Michael Mann’s “Collateral” Trivia!

Posted on by

Rob Hunter at Film School Rejects posted 31 Things We Learned from Michael Mann’s ‘Collateral‘ Commentary.  Before you click over, here are three of my favorites…

One of the big reasons why he chose to make Collateral was the way Stuart Beattie’s script captures an entire story in a very short period of time. The whole movie is “like the third act of a traditional drama.” He likes how it doesn’t go backward to offer more detail into these characters’ lives, and instead we’re just catching them at this moment. (I like movies that movie in real time or that all the action takes place during a short, specific time frame.  Movies with those parameters seems to really move and probably because of necessity to get the story told. – Craig)

Vincent is being intentionally rude upon first entering Max’s cab, but it’s not because he’s a jerk — he’s testing Max to see if he’s a man with an aggressive streak. Had he been, Vincent would have quickly changed cabs. (And we just thought Vincent was rude.  It’s these little touches that make viewing a movie repeatedly fun. – Craig)

He and Cruise worked out where exactly Vincent came from, and while nearly none of it is mentioned in the film their collaborative backstory is pretty detailed. “If he was in a foster home for part of his childhood, and he was back in public school at age 11, that would have been sometime in the 70s. He would have been dressed very awkwardly. He would’ve probably been ostracized ’cause he’d have looked odd. We postulated an alcoholic, abusive father who was culturally very progressive, he was probably part of Ed Sadlowski’s Steelworkers Local, he was a Vietnam veteran, he had friends who were African-American on the South side of Chicago. The Checkerboard Lounge is thirty minutes away on the Calumet Skyway. The father was probably an aficionado of jazz. There was a great jazz scene on the South side of Chicago, but it’s almost as if the father blamed the son for what happened to the mother. The father never tutored the boy in jazz…” And so on. (Look at the attention to detail!  Funny thing is there are other actors who’d be like, let’s do the scene, I don’t need the background stuff.  – Craig)

“Wiseguy” Trivia!

Posted on by

If you’ve never seen the series Wiseguy, it’s worth searching out (at least for the first few story arcs).  Ken Wahl played an undercover cop, Jonathon Banks was Wahl’s supervisor and Jim Byrnes was his handler.  The series was one of the first to have story arcs going over several episodes with guest stars playing the criminals.  Wiseguy was one of the best shows on television at the time.

I bring this up because the fine folks at Me-TV present 10 Undercover Facts about Wiseguy.  Before you click over, here are three of my favorite of the facts and my thoughts on each…

Wahl suffered some serious injuries.  (Sadly, Wahl’s acting career was cut short due to injuries.  Wahl missed part of season two due to an injury to his Achilles tendon.  In 1992, he fell down steps and broke his neck!  After filming a 1996 Wiseguy reunion movie, Wahl retired due to constant pain. – Craig)

You can’t see every episode in reruns due to music (licensing). (There are several episodes where music played such an integral part of scenes that to lose the music lessen their impact.  The biggest casualty was the conclusion of the Sonny Steelgrave arc which used Nights in White Satin by the Moody Blues. – Craig)

Wahl left the series early. (Wahl left after the third season and the series just wasn’t the same.  But we will always have those early story arcs.  Check them out! – Craig)

“Psycho” – Amazing Poster by Ignacio RC!

Posted on by

Isn’t this Psycho poster by Ignacio RC one of the most creative and beautiful posters you’ve seen lately?  I love it.  Here’s what Ignacio had to say about his inspiration for the piece…

I always loved Atari box art (Cliff Spohn, Steve Hendricks…) and particularly Steve Hendricks art for ‘Haunted House’ Atari 2600 game, so wanted to play with the same concept for ‘Psycho’, just for fun and practice.

Ignacio RC is an illustrator from A Coruña in Spain.  If you’d like to see more of Ignacio RC’s art, you can check out his gallery.

Source: Poster Spy.

Check Out the Amazing Animated Short “Dernier Round” (“Last Round”)

Posted on by

Check out this amazing animated short, Dernier Round (Last Round) created by a talented group of student filmmakers from France.  Dernier Round felt like the set-up for a wonderful full-length movie that I’d love to see!

“In a Parisian suburb, a promising young boxer must find a way to finance the future of his little sister, a piano prodigy.”

Source: FirstShowing.net.

“The Heathens” by Ace Atkins is Coming!

