This week’s Cool Actor is a little something different. We’ve mostly been featuring tough guys but in a lot of those tough guy action movies there was always a role for the cute, funny, ditzy combination comedy relief/sort-of love interest who didn’t get too serious with the hero because that would slow down the action. The great Joe Bob Briggs …
John Jos. Miller’s CREATURE FEATURE
Pulp Cover Friday In the rush and hubbub of last minute Christmas doings, you didn’t think I’d forget Pulp Cover Friday, did you? GALAXY was one of those magazines that just missed being published throughout the 1950s, it’s first issue being dated October 1950. It published some fine fiction, but was not notable for really excellent art (with exceptions, of …
John Jos. Miller’s CREATURE FEATURE
A Quintessential Alien Invasion Movie of the 1950s Sf/Fan: Classic SF/Fan: Alien Invasion One of the very best, if not the best, alien invasion movies from the 1950s is a Brit picture called THE TROLLENBERG TERROR (1958). Not familiar with that one, you say? Perhaps you’ve heard of it under the name they slapped on when they exported it for …
Cool Actor of the Week: Michael Ironside
Throughout the 80’s no one played a sadistic bad guy as well as Michael Ironside. He brought a frightening intensity to his roles that sometimes seemed out of place in the otherwise light-hearted cheeseball action movies he appeared in like Total Recall and Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone. Ironside got his start in TV and film roles in his …
Punch-Drunk Post
With all the Cheese Magneteers caught up in Christmas bidness, writing projects, or both, we’re a little short on material this week — and to make it up to you, I give you the trailer for one of the most underrated, overlooked and incredibly sweet movies in recent years, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love (2002).
Creatures from the Abyss (1994)
(I’m trying to deliver a treatment on time for a screenwriting assignment, so to keep the cheese flowing, here’s an excerpt from my book, Unsafe On Any Screen). I’m a lunatic for Italian movies, but I had never heard of this flick when I stumbled across it on the DVD rack at Best Buy. It looked so fruity that I …
John Jos. Miller’s CREATURE FEATURE
Face-off! No, not the Travolta movie with the face transplant, but a new format where I take two similar films and review them side by side to discover which one is better. The methodology, like a boxing match, is based on rounds scored on a 10 point system. To illustrate: a score of 5-5 indicates a tie; 6-4 is a …
Classic Rock Sunday – The Pretty Things
Probably the best classic rock band that most people can’t name, The Pretty Things were the lost patrol of the British Invasion. Guitarist Dick Taylor was in Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys with fellow Sidcup Art College students Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. Brian Jones came along, bringing with him a somewhat better name for the band. Taylor …
John Jos. Miller’s CREATURE FEATURE
Pulp Cover Friday Presents: Something a little different (with a tip of the hat to Patricia Rogers for giving me the idea) Pulps were entertainment for the American masses of the middle 20th century. The masses of other countries and other times also needed their cheap thrills. A very popular form of such in Japan in the 19th century was …
R.I.P. Blake Edwards
Director/Writer/Producer/Actor Blake Edwards passed away this morning at age 88. His list of credits includes so many classic films it’s kind of incredible — any filmmaker would be happy to have just one of Edwards’ movies on his resume. Some of the greats include Operation Petticoat, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Experiment in Terror, The Great Race, The Party, 10, SOB, Victor Victoria, and …
To Not-So-Boldly Go Where No Man has Gone Before…
I only remember seeing Space: 1999 once or twice as a kid. It must not have been available for long in Wisconsin, because I watched pretty much anything that came on the t..v back then. (My dad used to tell me that no one was going to pay me to watch t.v. when I grew up. I’m an editor now. …
Cool Actor of the Week – Evel Knievel
Okay, I realize I’m pushing it by making Evel Knievel the Cool Actor of the Week, but dammit, I freakin’ love Viva Knievel! (1977), and Evel did a pretty kick-ass job of playing himself in that movie. Sure, maybe what he did wasn’t really a heck of a lot like acting, but he sure delivered the groceries — putting feminist …
My Favorite Movie: Aguirre, Wrath of God
When the Cheese Magnet crew embarked on this Favorite Movie project I felt a little left out. Unlike the other guys, I don’t have a single favorite movie. I have many that I love for different reasons: The Maltese Falcon, Blazing Saddles, Solaris (original version), The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. After thinking it over for a few days …