From the DVD Shelf: Your Highness
In the DVD’s special features, Zooey Deschannel describes the film Your Highness as a dirty version of The Princess Bride, and I’d say that’s as good a description as any for this very profane, very funny fantasy film. I won’t call it a spoof, because Your Hig
Josh Reviews The Rum Diary!
It’s not getting much notice in theatres, it seems, but I found myself quite taken with The Rum Diary, Bruce Robinson’s adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s book, starring Johnny Depp. I am not at all a devotee of Hunter S. Thompson. I have not read the novel on whic
News Around the Net!
This is a fantastic article from the New York Times about how baseball dugout payphones are the last bastion of the landline. The web-site io9 always has some great lists, and I particularly enjoyed their recent list of 10 stand-alone episodes that totally represent their respective s
Josh Reviews Party Down (Season One)!
Wow! Add this series to the list of brilliant, cancelled-before-their-time TV shows! I don’t think I even heard of Party Down during the two seasons it was on the air, on Starz, in 2009-10. But every now and then, since it’s cancellation, I’d hear or read a menti
From the DVD Shelf: Mimic (The Director’s Cut)
I had previously seen Mimic once, back when it was originally released to theatres in 1997. I think I went to see it because the trailers looked interestingly creepy, and because I had so enjoyed Charles S. Dutton in Alien 3. (I still think that Mr. Dutton is one of the best aspec
Josh Reviews Moneyball!
Is anyone else as amused as I am by how closely Brad Pitt, in the new baseball film Moneyball, resembles Robert Redford in the classic baseball film The Natural (click here for my review)? It’s spooky, man! Anyways, Moneyball is adapted from the book Moneyball: The Art of Winn
The “Extended Cut” of Green Lantern Still Stinks
I was really disappointed by this summer’s Green Lantern. I had high hopes for the epic space adventure promised by the trailers, but what we got instead was a lame, Earth-bound mess. (Read my full review here.) I wondered if the “Extended Cut” of the film releas
Days of Terrence Malick (Part 1): The Thin Red Line (1998)
Terrence Malick directed two highly acclaimed films in the 1970’s (Badlands and Days of Heaven, neither of which I’ve seen, but I plan to remedy that soon — more on this later), and then he dropped out of sight for twenty years. Mr. Malick finally returned to the w
From the DVD Shelf: Josh Reviews the Animated Adaptation of Batman: Year One!
Back in 1986, Frank Miller turned the comics world on its ear with the release of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. This four-issue prestige-format limited series, which Mr. Miller wrote and pencilled (with inks by Klaus Janson and gorgeous colors by Lynn Varley), told the story of a