Expelled Grey Matter

The Saw series has a pretty decent fanbase but is hated by many critics and a lot of horror fans.  Partially it is because it is not necessarily horror, but extremely gory suspense.  I know the term "torture porn" gets thrown around a bit but, since the first, it has already been more about stories with twists - usually being that most of the victims could have escaped unscathed if they had only listened to the instructions of the game.  While the first three typically stuck to this it was inevitable that, as the movies kept making tons of money, series fatigue would creep in at some point.  The cracks showed in the fourth film, while the fifth really did nothing to further the story. Even the core audience for these films noticed at that point.  Saw V , despite being considered the worst in the series, still earned over 100 million dollars.  Saw VI , on the other hand, which many considered to be a surprising return to form after the fourth and fifth films...

Three directors stand out when it comes to classic westerns, and all define certain decades: John Ford, Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood.  That's not to say that there weren't plenty of others who added to the genre and sometimes even did better films than these guys, but for defining a certain style, as well as rounding up a consistent cast that they knew how to work with, they were the ones.  By the time The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance Ford had been making films in various genres since 1917.  He hit his stride with westerns in the 1930s, particularly with Stagecoach , which also helped a young man by the name of John Wayne become famous as well. Ford and Wayne went on to make a number of movies, both westerns and others, with many of them having the same group of character actors.  The two of them also made the genre stand out as, while they were popular for a good first part of the 20th century, the genre was cheap to make and always guaranteed to turn a profit....

It may be a bit surprising these days - although it shouldn't, since Sam Elliott still manages to make young women swoon - that a forty-something actor known largely for one television role was one of the biggest sex symbols of the 1980s.  That would be Tom Selleck, who came to starring roles later than most actors in Hollywood, but managed to portray a kind of gentlemanly edge that made him both a favorite for guys watching Magnum P.I. but also for housewives gazing longingly at the cover of TV Guide .  The fact that he seemed to do it effortlessly, and also seemed to be a decent human being in real life unlike a number of other sex symbols of the time, helped.  Though not as much a household name Simon Wincer is an Australian director with a fascination for the Old West and, like Selleck, a lot of his fame came from television.  He came up the way a lot of directors from Down Under did, making his mark originally with the Ozsploitation film Harlequin , but in 1989 ...

1974 was a great year for Mel Brooks.  Young Frankenstein   was a major hit and was a parody of the Universal horror films, and the Frankenstein series in particular.  However, it kept the atmosphere of those films and, despite being a comedy, finally wrapped up the series and achieved the goal that Dr. Frankenstein had wanted from the beginning, which was to animate a perfectly normal human being.  The same year Brooks also made Blazing Saddles which, while famously a satire of racism, also managed to be one of the last great westerns as well. When black railroad worker Bart (Cleavon Little) gets fed up with the racial attitudes of his boss Taggart (Slim Pickens) he is sentenced to be hung by the state's attorney general, Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman).  Because of an unforeseen problem the railroad is forced to make a detour through the town of Rock Ridge, and Lamarr realizes the value of the land is about to increase.  In an effort to scare off the reside...

From the time Toho decided to bring back their most famous movie monster with King Kong vs. Godzilla  - in fact, even before that with Mothra - the kaiju kingdom was ruled by director Ishirô Honda, special effects supervisor Eiji Tsuburaya and screenwriter Shin'ichi Sekizawa.  They, and often a rotating team of many of the same actors from the first Godzilla forward, brought us ever-evolving special effects and made Toho's menagerie of creatures one of the most famous in cinematic history. All good things, as usual, must come to an end.  Invasion of Astro-Monster  saw Honda's contract reach its end with Toho, which allowed him to do other things than monster films.  Tsuburaya was a big enough name that he could open his own special effects workshop, ultimately helping to create the Ultraman television shows.  Sekizawa ended up still working on a lot of the scripts for these types of films even though after this one the enjoyment began to run out - not beca...

As a child I loved reading all the major Greek mythological stories.  Hercules and Jason were great but, when it came down to it, the story of Perseus was always my favorite.  It helped that I was also interested in astronomy, which is what led me to be interested in the myths in the first place.  Unfortunately the Phoenix area has expanded, light pollution is worse, and I can no longer sit on a lawn chair and look up and see the brightest stars that make up Pegasus, Andromeda, Cepheus and Cassiopeia.  Perseus was always tricky because, except for Algol, the eye of the head of Medusa, it was always a bit fainter, as was Cetus.  Still, I loved looking up and remembering the tale.  Clash of the Titans came out at the time when I was still most interested in the stories.  I knew nothing about Ray Harryhausen at the time.  I remember the few toys Mattell made in connection with the movie in the stores and remember seeing the story books that were rele...

I sometimes wonder how it would have been to be sitting in a theater in 1963, watching on the big screen where one might have seen giant bugs or guys in monster suits tromping around, and suddenly see something spectacularly new.  I can especially imagine being a kid sitting in the front row as Triton rises from the sea to provide safe passage for Jason and his crew.  For me it has always been one of the most memorable scenes from Jason and the Argonauts , which says a lot since this has some of Ray Harryhausen's best effects work, including the living bronze statue Talos, the Hydra and the skeleton army that arises from its teeth. This was a time when Hercules and Jason films were popular in Italy, and mostly churned out as cheaply as possible.  Predictably, Hercules is in this, played by Nigel Green as producer Charles Schneer didn't want him looking like a body builder, but the movie largely deals with Jason's journey to find the Golden Fleece.  It's been a story ...