Posted on by

It’s been announced that Ace Atkins will have a new Quinn Colson novel coming out on July 13, 2021.  The Heathens will be the 11th novel in the best selling series and I can’t wait.  Here’s the synopsis…

Sheriff Quinn Colson and his former deputy Lillie Virgil find themselves on opposite sides of a case for the first time after a man is found dead and three delinquent teens go on the run.

The Byrd clan is one of the wildest families in Tibbehah County. The three kids are the ire of school resource and truant officers–they peddle pot and steal car parts, doing what they can to survive with a mother who sometimes disappears for months on end. But when their mother returns with a new husband, a registered sex offender, a homicide soon follows, and the kids hit the highway.

U.S. Marshal Lillie Virgil is convinced the Byrd kids are guilty of murder, and sets off on a cross-country hunt to track them down and bring them to justice. Back in Tibbehah, Sheriff Quinn Colson isn’t so sure. And as he digs deeper into the case, he comes to think there may be a larger conspiracy at work.

If you’ve missed out (or are interested in getting started) here our the Quinn Colson novels in order of publication.

  1. The Ranger
  2. The Lost Ones
  3. The Broken Places
  4. The Forsaken
  5. The Redeemers
  6. The Innocents
  7. The Fallen
  8. The Sinners
  9. The Shameless
  10. The Revelators

“Coyote” Starring Michael Chiklis – The Poster and Trailer are Here!

Posted on by

Here’s the poster and trailer for the new CBS limited series Coyote starring Michael Chiklis.  I cannot wait for this one!

Coyote is the story of Ben Clemens (Michael Chiklis), who after 32 years as a border patrol agent, is forced to work for the very people he spent his career trying to keep out of America. Now exposed to life on the other side of the wall, Ben will start to question his black and white views of the world, challenging his ideology and his loyalties.

See Kurt Russell Accidentally Destroy 145 Year Old Guitar!

Posted on by

Here’s a movie tidbit that I didn’t know until today.  During the scene in The Hateful Eight when Kurt Russell destroys a guitar, the instrument wasn’t a prop, but instead a $40,000.00, 145 year old museum piece!

The Hateful Eight saw Kurt Russell fill the boots of a weathered bounty hunter named John Ruth. While transporting a known murderer across the snow-topped mountains of Wyoming, a blizzard forces Ruth’s party to hunker down in a nearby lodge. In response to his bounty’s incessant singing, the bounty hunter eventually takes a six-string guitar and smashes it against a wooden beam. “Music time’s over,” Ruth growls. But Unbeknownst to Kurt Russell, the guitar was an irreplaceable 145-year-old museum piece, which the studio was borrowing from the Martin Guitar Museum. – James Fenner from Top 10 Blunders That Will Go Down In History – 2020 at Listverse.

Check out the scene below and watch as Jennifer Jason Leigh, in shock at Kurt’s actions, breaks character!  She obviously knew what Kurt Russell hadn’t been told!

MONSTERS by Barry Windsor Smith is Coming!

Posted on by

The cover above is to Barry Windsor Smith’s Monsters.  As many of our readers know, BWS is considered to be one of the greatest artistic geniuses to have ever worked in comics.  Smith’s last comic work was in 2005 and many thought he had retired.  Little did we know that he had been working on Monsters for 35 years.

35 years in the making, the most anticipated graphic novel in recent comics history! 

The year is 1964. Bobby Bailey doesn’t realize he is about to fulfill his tragic destiny when he walks into a US Army recruitment office to join up. Close-mouthed, damaged, innocent, trying to forget a past and looking for a future, it turns out that Bailey is the perfect candidate for a secret U.S. government experimental program, an unholy continuation of a genetics program that was discovered in Nazi Germany nearly 20 years earlier in the waning days of World War II. Bailey’s only ally and protector, Sergeant McFarland, intervenes, which sets off a chain of cascading events that spin out of everyone’s control. As the titular monsters of the title multiply, becoming real and metaphorical, literal and ironic, the story reaches its emotional and moral reckoning.

Monsters is the legendary project Barry Windsor-Smith has been working on for over 35 years. A 380-page tour de force of visual storytelling, Monsters’ narrative canvas is both vast and deep: part familial drama, part political thriller, part metaphysical journey, it is an intimate portrait of individuals struggling to reclaim their lives and an epic political odyssey across two generations of American history. Trauma, fate, conscience, and redemption are just a few of the themes that intersect in the most ambitious graphic novel of Windsor-Smith’s career.

