Song of the Day: Battle Without Honor or Humanity by Tomoyasu Hotei

Posted on March 31, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s song of the day was not specifically written for the Kill Bill soundtrack but that’s still the film that I’ll always associate it with. Here is Tomoyasu Hotei and Battle Without Honor or Humanity.

Scenes That I Love: Christopher Walken in Pulp Fiction

Posted on March 31, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today is Christopher Walken’s 83rd birthday so it seems appropriate to share a Walken scene that I love. Without further ado, here is the classic gold watch speech from the 1994 film, Pulp Fiction:

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special 1975 Edition

Posted on March 31, 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!

Today, we pay tribute to the year 1975. It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 1975 Films

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

Deep Red (1975, dir by Dario Argento, DP: Luigi Kuveiller)

Mirror (1975, dir by Andrei Tarkovsky, DP: Georgy Rerberg)

Three Days Of The Condor (1975, dir by Sydney Pollack, DP: Owen Roizman)

Music Video of the Day: Weapon of Choice by Fatboy Slim (2001, dir by Spike Jonze)

Posted on March 31, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Val wrote about this music video way back in 2016. I’m sharing it again because today is Christopher Walken’s 83rd birthday! Walken trained as a dancer before going into acting and he gets to show off more than a few moves in this video.

Walken also trained as a lion tamer before he went into acting. I guess he’s a little bit old to play a lion tamer now but still, that’s something I would have liked to have seen.

Enjoy!

Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 5.13 “Breaking Point”

Posted on March 30, 2026 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 Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983. The entire show is currently streaming on Prime!

This week, Ponch worries that he’s lost his touch.

Episode 5.13 “Breaking Point”

(Dir by Leslie H. Martinson, originally aired on January 3rd, 1982)

While pursuing a car thief, Ponch loses control of his motorcycle and crashes through the glass door of a jewelry store. He smashes into a display case and finds himself trapped underneath a shelf of jagged glass. One wrong move and he could lose his head!

Now, Baker and the other cops are able to rescue Ponch and move the display case. Still, the experience leaves Ponch so shaken that he starts to doubt himself. He starts to find excuses to not go out on his bike. He does paperwork back at headquarters. He claims that his bike has a vibration. The other members of the Highway Patrol start to whisper that Ponch is not pulling his weight. Getraer tells Ponch to take some vacation time and to get his head together.

Ponch’s sister, Patti (Maria O’Brien), is visiting. She’s a nurse but, like Ponch, she’s having doubts about her job. She would rather be a model, despite not being particularly attractive. Ponch isn’t happy about Patti giving up her career but he does arrange for Patti to spend some time with Jon’s model girlfriend, Christy (Mary Angela Young). While Patti and Christy are chatting, a man has a heart stroke and Patti saves his life. Patti realizes that her job is important and this leads to Ponch deciding that his job is important too.

I’m going to guess that this was designed to be Erik Estrada’s Emmy episode. Estrada does his best to capture Ponch’s uncertainty and his conflicted emotions but the thing with Erik Estrada is that you look at him and you just can’t believe he’s ever had a moment of self-doubt in his entire life. By the end of the episode, Ponch is back on his bike and flashing his big smile and there was never any doubt that he would be.

Even with Estrada hamming it up for the Emmy judges, this episode found room for two slo mo of doom accidents. How anyone could have survived the second accident, I have no idea. And yet, it appears that there weren’t any serious injuries. I guess we should be thankful for that!

Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 5.19 “Miracle Man”

Posted on March 30, 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 Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show can be purchased on Prime!

This week, the Miracle Man arrives in Miami!

Episode 5.19 “Miracle Man”

(Dir by Alan Myerson, originally aired on June 21st, 1989)

Who is the Miracle Man?

The Miracle Man (played by Jose Perez) is an overweight, middle-aged man who sometimes wears an eye mask and a t-shirt with a big M on it. He rallies the good people of Miami to take back their neighborhoods from the drug dealers. He thwarts drug deals, even the ones that are actually a part of an undercover operation. He’s something of a pest. The cops wants to stop him. The criminals want to kill him. A news reporter (Zach Grenier) wants to make him a star.

In real life, he’s actually Gregory Esteban and he is Izzy’s cousin. A former junkie, he blames himself for the overdose death of his daughter and he’s now determined to launch a one-man war against crime. He’s also bipolar and running low on his meds, which makes him unpredictable. Switek and Tubbs eventually catch the Miracle Man but he still manages to escape from the safehouse. His actions lead to the death of this week’s drug dealers but they also lead to him getting killed as well. That’s not really a surprise. Guest stars almost always died on Miami Vice.

This episode didn’t work for me. The Miracle Man character was too over-the-top to be taken seriously and, as a result, his story and his death didn’t have the emotional impact that it should have. As well, the villains were forgettable and generic. Considering how surreal Miami Vice could be, one would be justified in expecting this episode to be much more stylized than it was. Unfortunately, it was just dull. The Miracle Man could not save it.

