The Projectors

We’re near the end of a terrible year made worse by watching a dozen Lars von Trier movies over the span of 2024. We follow up last month’s discussion of “Dogville” with a genuine sequel. Part two of an unfinished trilogy that Lars calls “U.S.A: The Land of Opportunity”. Grace returns except she is now played by Bryce Dallas Howard and her gangster father is now played by Willem Dafoe. Minimal set...

Happy Thanksgiving! We like Thanksgiving around here. It’s the only time we eat all that shit and I know it sucks when your family can’t do the turkey proper but maybe we’re just lucky. Hopefully your family are cool and prioritize the right things on this holiday. Like food and chilling out and maybe watching a football game and not stressing about shit. Bob loves Thanksgiving. He’ll be the first...

Today we bid farewell to a musicals month where we RAISED THE CURTAIN & BELTED THE CHORUS and we might as well end it with another, infamous, Andrew Lloyd Webber selection. The stage show of “Cats” has always been the bizarre butt of jokes. Openly hated and yet consistently attended, it ran on broadway for a very long time. Today’s discussion of the Tom Hooper directed version of “CATS” from 2...

We’re nearing the end of musicals month and we’re hitting up some Marvin Hamlisch for an adaptation of a beloved stage classic about the journeys and desperations of the musical stage life. An “inside baseball” musical about musicals. For the sickos. It didn’t quite hit at the box office in its day but Richard Attenborough’s 1985 adaptation of “A CHORUS LINE” has held up over the years by all thos...

We’re in the home stretch of Musicals Month before the film holiday hits us hard and we go back to the classics with a crowd pleasing adaptation of a George Bernard Shaw novel for the musical stage. I do believe this is our first discussion of an Audrey Hepburn film. Hollywood was all about the turn of the century English doing song and dance back in the 60s. Between this,  Mary Poppins and Oliver...

Musicals are on the docket all November long but not every film is an adaptation and this one popped off as a movie before the stage show. An easy adaptation as you have two singing leads and only a handful of actors needed. While this modern musical had its pre-production ups and downs, this very budget tight Irish film that cost only $150k performed surprisingly well at the box office and receiv...

It’s musicals month for November’s theme and hitting up Tim Rice & Andrew Lloyd Webber again because it’s time to go to church though we can’t tell what denomination this is. It’s pretty sweaty but there are some baddies hanging around. A little gay, to be expected, but the band is pretty sick. They’re all the band. This is what Nazarenes wish their services were like. It’s two thousand years...

Kids. What is wrong with kids these days? They’re not perfect like we were. It’s musicals month and we’ve arrived at a 60s musical and the only musical Bob already saw prior to this month. This musical, inspired by Elvis getting drafted into the army, is a pop culture spoof and a launchpad for a young Ann-Margret who mesmerizes in this 1963 George Sidney adaptation of “BYE BYE BIRDIE”. A popular s...

For our month of musicals we certainly had some choices for the sub-sub genre of song movies known as “Jukebox Musicals”. These are musicals in which the music is based on pre-existing material. Maybe it’s cheat mode when you’re mining from something that was already popular but remember how not cool it was in that “A Knight’s Tale” movie with Heath Ledger in it? Remember that shit? I guess that l...

Let me tell you something about life, old chum. It’s only a cabaret. Kill Nazis. November is for the musicals and we’re RAISING THE CURTAIN & BELTING THE CHORUS all month long and it’s time to hit up a Bob Fosse joint in this iconic adaptation starring stage legend and Queen of the Theatre Nerds, Liza Minelli. Bob is learning this shit for the first time but you theater nerds already know abou...

It’s musicals month and Bob is at least tripling the amount of musicals he’s watched in his lifetime on this month alone and today we go to that timeless tale of salt and garlic who truly have the ability to do wonders together if it wasn’t for sausage and it’s systemic authoritarianism making things too divided. I’m sure it’s obvious that we’re talking about the Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise/Stephen...

All November we gotta RAISE THE CURTAIN & BELT THE CHORUS! It’s musical films all month long and today’s discussion got a lot of news and attention during its production back in 1996. MTV, still in the music video game back then, helped push this beloved Tim Rice & Andrew Lloyd Webber project because its star is none other the the iconic pop diva, Madonna. Stage purists of “EVITA” always h...

All November we RAISE THE CURTAIN & BELT THE CHORUS for a musicals themed month and we’re heading to a fictional Russian town called Anatevka for a folksy tale of a pious and poor Jewish family. This beloved stage show ran very long so perhaps it’s no wonder that Norman Jewison’s adaptation of “FIDDLER ON THE ROOF” was a box office smash for 1971. In it we meet Tevye’ and his family. He’s got...