Monsters is rendered in Windsor-Smith’s impeccable pen-and-ink technique, the visual storytelling with its sensitivity to gesture and composition is the most sophisticated of the artist’s career. There are passages of heartbreaking tenderness, of excruciating pain, and devastating violence. It is surely one of the most intense graphic novels ever drawn.

Black and white illustrations.

Monsters by Barry Windsor Smith will be released on January 19, 2021.  It is available for pre-order now.  Deal me in.

The All-Time Best Comedies

Posted on by

Matthew Jackson at Mental Floss posted his choices for The 30 Best Comedy Movies of All Time.  I’m a big fan of lists, more for the discussion they create than any definitive ranking.  Jackson’s list is what resonates with him.  My list, or your list would be different.

I’ve seen 23 of Jackson’s 30 listed films.  My favorites from his top 30 are Dr. Strangelove, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein.

Movies that didn’t make his list but would have made mine include…

  • Arsenic and Old Lace
  • Christmas Vacation
  • A Christmas Story
  • Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
  • The Great Race

And that’s just off the top of my head.

“FBI/MLK” – The Poster and Trailer are Here!

Posted on by

We have the poster and trailer for FBI/MLK.  I like them both and look forward to seeing the film.

Director: Sam Pollard
Starring: Martin Luther King

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is remembered today as an American hero: a bridge-builder, a shrewd political tactician, and a moral leader. Yet throughout his history-altering political career, he was often treated by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies like an enemy of the state. In this virtuosic documentary, award-winning editor and director Sam Pollard (Editor, 4 LITTLE GIRLS, MO’ BETTER BLUES; Director/Producer, EYEZ ON THE PRIZE, SAMMY DAVIS, JR.: I’VE GOTTA BE ME) lays out a detailed account of the FBI surveillance that dogged King’s activism throughout the ’50s and ’60s, fueled by the racist and red-baiting paranoia of J. Edgar Hoover. In crafting a rich archival tapestry, featuring some revelatory restored footage of King, Pollard urges us to remember that true American progress is always hard-won.

“Hunter Hunter” Poster and Trailer

Posted on by

Here are the poster and trailer for Hunter Hunter.  I like both!

Directed by: Shawn Linden
Starring: Camille Sullivan, Summer H. Howell, Devon Sawa & Nick Stahl

HUNTER HUNTER follows a family living in the remote wilderness earning a living as fur trappers. Joseph Mersault (Devon Sawa), his wife Anne (Camille Sullivan), and their daughter Renée (Summer H. Howell) struggle to make ends meet and think their traps are being hunted by the return of a rogue wolf. Determined to catch the predator in the act, Joseph leaves his family behind to track the wolf. Anne and Renée grow increasingly anxious during Joseph’s prolonged absence and struggle to survive without him. When they hear a strange noise outside their cabin, Anne hopes it is Joseph but instead finds a man named Lou (Nick Stahl), who has been severely injured and left for dead. The longer Lou stays and Joseph is away, the more paranoid Anne becomes, and the idea of a mysterious predator in the woods slowly becomes a threat much closer to home.

Catch & Release: A Murder Book Story by Ed Brisson & Lisandro Estherren

Posted on by

If you’re into crime stories, then you might want to check out Catch & Release: A Murder Book Story by Ed Brisson & Lisandro Estherren. What’s it about, you ask? (And I’m glad you did.)  I’ll let Ed Brisson take it away…

CATCH & RELEASE: A MURDER BOOK STORY is about a thief who concocts a plan to sell a stolen car not once, but several times, by luring unsuspecting buyers to a remote location and robbing them at gunpoint. His plan hits a snag when he encounters a student, who needs a fresh set of wheels to travel to his new life out West. When things go south, they go south hard, and now our car thief stands on a precipice where he has to make a choice that will affect not only his life, but that of his co-conspirator and their two victims. The story is an examination of one man’s guilt and how far he’s willing to go to stay out of jail.

Below are a couple of pages from the story.  

Catch & Release: A Murder Book Story is running on Kickstarter. Click on the link for more info or to pre-order. If you want to get a copy, you have until December 16th to get your order in. I did and look forward to it!

Update: Interview with Ed Brisson (who) Makes Crime Pay With the Catch & Release: A Murder Book Story Kickstarter at CBR.com.