The story of how The Lawnmower Man becoming one of the most infamous Stephen King adaptations is a fascinating one that we dive into on this episode of Silver Screen Confidential!
Category: Other
Silver Screen Confidential: The Ghost in Three Men and a Baby
In this episode we take a look at one of the most famous urban legends in movie history! How did the story of a ghost in Three Men and a Baby get started, and are hoaxes like this even possible with the technology we have today?
Silver Screen Confidential: The TV Cut of How The Grinch Stole Christmas
It’s certainly been a while since my last Grinch video, and even back then I wanted to do this video. Life got in the way however and so it kept getting pushed further and further back, but in that time it’s changed into what I hope will be the start of a new video series! Let me know what you think in the comments below!!
The Sonic Soapbox – Episode 1: Sonic’s Movie Design
Wanted to know what I think about Sonic’s design in the upcoming movie? Well take a listen to The Sonic Soapbox; an idea I’ve been thinking of for a bit now and hope to bring you more of in the future!
HalloWWEen: DOOM
DOOM and all the images you see in this review are owned by Universal Pictures
Directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak
Welcome one and all to this most SPOOKY time of the year! For this Halloween, I’ll be reviewing horror movies as I’ve been known to do on occasion, only this time we’ll be doing something a LITTLE bit different! With my recent fascination in the WWE and wrestling in general, I thought it’d be interesting to check out a few horror movies from some of the company’s most iconic stars, starting with the often maligned DOOM movie from 2005! DOOM was one of the biggest attempts to bring a video game to the big screen but ended up bombing at the box office which kind of put the whole idea of adaptation these properties on hold for a while there; leaving the genre to be dominated by Resident Evil sequels and Uwe Boll until around 2016 when studios started getting confident once again and movies OTHER than Resident Evil could start making money. Is it as bad people say it is, or is this Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson vehicle just a diamond in the rough looking for the right critic to give it the polish it needs? Let’s find out!!
Before the opening credits we get a bit of narration which tells us that humans discovered a portal on Earth that led to Mars, and now that I think about it… isn’t that the plot of John Carter of Mars? Why haven’t they run with that yet!? Maybe that’s the surprise twist in DOOM: Eternal. Now obviously with this being a DOOM movie, nothing can go well once you get your ass to Mars which these unlucky scientists are currently learning as the prologue picks up right as things are going to hell; literally I’m sure. They are RUNNING their asses off to try and get away from some unseen (presumably demonic) threat, and the situation is SO critical that the fastest sprinter locks the sliding doors behind him; leaving the slower ones to die in very gory fashion!
Will Review For Food!! We Just Launched a Patreon!!
Wander Over Yonder: A Post-Mortem
So, I just finished watching the finale of Wander Over Yonder. I felt doing something like this was appropriate.
For the uninitiated, this was a show about a fuzzy, overly-optimistic alien named Wander who travels across space with his best friend/steed/muscle, Sylvia. Together, they travel and look for other aliens in need of help, whether it’s small favors or need of rescue from villains looking to conquer their planet. Among said villains is Lord Hater, a skeleton-man with magic powers who seeks to become “The Greatest in the Galaxy” by conquering every planet with his army of eyeball soldiers known as The Watchdogs, led by Hater’s right-hand man and true brains behind his villain operation, Commander Peepers.
The show was created by Craig McCraken, best known as the creator of The Powerpuff Girls and Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends. Through this body of work, he became one of the first “celebrity animators” to people of my generation, where his name is almost like a brand in and off itself, synonymous with a mixture of adventure, screwball comedy, outlandish scenarios that mix the mundane with the bizzarre, and memorably over-the-top characters. The style of animation, character design, and writing associated with his shows became fixtures that fans could latch unto and identify as symbols of his work, and it’s been interesting to see how he (and his evolving team of associates) continue to evolve those basic tools and adapt them to new ideas.
In terms of scope, the show seemed to be the least ambitious of the three he’s done at first glance. PPG was primarily about satirizing superhero tropes by embodying them through a trio of kindergarden-aged superheroines and their oddball adventures. Foster’s was a surreal take on the idea of children outgrowing their imaginary friends (i.e. whatever symbol of their childhood they’re supposed to represent) by making said friends become real-life characters and showing what happens to them after their kids move on (or, at least, when they’re “supposed” to). So, it doesn’t seem like there’d be much to compare in a series that’s mainly about a guy who may be too kind for his own good, and believes that with enough kindness, anyone can be a friend. However, this is only one part of a bigger whole, and it’s the way the show bounces this concept with its other characters where the show becomes something truly memorable.
The Cartoon Physicist: Schlock & Terror Trailer
Drive By Biography: Christopher Titus
You know me! I can’t even look through my DVD collection without finding a way to turn it into something fun for the site! Almost everything I do is preceded by the question “how will I be able to turn this into an awesome post?” and lo and behold I have done it yet again! One of my favorite comedians is Christopher Titus and as luck would have it I’m going to be seeing him live in less than a week, so I figured now would be as good a time as any to take a look back at his career and how his work has been a great influence to me. I guess we should start this by answering the most basic question first. Who is Christopher Titus?
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I love being from a screwed up family
Christopher Todd Titus was born in Castro Valley California in 1964 to Kenneth and Juanita Titus. Throughout Christopher’s childhood, he had to deal with his manic depressive, paranoid, schizophrenic mother who was in and out of his life as well as his mean alcoholic dad who did his best to raise him right but was dealing with demons of his own. Most of his life story is told to us from his first major stand-up special Norman Rockwell is Bleeding which he had performed for years before getting it adapted into a TV show on Fox in 2000 simply called Titus; though to be clear, the recording you can find of that special was done a few years after the TV show had ended. Whether or not all of the stories about his life are true is something that can be reasonably questioned as my cursory research produces little evidence outside of his own personal accounts for what he had to go through, and since a lot of his appeal (at least for me) is the frankness, sincerity, and openness with which he talks about rough subjects, the material NOT being true would certainly hurt that image (like when Robin Williams’s off the cuff delivery style is undercut by the fact that he would always tell the same stories on every talk show he did). Personally, I don’t have a reason to question him or what he went through, and on the off chance that he DOES stretch the truth for comedic effect (in a memorial to his father at the end of an episode of Titus, his father says that only ten percent of what we hear is the truth), I still feel his comedy fills a need and speaks to an audience that very few comics have been able to reach. Probably the comedian that comes the closest would be Marc Maron who had a similarly rough life (though mostly AFTER his childhood) and frequently bares his soul to the world through his stand-up routines and his WTF podcast, on which he did in fact interview Christopher (one of the show’s better episodes in my opinion). The first time I ever heard Christopher’s comedy was when Norman Rockwell is Bleeding had aired on Comedy Central’s Secret Stash* which was (or maybe still is, I have no idea) a block of time around midnight or one in the morning on the weekends that would show movies and stand-up specials with the bad language intact, not to mention Girls Gone Wild commercials. Needless to say that I watched Secret Stash A LOT when I was in middle school, and even managed to stumble upon some great comedians in the process. The one comedy special that stood out the most for me though was the aforementioned Christopher Titus special, and it’s honestly something I would put in the top ten if not top five comedy specials that have influenced me greatly, some of which include Denis Leary’s No Cure for Cancer, Bill Maher: The Decider (he hit his peak during the Bush years), George Carlin’s Life is Worth Losing, and Whoopi: Back to Broadway. Now by the time I had discovered him, it had been YEARS since he had established himself and also years after his television show. What happened with that exactly?
The Reviewers Unite 