I've been playing the PC game L.A. NOIRE, which is sort of like the movie L.A. CONFIDENTIAL. You're a cop in 1940s Los Angeles. As tends to happen when I play these kind of sandbox video games, I find myself exploring the nooks and crannies of the virtual world more than just playing the actual game. For example, I wandered around MacArthur ( Read more... )

Now that it's been in theaters a fortnight...

Warning, here be spoilers. Although I try to keep a few things mysterious. Still, avert your eyes if you wish to remain pure and untainted and unspoiled.

No kidding. Really. Spoilers. SPOILERS. Like that sign says in the dark forest on the way to the Wicked Witch's castle in The Wizard of ( Read more... )

Emperor of the North is a strange 1973 movie (IMDB, wikipedia) directed by Robert Aldrich (The Dirty Dozen). Originally titled Emperor of the North Pole, but probably renamed because people were mistaking it for a Santa Claus movie. Starring Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, and Keith Carradine, it's set in the Great Depression in the 1930s, and ( Read more... )

The Coen Brothers' first movie was Blood Simple (1984), a Texas noir where a lover's triangle and a greedy private eye lead to murder for all the wrong reasons. The audience knows what's happening the whole time, but the characters don't, which makes it very suspenseful. Most of the problems escalate from misunderstandings that could have been ( Read more... )

Info here, Starlight 6 website here, and their more-quickly-updated Facebook page here.

Bands start playing at 11am.

But as for the movies that'll start showing after sunset:

THE BLUES BROTHERS (Trailer on YouTube).
A SPECIAL SURPRISE PSYCHEDELIC WESTERN.
ZARDOZ (Trailer on YouTube).
FROGS Trailer on YouTube).
SHANTY TRAMP (Poster on IMDB).

I've been meaning to see this movie MOON, with Sam Rockwell, directed by Duncan Jones (David Bowie's son). A throwback hard scifi movie, with overtones of 2001, SILENT RUNNING, ALIEN, OUTLAND, and, I'd suspect, DARK STAR, and the Moonscape and minatures of SPACE: 1999 as well ( Read more... )

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The movie Look comes out on DVD today, which is a narrative filmed as if from the point of view of surveillance cameras. A bunch of interlocking stories (ala Crash, etc.), it follows characters as they're observed on camera in malls, parking lots, schools, traffic cams, elevators, the office, and so on.

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With MONSTERS VS. ALIENS coming out Friday, March 27th, I was trying to think of the other "Gigantic People" movies.

THE CYCLOPS (1957). Test pilot crashes in Mexico and grows to enormous size due to radioactivity.
THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN (1957). Was done on MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000.
ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN (1958). I've never seen it, ( Read more... )

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