Expelled Grey Matter

Whenever any date prior to 1967 is mentioned in television shows or movies these days the topics mentioned have nothing to do with economic stability, technological advances or the general state of optimism that existed, but rather two things: the oppression of women and minorities.  If it is to be believed, our grandparents and great-grandparents were barely one step above a plantation overseer, dedicating every day of their life to making sure the world around them stayed a pure, unchallenged white. There were major issues, and a good part of the last half of the 20th century was spent in dealing with them.  In truth, we'll probably be dealing with them for decades to come, as being awful to others that are not exactly like us seems to be programmed into humanity, largely as a leftover survival instinct from the times when someone who didn't look like you very likely did want to kill you and your family.  What seems to be left out is that, although there were fre...

Australia has a bit of a reputation as a rough-and-tumble desert full of snakes, spiders, serial killers and psychotic bikers.  It's a place where men are men, beer is - well, the exact opposite of whatever Foster's is.  It's a place so tough that the only protection you have from the roving gangs is black-leather wearing police in their souped-up muscle cars. Of course, other than spiders and snakes (and, unfortunately, the serial killers), none of this is true.  In fact, the movies that pushed this stereotype were a rather recent development, as Australia's version of the Hayes Code was stricter than that in the U.S., and it lasted all the way until the early 1970s.  It was so strict, in fact, that there was practically no local film industry.  This changed when Australia adopted something from the U.S. - the "R", or Restricted, rating. While this coincided with the birth of serious Australian cinema (often referred to as the Australian New Wave) in t...

Gary, Indiana.  It was a steel town, and it still is.  United Steel still has their factory there, although it, like the city, is a ghost of its former self.  My grandfather lived and worked there as one of the many Europeans that settled down to work in the steel industry.  My mother and her brothers were born there.  This was the 1930s and 1940s.  Like many cities that depended on a major industry for their life blood, once the world began to change the town did as well.  Gary fell into ruin and decay as most of the population left.  It increasingly became a symbol of blight and crime in the United States.  Former NFL player and famous blaxploitation actor Fred Williamson is one of the many celebrities (the entire Jackson musical clan, for instance) that came from Gary.  It's no surprise that when he got the chance he decided to make a tribute to the movies that made him famous he also decided to feature his home city and return t...

This movie is practically the KLF of movies. Not familiar with the KLF?  They were Bill Drummond and James Cauty, and are often given credit with creating the trance genre of electronic dance music.  Originally called the Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu (or the JAMMs, for short), they originally gained notoriety after being sued by ABBA for using unlicensed samples on their first album.  Though they continued their rebellious stance (KLF stands for Kopyright Liberation Front), they eventually learned to pay for their samples and eventually evolved their sound, their vital first singles were using samples to create their sound in a more blatant fashion that P-Diddy. At least the KLF created something worthwhile.  What we have here is another prehistoric adventure with close-ups of lizards standing in for dinosaurs.  To add insult to injury, they couldn't even use their own lizard close-ups. It's 1881 in Algeria, and Frenchman Hector Servadac (Cesare Danova) ...

I still believe that of all the attempts to adapt television shows to the big screen, outside of science fiction, the only one I can think of that's been truly successful was the two Addams Family movies.  I think that is because the original show used subversive humor to satirize society at the time it was made, and because of being framed in a "spooky" manner it got away with much more than I would expect from a television show that started at the same time the Beatles were becoming popular in the United States.  Instead of doing some sort of ironic take on the show, director Barry Sonnenfeld wisely just updated it to the '90s and let things play out. It does help that the Addams Family themselves always happily existed as outsiders, with much of the humor coming from their confrontations with "normal" people and their general misunderstanding of how the world works.  Other adaptations like The Brady Bunch and The Beverly Hillbillies , while occasiona...