November has arrived and we’ve booked for a genre of film that is very different than the cavalcade of horror we just got out of. For some, maybe it is horror, but all month long we’re going to discuss decades worth of Musical Films and we’ve calling it RAISE THE CURTAIN & BELT THE CHORUS. Many of these films started on the stage and others started as movies inspired by the stage and we kick i...

We’ve crawled out of Halloween Humpfest but the creeping dread continues for just a little bit longer because it’s time for another discussion in our overarching director topic for 2024. Yes, it is still a “dreary Year of von Trier” and what shit-hole year it’s been. Heading down the final stretch, it’s safe to say that the overall feeling of dread may bleed into the following year but we will be...

We’ve crawled through the shock and gore of HALLOWEEN HUMPFEST and we’ve come, once again, to that special day. Halloween. Last year on the holiday we dropped a 6 Pack discussion on the first 6 movies in the Halloween franchise created by John Carpenter and Debra Hill. Here’s you a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTFVWja0MMg Peaks and valleys to the extreme. Today we might as well finish off...

EXTREMELY SPOILERY! We’ve arrived upon the eve of Halloween and the penultimate episode of HALLOWEEN HUMPFEST. We previewed every day except today because today was left to Angela to decide which horror movie, made in 2024, was going to be discussed. There were many to choose from but we went to the movies and picked a body horror flick that is getting a lot of buzz right now. If your ear is to th...

We’ve reached the end of our weekday sub-theme discussions for Halloween Humpfest and we pop back into the 80s to end JOHN CARPENTUESDAY on a high note. It seems like a rather insane idea to adapt this Stephen King story about a killer car. In lesser hands it could be a laughable mess but John Carpenter’s 1980 horror “CHRISTINE” is an excellent example of how he can, more often than not, execute w...

We’re in our final week of Halloween Humpfest and upon our final discussion for Universal Monster Mondays. Werewolves have come up this month already so we might as well go back to one of the celluloid originals from where so much of the modern lore derives. Lycanthrophiles know we’re talking about George Waggner’s 1941 horror classic “THE WOLF MAN” starring Lon Chaney Jr., Claude Rains, Evelyn An...

We’re heading towards the finish line of this year’s HALLOWEEN HUMPFEST and our final FRIDAY NIGHT FIENDS edition is devoted to one of the lesser known 80’s slashers that did not blow away the box office but has found it’s cult appreciation over the years. Special Effects wiz, Stan Winston, made his directorial debut with the 1988 hillbilly horror “PUMPKINHEAD” starring Lance Henriksen, John D’Aqu...

HALLOWEEN HUMPFEST is nearing its last leg and we speak on our final weekday sub-theme episode of TRUE THREAT THURSDAY. These spooky selections are based on “true events” and some garner more skepticism than others and you could say there’s a lot of skepticism in this discussion regarding this 1979 box office hit. It’s based upon the supposedly true accounts of a family haunted by evil spirits in...

Another HALLOWEEN HUMPFEST means another round of Hammer Horror classics in the can in this our final episode of HAMMER HORROR HUMPDAYS. We bounce ahead in the Frankenstein series to a portrayal of the iconic doctor that may be at it’s most confident and charming. The title of the 1964 Freddie Francis film “THE EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN” may seem a little strange in that the Baron Victor Frankenstein i...

It’s another JOHN CARPENTUESDAY for HALLOWEEN HUMPFEST and we’ve been catching up with some Carpenter picks we’ve been long overdue to check out. John Carpenter made high end flicks for over a decade but the 90s are certainly his most divisive period. The guy has made, at least, ten good movies. More than many. Movies like Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Ghosts of Mars or The Ward doesn’t get the lip...

When you rank the Universal Monsters in order of lethality you’re gonna line up some heavy hitters. Frankenstein seems to be kinda sweet until suddenly you get snapped like a Lemmy Bunny. Dracula and Imhotep definitely have stacked some bodies off screen over their long life spans. Gill-Man only kills when you encroach his lagoon so that’s more “justice” than “murder”. The oft overlooked “Phantom...

Every Friday is FRIDAY NIGHT FIENDS during HALLOWEEN HUMPFEST and today we’re discussing the follow up to one of our favorite horror movies. Kirsty, Julia, Pinhead and the Lament Configuration are back and hotter than ever and we’re gonna be spending a lot of time down under under the gaze of Leviathan. We’re talking “HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER 2” from 1988 directed by Tony Randel and starring Claire H...