“This is the only place I’m happy.”

Fourteen is a painful age for any kid...but for young Duncan (Liam James), it’s a real tribulation: he’s shy and unsure of himself, and his divorced mother Pam (Toni Collette) has dragooned him into spending the summer in a coastal Massachusetts beach house with her overbearing boyfriend Trent (Steve Carell) and his conceited daughter Steph…

If I were a Carpenter

My Facebook compadre John Carpenter (not to be confused with the director of Halloween...particularly since the Facebook Carpenter goes by "John K.") is known to friends and creditors as "The Movie Man"; John's a devoted classic film buff and collector of 16mm cinematic antiquities, which he's been sharing with appreciative audiences in his home base…

“So tell me, why should it be true/That I get a kick(start) out of you…”

Hi, buckaroos! Scamp Shreve time again. Yeah, I’m trying to slide one by ya once more.  Okay, now that I’ve achieved my lifelong ambition of referencing both Cole Porter and Jerry Jeff Walker in a single post...let me get to the “meat” of the matter.  There are two Kickstarter campaigns underway highlighting two of silent…

Menjou En Gros

The recent VCI/Sprocket Vault DVD release of Hal Roach Forgotten Comedies could just have easily been titled “Adolphe Menjou at Hal Roach” because the three features in the collection—The Housekeeper’s Daughter (1939), Turnabout (1940), and Road Show (1941)—all star the actor known for both his sartorial splendor (he was voted “The Best Dressed Man in…

Darling of the airwaves

My Facebook compadre Jeff Abraham dashed off an e-mail alerting me to this very exciting bit of news: The National Comedy Center is proud to announce the acquisition of an expansive archive chronicling the nine-decade career of pioneering comedienne Rose Marie, who passed away at the age of 94 in December 2017. National Comedy Center…

“I’m just mad…cause I suck.”

Sherry Swanson (Maggie Gyllenhaal) has just been paroled.  A heroin addict since the age of 16 (she reminisces at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting that horse was “the love of my life”), she was sent up on theft charges (gotta support that habit) two-and-a-half years ago and now that she’s out, very much wants to pick…

Adventures in Blu-Ray: Miss Annie Rooney (1942)

Since confession is good for the soul (or so they tell me), I’ll admit that when ClassicFlix announced that it was starting up its own distribution of classic movies to DVD and Blu-ray...I was a bit skeptical.  (You may have noticed from time to time that this is my nature.)  I posited that CF would…

Next in line

How many times has this happened to you?  You and your better half are celebrating your 35th wedding anniversary and have invited family and friends to a secluded Missouri cabin for the festivities.  The wine has been poured, the food is ready...and two of the members of your admittedly dysfunctional clan are already opening old…

Fire and Fury

Stand-up historians (well...it might be a thing) like to point out that the United States and Australia share a common kinship in that our forefathers emigrated to their respective countries from the United Kingdom.  The only difference, of course, is that it was a voluntary deal for Americans; the Aussies, on the other hand, consisted…

“She’s gonna love me in my Chevy Ford Van and that’s all right with me…”

I was having a Facebook Messenger chinwag with my loyal sidekick Andrew “Grover” Leal Wednesday night...and I vowed during that interaction that I was going to cease “lollygagging” and start getting content up on the blog on a regular basis.  This ambitious promise would begin on Thursday; I would grab a title from a stack…