Monday, November 30, 2020

Sleigh Bell Cinema | Holiday Affair (1949)

Rob Graham visits to talk about Janet Leigh and Robert Mitchum's Holiday Affair, also starring Wendell Corey and (ever so briefly) Harry Morgan. Find out who's #TeamCarl and who's #TeamSteve in this complicated Christmas courtship.

Friday, November 27, 2020

AfterLUNCH | After Dinner Lounge, Part 1

In the first of hopefully many such discussions, Rob Graham, Evan Hanson, and I have a very informal conversation about what we've been reading, watching, and thinking about lately. Topics lead to unpredictable places, but include:
  • Comics like X of Swords, Batman: Three Jokers, and The Orville.
  • Novels like The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty, The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton, and Bonnie MacBird's Sherlock Holmes series.
  • TV shows like The Good Wife, Dark Shadows, and Police Squad!.
  • Movies like the Omen series, Tremors: Shrieker Island, and The Gumball Rally.
  • And real talk on Getting Old, Biblical Apocrypha, and COVID and Thanksgiving.
Download or listen to the episode here.

Wednesday, November 25, 2020

Sleigh Bell Cinema | Christmas in Connecticut (1992)

Noel Thingvall drops by the farmhouse to talk about Arnold Schwarzenegger's directorial debut, the 1992 remake of Christmas in Connecticut starring Dyan Cannon, Kris Kristofferson, Tony Curtis, Richard Roundtree, and Jimmy Workman.

Monday, November 23, 2020

Hellbent for Letterbox | The Sisters Brothers (2018)

Evan Hanson returns to help Pax and I analyze The Sisters Brothers starring John C Reilly, Joaquin Phoenix, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Riz Ahmed.

Friday, November 20, 2020

Sleigh Bell Cinema | Remember the Night (1940)

If you're most familiar with Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray from their film noir classic Double Indemnity, you may be surprised by their falling in love over Christmastime in Remember the Night. Siskoid (Siskoid's Blog of Geekery, The Fire and Water Podcast Network) and I talk about the romance and how deftly it avoids both melodrama and romcom tropes. It's a movie worth seeing and a discussion worth listening to.

Tuesday, November 17, 2020

AfterLUNCH | Interview with Lost in Space Story Editor Vivian Lee

On this very special episode, Rob talks with Vivian Lee, writer and executive story editor on Lost in Space (2018) about her behind-the-scene experiences helping to create the show.

Monday, November 16, 2020

AfterLUNCH | Lost in Space (2018), Season 1

Evan Hanson joins Rob and I to talk about the first season of the 2018 Lost in Space series streaming on Netflix. We don't all agree about the show, but we do love talking about it and we talk about everything. If you'd like to be unspoiled, be sure to watch the season before listening to this conversation. We bury ourselves in it like a Robinson buried in ice. 

Sunday, November 15, 2020

Sleigh Bell Cinema | The Ref (1994)

Jeeg joins me for a heartwarming movie about getting along with family during the holidays, healing relationships, complicated burglar traps, drunk Santas, fruitcakes, and above all... hilarious rants. It's The Ref starring Denis Leary, Judy Davis, Kevin Spacey, Glynis Johns, and Christine Baranski.

Friday, November 13, 2020

Hellbent for Letterbox | 5 Card Stud (1968)

Pax and I welcome our friend Evan Hanson to help solve the Western murder mystery of 5 Card Stud starring Dean Martin, Robert Mitchum, Roddy McDowall, Yaphet Kotto, Inger Stevens, and Denver Pyle.

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

Sleigh Bell Cinema | On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)


I'm joined by my good pal Carlin Trammel of the Nerd Lunch and Pod James Pod podcasts to talk about that most Christmasy of James Bond movies, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, starring George Lazenby, Diana Rigg, and Telly Savalas.

