Dinner and a Movie with Moxie

  Adventure Island (1987) Can a video game be frustrating to the point of being impossible, but also be great and fun at the same time?   For me that has always been the case for Hudson's Adventure Island.  I remember playing this game as a kid, and I always loved it, for me as a kid though anything with skateboarding was something that I absolutely loved, and though I have great memories of spending hours upon hours playing this game, I realized as I played it this past week, that I had never been past the second part of the first level, I'm not sure if I ever even got through the first stage of the first level as a kid.   But I was never frustrated with it, I loved playing it.    Can you be absolutely terrible at something and love it?  Yes, I think so.  So I put serious effort into this game this past week and I realized something, it is terribly frustrating to the point of me having to admit that for me it is impossible (I didn't eve...

Shamanic Princess (1996-1998) This is a strange anime OVA (Original Video Anime, or a direct to video anime) series that ran from 1996-1998, with only six episodes made, and the series has a strange chronology to it. Shamanic Princess is a darker twist on the "magic girl" anime, done in a style that is quite reminiscence of CLAMP's work on Magic Knights Rayearth, though it had nothing to do with that anime/manga team.  Shamanic Princess was directed by Mitsuru Hongo and Hiroyuki Nishimura, and created by the Triangle Staff studio.  The series was licensed in North America by Central Park Media in 2000, but after they closed the licensing rights were purchased by Media Blasters for North American distribution.  The OVA consists of six 30 minute episodes, and can be found as a complete collection with all six episodes on DVD.    I watched the English dialogue version that stars Tara Sands as Tiara a royal priestess from the Guardian World, P.M. Lewis plays Japolo ...

  Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (1941) In classic horror literature there are three horror stories that have made the greatest impact, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 classic The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was adapted as a stage performance in 1887 by Russell Sullivan, and then for film in 1925, and again in 1931.   The Paramount Pictures 1931 adaptation was an Academy Award winning version of the story.  Then in 1941 MGM decided to remake the 1931 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, also pulling elements for the screenplay from the stage performance, and thus being less based on Robert Louis Stevenson's novella than upon the 1931 film and the 1887 stage performance.  For the 1941 film MGM cast two A-list actors to play the lead roles with Spencer Tracy and Ingrid Bergman.    Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was directed by Victor Fleming (the director of Gone With The W...

 Freaks (1932) Tod Browning, former circus performer and Vaudeville performer turned director is probably best known for his silent films with Lon Chaney as well as the 1931 talkie production of Dracula for Universal, also directed one of the most controversial film ever made, Freaks.   The combination of the failure and shock of Freaks, as well as his having trouble adapting to the new world of Talkie films, his career would come to an end in 1939, though he would retire a very wealthy man.   Freaks released in 1932 is a controversial film about a group of sideshow "freaks" in a traveling circus.  The film portrays them as "normal" people, that have the same emotions and experiences as "normal" people, and in the film the real "monsters" are not those with physical deformities, but instead those who are labeled as "normal" by society.  One of the performers, Hans, who is a little person becomes attracted to the trapeze performer, Cleop...

  Jim Henson Double Feature: The Dark Crystal & Labyrinth "Another World, Another Time... In the Age of Wonder." As a child growing up in the 1980s, Jim Henson was a huge part of my childhood, from Sesame Street, to Labyrinth, and The Dark Crystal, Jim Henson helped to fuel my imagination and wonder.   I didn't grow up on Disney like many kids my age or kids a bit younger than me did, I grew up on Sesame Street and the Muppet Babies, and the Muppet movies (I especially loved The Muppets Christmas Carol!), and of course I remember watching Fraggle Rock in the morning before school as a kid.  I think my love of fantasy films and literature was greatly fueled by The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.     The Dark Crystal, released in 1982 was directed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz, and written by David Odell, with character designs by Brian Froud.   The film was distributed by Associated Film Distribution, Universal Pictures (US), and United Internati...

 Golden Years (1991) Stephen King has had a long relationship with television miniseries adaptations of his works, since his novel 'Salem's Lot was adapted as a miniseries in 1979.  Many of those miniseries were quite successful, especially the 1990 adaptation of Stephen King's It.  After the success of David Lynch's Twin Peaks showing that a television show could be a continued drama rather than episodic, or being a Soap Opera, Stephen King had the idea of creating a television series based on an unpublished book that he had called Golden Years.  The series was pitched as a limited series made of seven parts (or episodes), and was supposed to act as a pilot for a longer series, however after the seven parts were aired, CBS chose not to pick up the series. Golden Years was created by Stephen King, who also wrote and co-wrote the series.  Josef Anderson wrote the teleplay for the last half of the series, while King did the outline of the stories.  Golden Yea...

  The Stand (1994) The story of The Stand being adapted to film, is almost as long as the novel itself.  George Romero first approached Stephen King about doing a film adaptation of The Stand soon after it was published, and Richard Rubinstein at Laurel Entertainment was also very excited about the idea of making a film adaptation of The Stand.  Though Romero's interest dissipated in the 1980s as Stephen King had a string of poorly received film adaptations of his work.  At one point Dario Argento was supposedly approached about directing a film adaptation but turned it down.  Finally after the massive success of Stephen King's It as a television miniseries, as well as the box office success of Pet Sematary, King began to warm up to the idea of doing the film as a television miniseries.  King wanted Mick Garris, who he worked with on Sleepwalkers previously, and was happy with his treatment of source material.  Finally after around a dozen different sc...