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Take Me Home Tonight

By Adam Lippe

Of the many funny things that comedian Faizon Love said during his frequent guest spots on Dinner For Five, regarding a film he co-starred in, Torque, one of the most perceptive was how the producers were far more worried about assembling the soundtrack rather than the screenplay. It’s a common downside to having to sell […]

Year One

By Adam Lippe

It doesn’t happen often. But sometimes you can tell how stale and unfunny a comedy is going to be just from the marketing alone. I’m not referring to the TV ads and trailers, which take bits out of context, often changing their meaning and humor value. I mean situations where a cast member shows up […]

Shrivel Me Timber; Erotic Thrillers Vol. 1: Traces of Red

By Adam Lippe

If the idea of seeing Jim Belushi as a sex symbol isn’t appealing to you, then I don’t know what to say. Clearly Traces of Red is too good for you. As I detailed in the [Motor]Cycles of the Film Industry article, Hollywood does things in cycles. When the 1980’s teen sexploitation market dried up […]

Neighbors

By Adam Lippe

After reading Wired, where writer Bob Woodward extensively covers not just John Belushi’s downward spiral, but the extremely troubled production of Neighbors which included  director John G. Avildsen and John Belushi (in his final film) fighting on set, the constant rewriting and dilution of Larry Gelbart’s dark, original script, which was apparently quite close in […]

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Roadracers

By Adam Lippe

Whenever there’s a genre parody or ode to a specific era of films, such as Black Dynamite’s mocking of Blaxploitation films or Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, the second half of Grindhouse, the danger is that the film might fall into the trap of either being condescending without any particular insight, or so faithful that it becomes the very flawed thing it is emulating.

Black Dynamite has nothing new to say about Blaxploitation films, it just does a decent job of copying what an inept [...]

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Featured Quote (written by me)

On Cold Fish:

Though the 16 year old me described the 1994 weepie Angie, starring Geena Davis as a Brooklyn mother raising her new baby alone, as “maudlin and melodramatic,” Roger Ebert, during his TV review, referring to the multitude of soap-operaish problems piling up on the titular character, suggested that it was only in Hollywood where Angie would get a happy ending. “If they made this movie in France, Angie would have shot herself.”

Well Cold Fish was made in Japan, where Angie would have shot herself and that would have been the happy ending.