“Giveaways are my stock-in-trade…”

Apologies for the quiet on the blog recently but it’s just been one of those months: off-blog chores to do for Ma and Pa, and for a moment there, I thought I might not be able to pay the income tax this year. (I would really be devastated if I couldn’t contribute to this furshlugginer…

From the DVR: The Wonderful World of Disney

The Starz/Encore people have managed to acquire some feature film titles from Walt Disney Pictures of late, because I was afforded an opportunity to catch up with two of the studio’s animation releases that had eluded me for a good while: The Princess and the Frog (2009; I liked this one) and Frozen (2013; not…

I can’t win for losin’ you

My longtime paisan Jeff Lane broke the news to me on Facebook yesterday that country singer-songwriter Earl Thomas Conley left this world for a better one yesterday at the age of 77.  Blake Shelton, who scored one of his early chart hits (#18 in 2002) with the Conley-penned All Over Me, remarked on Twitter that ETC “was my all…

Adventures in Blu-ray: Noir Archive Volume 1: 1944-1954

In Jacobellis vs. Ohio (1964), a U.S. Supreme Court case addressing the First Amendment (an Ohio movie theatre banned the 1958 Louis Malle film Les Amants because they believed it to be “obscene”), Justice Potter Stewart made a famous observation about obscenity that has become a colloquial expression today.  “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I…

Adventures in Roku II: Texas Blood Money

The recent acquisition of the Roku in the House of Yesteryear has been both a source of welcome entertainment (for your humble narrator) and amusement (also for your humble narrator, because his mother is now calling it the “Yoko”).  I mentioned in this last post that I am fast becoming a fan of some of…

Go Ask Alice

It wasn’t quite a year ago today (and admittedly, I’m a little late with this review) but in April of last year silent film historian/accompanist Ben Model—the hardest working man in the 88 keys business—launched a Kickstarter campaign to produce a DVD showcasing the work of silent movie mirthmaker Alice Howell.  Howell, described on the back of the…