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70 Years of Godzilla
70 years ago, on November 3, 1954, GOJIRA opened in theaters across Japan. Directed by Ishiro Honda, it told a stark tale of a prehistoric dinosaur presumably awakened…
Horror Films Seen in Theaters 1960-1980
A look back through my prime formative moviegoing years in the 1960s and ’70s reveals a wide range of different horror films seen in theaters then and I…
Double Feature Memories, Part 2: The 1970s
In an earlier post this year, I recounted some of the great double bills I got to see in the 1960s in New York theaters. For Part 2,…
NINJA (2009) – New York, Bulgarian Style
I initially was drawn to NINJA (2009), a straight-to-video martial arts vehicle for Scott Adkins, back in 2011 because it was directed by Isaac Florentine, of “Mighty Morphin…
In Memoriam: Cheng Pei Pei
Cheng Pei Pei, one of my favorite actresses from Hong Kong cinema, passed away at the age of 78 last month on July 17, 2024. She’s probably best…
James Baldwin Centennial
August 2, 2024 marks the centennial of author James Baldwin, who was born on this date in 1924 and died December 1, 1987. To commemorate the occasion, I…
Fandom in the ’90s: Anime, Hong Kong, Godzilla and Power Rangers
The 1990s was an exciting period to enter fan cultures, especially in New York. I plunged heavily into anime in 1992, thanks to a chance encounter at a…
Audie Murphy Centennial
June 20, 2024 marks the centennial of Audie Murphy, a young man from Texas who joined the army in 1942 and fought Nazis in World War II. He…
MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO and its Critical Reception in New York in 1993
In 1992 I acquired a VHS tape of Hayao Miyazaki’s MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (1988), copied from an unsubtitled Japanese laserdisc. It was only the second example of Japanese…
Roger Corman: A Memorial Tribute
Film legend Roger Corman passed away on May 9th at the age of 98 after a directing/producing/distributing career that had lasted some 70 years. He’s famous for a…
Anime and Japanese Architecture – Old and New
One of the visual thrills I get from watching Japanese films is noting the intricate design of Japanese buildings found in period settings, from the details of the…
MGM Centennial: Post-Golden Age, 1960-1973
As film buffs everywhere, led by TCM, celebrate the 100th anniversary of the merger that formed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on April 17, 1924, and rehash the litany of great films…
Double Feature Memories, Part 1: The 1960s
Turner Classic Movies has an eight-minute interstitial called “Two for One: The Tradition of the Double Feature,” and features Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg recalling the great double…
Japan and the Foreign Language Film Oscar
Japan’s choice of Wim Wenders’ PERFECT DAYS (2023) as its submission for Best International Feature at this year’s Academy Awards and its subsequent nomination got me to thinking…
Lee Marvin Centennial
“Lee was my kind of actor, a real tough-looking, tough-talking sonofabitch.” – Sam Fuller Lee Marvin was born in New York City on Feb. 19, 1924. Today marks…
Chow Yun-Fat in New York, 1996
On April 26, 1996, I visited a screening room in Manhattan to see PEACE HOTEL (1995), the last film Chow Yun-Fat made in Hong Kong in the 20th…
The Films of 1973, Part 2: A Great Year for Movies
Since I covered so many cops, crime, Blaxploitation and kung fu films in Part 1, I decided to post a second entry for everything else from 1973: westerns,…
The Films of 1973, Part 1: Cops, Crime and Kung Fu
1973 offered a wealth of riches for regular moviegoers, particularly those at neighborhood theaters. Hollywood released a ton of exemplary crime films, alternating hard-nosed cops with career crimi…
SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON: An Animated Western Classic
One day late last year, I got to thinking about my favorite American animated movie of the 21st century, SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON, and realized I hadn’t…
Hayao Miyazaki in New York: 1999 Interview
It’s currently Hayao Miyazaki season in the U.S. as the latest film of the Japanese animation pioneer, THE BOY AND THE HERON, opens wide and becomes a bonafide…
Black-and-White in 1960s Hollywood
Black-and-white films were regularly produced and released by the major Hollywood studios right up through 1966, which happened to be the last year that the Academy Award categories…
SHANGHAI EXPRESS 1932 to 2007: Five Degrees of Separation
SHANGHAI EXPRESS is the title of two great films made 54 years apart, 1932 and 1986, in two different countries thousands of miles apart, the U.S. and Hong…
Movies from Childhood: A Collection of Images
Inspired by Jean-Luc Godard’s 8-part series, “Histoire(s) du Cinema,” I decided to look over images I’ve compiled from films I saw in childhood and find ways to juxtapose…
Pokémon in America: 25 Years and Counting
25 years ago this month, on September 8, 1998, my favorite Japanese animated TV franchise premiered in its English-dubbed version on American television. My long relationship with Pokémon…
THE BLOB (1958): Criterion Blu-ray of a Sci-Fi Classic
When I was five, I remember standing outside my local movie theater, the Crotona, and seeing a poster for the movie, THE BLOB (1958), with this massive jello-like…
60 Years Ago at the Movies: JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS (1963)