Don Johnson is only in this episode for the first two minutes. Edward James Olmos isn’t in it at all. (Crockett and Castillo are described as being absent to prepare for a trial.) The whole episode feels like filler. I can kind of understand why it wasn’t aired during season 5’s original run.

Sorry, Miracle Man.

The Eric Roberts Collection: Eternity: The Movie (dir by Ian Thorpe)

Posted on March 30, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the 1980s, no band better represented mediocre R&B than Eternity.

At least, that’s the claim made by 2014’s Eternity: The Movie, an occasionally amusing comedy in which Pennsylvania-bred singer/songwriter Todd Lucas (Barrett Clarke) moves to California, gets his dream job of working at BJ-Maxx, and eventually befriends a coworker whose name actually is BJ (Myko Oliver). BJ is a saxophonist who has released a solo album in which he covers the theme songs of classic detective shows. When the naive Todd and the irresponsible BJ get together, they become an unlikely hit-making duo. Their first song Make Love, Not Just Sex, shoots up the charts and soon, Todd and BJ are putting all of their personal issues to music.

Eternity: The Movie is a comedy that recycles a handful of jokes over and over again. The main joke is that Todd and BJ come across as being extremely into each other, even while they’re sleeping with groupies and both pining for their neighbor, Gina Marie (Nikki Leonti). Todd and BJ are the type of musical partners who discuss their lives while sharing a bubble bath. It’s not the cleverest joke ever told but, thanks to the ability of the actors to say the most ludicrous of lines with a deadpan face, I did chuckle occasionally. The better joke is that their music is both convincingly bad and also convincingly catchy. It’s the type of bad music that you can believe would become very popular. At one point, Todd sings a song about his ex-girlfriend, who drowned in a river. Throughout the song, he laments that she just wasn’t a better swimmer. The songs are performed with just the right amount of earnest stupidity to be funny.

As for Eric Roberts, he plays the manager of BJ-Maxx. Jon Gries and Martin Kove also show up, playing a record executive and the record executive’s father respectively. I’d like to see a movie where Eric Roberts and Martin Kove start a band. Someone should make that happen.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Join #MondayMania For The Wedding Stalker!

Posted on March 30, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi, everyone! Tonight, on twitter, I will be hosting one of my favorite films for #MondayMania! Join us for 2017’s The Wedding Stalker (a.k.a. Psycho Wedding Crasher)!

You can find the movie on Prime and then you can join us on twitter at 9 pm central time! (That’s 10 pm for you folks on the East Coast.) See you then!

Song of the Day: Life In The Fast Lane by The Eagles

Posted on March 30, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This song was one of my father’s favorites. I miss you, Dad.

He was a hard-headed man
He was brutally handsome, and she was terminally pretty
She held him up, and he held her for ransom in the heart
of the cold, cold city
He had a nasty reputation as a cruel dude
They said he was ruthless, they said he was crude
They had one thing in common, they were good in bed
She’d say, ‘Faster, faster. The lights are turnin’ red.”
Life in the fast lane
Surely make you lose your mind, mm
Are you with me so far?
Eager for action and hot for the game
The coming attraction, the drop of a name
They knew all the right people, they took
all the right pills
They threw outrageous parties, they paid heavenly bills
There were lines on the mirror, lines on her face
She pretended not to notice, she was caught up
in the race

Out every evening, until it was light
He was too tired to make it, she was too tired
to fight about it

Life in the fast lane
Surely make you lose your mind
Life in the fast lane, everything all the time
Life in the fast lane, uh huh
Blowin’ and burnin’, blinded by thirst
They didn’t see the stop sign,
took a turn for the worse

She said, “Listen, baby. You can hear the engine
ring. We’ve been up and down this highway;
haven’t seen a goddam thing.”
He said, “Call the doctor. I think I’m gonna crash.”
“The doctor say he’s comin’, but you gotta pay him cash.”
They went rushin’ down that freeway,
messed around and got lost
They didn’t know they were just dyin’ to get off
And it was life in the fast lane
Life in the fast lane

Songwriters: Joseph Fidler Walsh / Glenn Lewis Frey / Donald Hugh Henley

Scenes I Love: The Montage from The Parallax View

Posted on March 30, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today, we wish a happy birthday to actor, director, and producer Warren Beatty.

In Alan J. Pakula’s 1974 film The Parallax View, Beatty plays a seedy journalist who goes undercover to investigate the links between the mysterious Parallax Corporation and a series of recent political assassinations. In the film’s most famous sequence, Beatty — pretending to be a job applicant (read: potential assassin) for the Parallax Corporation — is shown an orientation film that has been designed to test whether or not he’s a suitable applicant. The montage is shown in its entirety, without once cutting away to show us Beatty’s reaction. The implication, of course, is that what’s important isn’t how Beatty reacts to the montage but how the viewers sitting out in the audience react.

So, at the risk of furthering the conspiracy, here’s that montage.