
(Speaking of Orwell, I recently read a review of Andy Serkis’s adaptation of Animal Farm. Apparently, Serkis added a third act where a piglet named Lucky leads a revolution against the pigs. That’s the culture of 2026. It’s Animal Farm, with a happy ending and an anti-capitalist message.)
According to Checkiday, today is also Theraputic Massage Day so remember that if you’re feeling overwhelmed. You’ve earned a break.
Cole Thomas Allen Is a Dork
Last Saturday, a California teacher and avid Bluesky user named Cole Thomas Allen attempted to assassinate Donald Trump and his cabinet at the White House Correspondents Dinner. He failed, though the fact that he got near the ballroom with a gun is alarming. Also alarming is that, culturally, we’ve reached the point where this type of violence and potential violence is just shrugged off.
That said, the most memorable thing about Cole Thomas Allen is just how dorky he appears to have been. To be honest, all three of the men who attempted to assassinate Trump have come across as being incredibly dorky. I mean, Lee Harvey Oswald was definitely a nerd but even he looked like James Bond compared to Ryan Wesley Routh. As for Allen, he was apparently planning on dying in his attack and he couldn’t even pull that off. Instead, he was arrested and forcibly undressed before being sent off to jail. He left behind a manifesto that read like a Bluesky timeline and a selfie of himself wearing black pants, a black shirt, and ludicrously wide red tie, as if he wanted to make sure that the Secret Service had an easy target at which to fire.
This week, I started reading through the Shattered Lens archive. I started with our very first post, Arleigh’s review of Avatar. I’m currently worked me way through to September of 2011. It’s been interesting to read and to see how much the culture has changed over the past 14 (going on 15) years. When we started this site, DVDs were still a big deal. My first year of reviews are filled with excited anecdotes about the movie theaters that I loved to visit. Most of those theaters are gone now.
It made me a little bit sad to see how enthusiastic I used to get about certain films. I couldn’t wait to see Black Swan and Sucker Punch. I used to eagerly look forward to the Marvel movies. The Oscars used to be the center of my life. I used to watch my favorite trailers over and over again. I still do get excited about some movies. I still look forward to any new film from Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Sofia Coppola, Andrea Arnold, Joel Coen, Richard Linklater, Joseph Kosinski, and a handful of others. But the Marvel films no longer enchant me. Every trailer has the same flat Netflix look it. Every mainstream movie seems to feature the same collection of stock characters and the same mind-numbingly banal outlook. Meanwhile, the indie films have become just as predictable, their moments of subversion carefully choreographed so to not ruin any potential streaming deal. The knowledge that every film will quickly be available for me to watch at home has taken the thrill out of planning a night with a movie.
The more time passes, the more I find myself ignoring new releases so that I can enjoy films from the pre-streaming era. I guess that’s just a part of getting older. Every generation thinks that the generation that comes after them is full of heathens who are destroying the culture.
Spencer Pratt Is Running For Mayor Of Los Angeles….
….and his first commercial was surprisingly effective. In fact, my twitter timeline is full of people who are convinced he’s going to win. Of course, my twitter timeline is also full of people who thought Gary Johnson was going to win in 2016. As for my opinion, I’m torn. On the one hand, I don’t think I would vote for Karen Bass, not after what happened during the January 2025 wildfires. David Lynch died as a result of having to leave his home due to the fires. As far as I’m concerned, that’s reason enough to vote against Bass. But Mayor Spencer Pratt sounds like it would be a better TV show than a reality. Fortunately, I don’t live in Los Angeles so I don’t have to vote for anyone running over there.
(I am looking forward to President Pratt’s 2044 inaugural ceremony.)
Things Are Going To Get Easier
I watched the 1979 classic Over the Edge this week so, of course, I’ve got this song stuck in my head.
Is that it?
I guess that’s it! Whatever you celebrate, enjoy the first of May!
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 Hunter, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1991. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi and several other services!
This week, the police commissioner is suspected of murder!
Episode 1.3 “The Hot Grounder”
(Dir by Bill Duke, originally aired on October 5th, 1984)
After the police commissioner’s wife is blown up by a car bomb, all the homicide detectives hide out in the bathroom because they don’t want to get assigned the case. Captain Cain still manages to track them down and gives the case to Hunter and McCall. When McCall asks Hunter why he didn’t do a better job hiding, Hunter replies, “I’m too tall!”
Hunter and McCall soon come to suspect that Commissioner Crenshaw (William Windom) had his wife killed. Because Crenshaw was being blackmailed with photographs of him with another man, his wife was threatening to divorce him. Despite all of the evidence against Crenshaw, the police chief (Jason Bernard) tries to protect him. Hunter and McCall find themselves suspended from the force. They still manage to prove Crenshaw’s guilt. Crenshaw goes to prison and Hunter and McCall get their badges back.
This episode felt like a rough draft. I enjoyed the humor at the start of it. All of the detectives trying to hide felt very realistic. Dryer was always obviously still getting comfortable with the role when this episode was shot but his jokes were well-delivered. That said, the mystery itself felt half-baked and William Windom was not particularly believable in his role. By the end of the episode, Hunter had been reduced to repeating, “Works for me,” over and over again.
This episode didn’t really work for me. It was obvious that the show was still trying to figure out who Hunter and McCall were and how they would react to each other. As such, their chemistry felt off in this episode and the end result was forgettable.
Welcome to 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 Decoy, which aired in Syndication in 1957 and 1958. The show can be viewed on Tubi!
This week, Casey gets involved in a domestic drama.
Episode 1.29 “Cry Revenge”
(Dir by David Alexander, originally aired on April 28th, 1958)
Mrs. Hart (Fran Carlon) has been getting threatening phone calls from criminal James Anderson (Lee Bergere), who is trying to keep Mrs. Hart from testifying against him in court. Casey is sent over to the Hart home to provide 24-hour protection. It’s there that she meets Norma (Zohra Lampert), Mrs. Hart’s club-footed daughter. Norma blames her mother for both her father’s death and her disability.
Norma stuns everyone when she announces that she has married Howard Farley (Lonny Chapman), one of Anderson’s criminal associates. Norma is getting back at her mother but what she doesn’t realize is that Howard only married her so that he and James could rob the family business!
Casey didn’t really get to do much in this episode, as she herself admitted at the end of the episode. (In her closing monologue, she tells us that she’ll always think of the Harts whenever she wonders what happens behind the curtains of a seemingly perfect home.) This episode is a bit of a soap opera, with Norma eventually discovering the truth about her alcoholic father and how he was responsible for her twisted foot.
Zohra Lampert, who previously appeared on this show as the victim of a heroin dealer, gives a good performance as Norma, playing her as being both vulnerable and vindictive. This episode eventually got a bit too overwrought for its own good but Lampert made the episode worth watching.
Hi, everyone! Tonight, on Mastodon, I will be hosting the #TubiThursday watch party! Join us for the original Red Dawn (1984)!
You can find the movie on Tubi and Prime and you can join us on Mastodon at 9 pm central time! (That’s 10 pm for you folks on the East Coast.) We will be using #TubiThursday hashtag! See you then!
Red Dawn (1984, dir by John Milius, DP: Ric Waite)
Through the Shattered Lens 