Dinner and a Movie with Moxie

  Tokyo Godfathers I have been aware of this film for awhile, but I never chose to watch it until my roommate was telling me how it is one of their favourite Christmas films, so they gave me a copy of it and we watched it together.  I was super impressed by this amazing anime film.  Though it was released in 2003, it was only available in the USA with English Subtitles until 2020 when G-Kids re-released the film with English language dubs.  Now I full well know that most anime fans will shun me for preferring dubs over subs, but being that I don't speak Japanese, and when I watch with dubs I end up missing some of what is going on in the images, I end up getting more enjoyment from a dubbed version than a subbed version, however if I am watching a live-action film it must be subbed, because dubs on a live-action film makes it unwatchable for me.  Not sure if that makes sense to anyone else, but that's my preference, so therefore we watched the 2020 G-Kids versio...

The Curse Of The Living Corpse  Actor, director, producer, ect Del Tenney partnered with drive-in theater chain owner Alan Iselin to produce a string of low budget horror films, that would be released by Twentieth Century Fox, two of these films were The Horrors Of Party Beach, and The Curse Of The Living Corpse.  The Horrors of Party Beach was a low budget b-horror film that goofed on 1950s creature features, and beach party movies that were popular at the time, and has gone on to be a cult classic.  The Curse Of The Living Corpse, on the other hand is a low budget period horror film, that in is as much of a murder mystery as it is a horror film, and it plays out like a more traditional horror film, though not incredibly original, it does work well, and is effective as a mystery, I honestly didn't see the ending coming, though there were hints along the way. The Curse Of The Living Corpse was written, directed, and produced by Del Tinney.   The film was distrib...

  The Horror Of Party Beach Beach parties, 1960s surf rock, cute girls in bikinis, and atomic monsters from the sea murdering young girls on the coast of Connecticut, and all part of a low budget b-monster film with tons of blood (chocolate syrup); what is there not to love about The Horror Of Party Beach.   This film was absolutely everything I wanted it to be!  It is a b-horror drive in classic, originally shown as a double feature with The Curse Of The Living Corpse.    The Horror Of Party Beach was directed by Del Tenney who was born in the north-central Iowan town of Mason City, which was also home to Meredith Wilson who wrote the Music Man.  Del Tenney's family then moved to California, and he then moved to New York City to study acting and became an actor.  Then wanting to get into film making, he was approached by a drive-in theater owner in Albany NY that approached him about doing some low budget horror films, and that theater owner had ...

  The Asylum "Mockbusters": Journey To The Center Of The Earth & 100 Million BC Tonight's science-fiction double feature is more about a concept of filmmaking rather than just a review of two bad films.  The idea of parody and straight up ripoffs of blockbuster films is nothing new, we all can think of a million Star Wars and Alien ripoffs from the 1970s and 1980s (many of which were produced by Roger Corman), and then of course the Porno parodies that we all love to laugh at.  But there is a special kind of big budget ripoff called "mockbusters", which are released directly to video/DVD right around the time that a major blockbuster film will be released, these films are designed to capitalize on the popularity of the big budget blockbuster, and they are made very quickly at extremely low budgets, and put into the video stores and video rental stores while the big budget version is still in the theaters.  The profit model of these basically work like this: ...

Darren Aronofsky Double Feature: Pi & Requiem For  A Dream Darren Aronofsky started his career making two of the most cerebral and disturbing films that I have seen with Pi and Requiem For A Dream, before going on to make films like The Black Swan, Noah, and Mother.   His first feature length film Pi, in 1998 is a cerebral thriller about a man who is a mathematician who is obsessed with finding the numbers behind the complete order of the world.   Though the obvious plot of the film revolves around math, and how numbers control the world, there is an underlying story about mental health, which is a common theme in Aronofsky's films.  It is likely that the main character in Pi is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.   Pi was written and directed by Darren Aronofsky, and distributed by Artisan Entertainment.  Aronofsky raised most of the money for the film from $100 loans from friends and relatives, with some other funds raised as well....

The Wachowskis Science-Fiction Double Feature: Cloud Atlas & Jupiter Ascending The Wachowski sisters, Lana and Lilly Wachowski made a name for themselves in the world of science fiction in 1999 when they wrote and directed the Matrix, and since then they have not slowed down in their creative and imaginative output, releasing some of the most mind blowing science fiction films in the industry.  In 2012 they adapted the David Mitchell novel Cloud Atlas, and in 2015 they wrote and directed the science-fiction action film Jupiter Ascending, two big budget sci-fi films that were mind blowing in their effects and just overall bigness. Cloud Atlas released in 2015, was written and directed by the Wachowski sisters with Tom Tykwer co-directing, based on the 2004 novel of the same name by David Mitchell.  The film was distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures and X-Verleih (in Germany).  Cloud Atlas was a box office disappointment only making $130.5 million in the box office, agai...

The Langoliers (1995) In the 1990's there was this trend of adapting Stephen King's works to television mini-series, with books like It, The Tommyknockers, The Shining, The Stand, and several others being made into television miniseries.   One of those made for television films was The Langoliers from 1995, which was directed by Tom Holland, and aired on ABC on May 14th and 15th of 1995.   The Langoliers is based on the novella of the same name that was featured in Stephen King's collection Four Past Midnight, and was aired in two hour and a half segments.   Tom Holland also did the teleplay for the film. The Langoliers stars David Morse as Captain Brian Engle, Kate Maberly as Dina Catherine Bellman (a blind girl with telepathic powers), Patricia Wettig as Laurel Stevenson, Dean Stockwell as Bob Jenkins, Mark Lindsay Chapman as Nick Hopewell, Kimber Riddle as Bethany Simms, Christopher Collet as Albert Kaussner, Frankie Faison as Don Gaffney, and Bronson Pi...