Thursday, November 05, 2020

Sleigh Bell Cinema | Shazam! (2019)

Season Three of Sleigh Bell Cinema kicks off with a tangential Christmas movie that's not as tangential as it seems. I welcome my son David to talk about the big screen adaptation of one of our favorite superheroes. It's Shazam! starring Zachary Levi, Asher Angel, Jack Dylan Grazer, and Mark Strong.

Tuesday, November 03, 2020

"The Statement of Randolph Carter" by HP Lovecraft

With Halloween behind me, I got to thinking about possible topics for next year's countdown and it's led me down a rabbit trail. I really enjoyed watching my way through the Friday the 13th films and am considering going through the Nightmare on Elm Street movies next, but I also watched a couple of HP Lovecraft movies this season and they got me thirsty for more. The thing about those though is I don't know if I really want to wait a year for either of them. And when I figured out what I'd need to do for the Lovecraft project, it's more than a month-long thing anyway.

Part of the issue is that I'm not super familiar with Lovecraft's work. I've read maybe six of his original stories, so most of what I know about his stuff is what's leaked into the general pop culture: Cthulhu, the Necronomicon, that kind of thing. I didn't really want to write about Lovecraft adaptations when I've never read the stories they're based on, so that's what I'm doing for a while: cover a different Lovecraft story that was eventually adapted into a movie. Once I finish with those, I'll start watching (in some cases re-watching) the films. 

I had to think about how to organize my approach to the original stories. As was typical of stories submitted to pulp magazines in the early 1900s, many of them were published in a different order than how Lovecraft wrote them. Rather than tackle them in the order in which they were released to the public, I've decided to read them in the order in which Lovecraft created them. 

My understanding is that the so-called Cthulhu Mythos was an idea imposed on Lovecraft's work later and not something that he planned out. Obviously he returned to various locations like Arkham and its Miskatonic University. And the Old Gods are a concept that he used a lot. But it was apparently never his intention to create a cohesive canon. By reading the stories in the order that he wrote them, though, my hope is to see the development of whatever loose continuity there is and create my own canon in the process.

First up is a very short story called "The Statement of Randolph Carter" that Lovecraft wrote at the end of 1919. It's formatted as a transcript of a testimony given by Carter regarding the disappearance of his friend Harley Warren. Carter appears to be under suspicion for Warren's possible death, so Carter recounts his experience following Warren on an expedition to a crypt where Warren hoped to uncover a doorway to the underworld. To make a short story even shorter, Warren went in, but he never came out.

At the risk of offending Lovecraft fans, "The Statement" exemplifies my problems with some of his other stuff I've read. He tends to be very Tell Not Show. Carter doesn't remember much about the evening, which is explained as the result of the horror he experienced, but comes across simply as a way for Lovecraft to avoid filling in details. And once Warren enters the tomb, Carter stays up top listening to Warren describe what he sees via wired transmitter. The horror is all just Warren's freaking out about whatever he's witnessing below:
“I can’t tell you, Carter! It’s too utterly beyond thought—I dare not tell you—no man could know it and live—Great God! I never dreamed of THIS!” 
As short as the story is, this goes on longer than I would like.

But I do like the final line of the story. It's not especially shocking after all that build up, but it's a good, chilling line.

And I like the introduction of one of Lovecraft's recurring themes. Carter explains that Warren became convinced of the existence of a demonic underworld after reading one of his "vast collection of strange, rare books on forbidden subjects" that was "written in characters whose like I never saw elsewhere." I know just enough about Lovecraft to know that forbidden knowledge in ancient tomes is a huge deal, so as I build a canon for myself to compare the movies to, this idea is foundational.

Monday, November 02, 2020

AfterLUNCH | '80s Laff-a-Lympics

Remember Scooby's All Star Laff-A-Lympics where various Hanna Barbera characters crossed over to compete against each other in Olympics-style events? Even if you don't, it was really fun, so Amanda VanHiel, Shawn Robare, Rob Graham, and I imagine what that would be like with characters from '80s TV shows and movies. 

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