In the summer of 1963, on my tenth birthday, I was taken by my parents to see my first Broadway show, “She Loves Me,” and afterwards we walked…
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: 30th Anniversary Tribute
While the Power Rangers franchise is still going strong after 30 years, I thought I’d look back at the early seasons of “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers,” which premiered…
“Aim for the Ace!” – Classic Anime Tennis Series
“Aim for the Ace!” (Ace wo Nerae) is a 26-episode Japanese animated TV series made in 1973 about high school women’s tennis. The focus is on Hiromi Oka,…
Paintings in Movies: PILLOW TALK (1959) and PROJECT A (1983)
I’m always intrigued when I notice background details involving artwork in various films and TV shows, especially paintings on the walls of the various interiors used in the…
50 Years Ago: Bruce Lee
50 years ago today, on July 20, 1973, Bruce Lee died in Hong Kong. Matthew Polly’s informative biography, Bruce Lee: A Life (2018/Simon & Schuster), offers a detailed…
CAPE FEAR: From Martin and Lewis to Martin Scorsese
For the record, CAPE FEAR (1962) is a black-and-white thriller directed by J. Lee Thompson and based on a novel by John D. MacDonald. It stars Robert Mitchum…
Jonas Mekas on the Joys of Hollywood Cinema 1960-65
Jonas Mekas began writing a regular column, entitled Movie Journal, in the Village Voice of November 12, 1958. A filmmaker himself and co-founder of Anthology Film Archives in…
What if IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD had been made as a crime thriller? Part 2
I continue my foray into Fan Fiction and positing what might happen if a professional heist man like Parker from Richard Stark’s crime novels were inserted into IT’S…
What if IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD had been made as a crime thriller? Part 1
I intend to do a 60th Anniversary tribute to IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD (1963) later this year around the time of its release date, but…
Warner Bros. Centennial: 25 Favorite Classics
Warner Bros. is generally considered the most fondly remembered studio in the Golden Age of Hollywood by most critics and historians who have studied the studio system over…
50 Years Ago: When Kung Fu Came to Times Square
50 years ago, on March 20, 1973, Warner Bros. held two free screenings of a new movie at the Loew’s State Theater on Broadway and 45th Street in…
Hong Kong, 1957: Little Women In the Mood for Love
OUR SISTER HEDY (1957) is a black-and-white comedy-drama shot in Mandarin in sync sound at the Cathay Studio in Hong Kong and stars Jeanette Lin Tsui, Julie Yeh…
A 1933 Review of KING KONG–with a Twist
March 2, 2023 being the 90th anniversary of the New York City premiere of KING KONG (1933), I thought I’d honor the occasion by sharing a delightful and…
Tribute to Leiji Matsumoto, Legendary Manga and Anime Pioneer
Leiji Matsumoto, manga artist and animation creator, passed away in Japan on February 13, 2023, at the age of 85. He is arguably the most important figure in…
Galaxy Express 999, Queen Millennia, Space Battleship Yamato
Mount Fuji on Film: From Naruse to Godzilla to Anime
I’ve always been intrigued by 19th century Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai’s series of woodblock prints entitled, “36 Views of Mount Fuji,” which indeed offers Mount Fuji from a…
Greats or Favorites? How to Make a List of 100 Top Films
The recent Sight and Sound list of The Critics’ Top 100 Greatest Films of All Time and the Variety list of 100 Greatest Movies of All Time got…
Simon Hsu: Unsung Shaw Bros. Action Director
Shaw Bros. martial arts films of the 1960s and ‘70s boasted numerous great action choreographers. The celebrated team of Lau Kar Leung and Tang Chia worked on most…
The 100 Greatest Movie Stars Who Would Never Make a List of the 100 Greatest Movie Stars
I recent discovered an old post I contributed to the on-line Mobius Home Video Forum back on March 21, 2005 called, “Fifty All-time Top Movie Stars Who Would…
Hong Kong Fandom in the ’90s: Chinatown Theaters
Thirty years ago, on September 30, 1992, I made my first trip to a Chinatown theater in Manhattan to see Hong Kong movies. It was the old Sun…
The Many Faces of Sonny Chiba
Japanese martial arts star Sonny Chiba died last year at the age of 82 and I finally got around to a pile of Chiba discs in my collection…
THE LOYAL 47 RONIN (1958) – A Samurai Masterpiece
I’ve seen five Japanese films about the story of the 47 Ronin, made from 1941 to 1994. There were dozens more films about this famous incident from the…
40 Years Ago: Gojira and Space Firebird Come to New York
In the summer of 1982, the Public Theater in Manhattan ran a film series called “Summer in Japan,” which programmed a number of Japanese films that hadn’t previously…
40 Years Ago: The TWILIGHT ZONE Tragedy–In Memory of Renee Chen, Myca Dinh Le, and Vic Morrow
Forty years ago, in the early hours of July 23, 1982, a horrible, preventable tragedy occurred on the outdoor set of TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE, a Warner Bros.…
Three Toho Classics and the Work of Sci-Fi Illustrator Shigeru Komatsuzaki
I’d heard of Japanese science fiction illustrator Shigeru Komatsuzaki before, since he’s mentioned in Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa (Wesleyan University Press,…
Hibari Misora and the Last “Sannin Musume” Musical
Japanese actress and recording star Hibari Misora made a series of four musicals with two other singing stars, Chiemi Eri and Izumi Yukimura, who were known collectively as…