Halloween Horror Movies 2013 - Day 28 - ALIEN
A monster stalks a group of people who are trapped in an enclosed area with limited places to hide and few options of escape. They are killed one by one until only the nubile young hottie...
View ArticleHalloween Horror Movies 2013 - Day 29 - THE EVIL DEAD
It used to be that the “B movie”, particularly “B” Horror movies, were a sort of minor leagues for emerging filmmakers. It was an area of film where a director could, on a modest budget, cut...
View ArticleHalloween Horror Movies 2013 - Day 30 - PRINCE OF DARKNESS
The Religious Horror sub-genre rarely works for me. I usually don’t find it credible, much less scary (a strange stance, I know, for someone who loves supernatural Horror, but there it is)....
View ArticleHalloween Horror Movies 2013 - Day 31 - HALLOWEEN
Today is the day, and this is the movie for it! The sire and still best of all the slasher films, John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN broke the mold of the psycho-killer movie and remade it in its own...
View ArticleSorry Gang!
Somehow, 3 of my "12 Essentials of Christmas" diaries posted prematurely. I took them down...Consider it a preview, I guess... :-[
View Article12 Essentials of Christmas - Day 1 - THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS
In 1982, Disney had a surprise success with a stop-motion animated short called VINCENT, which was the brainchild of one the many animators on their payroll. This animator had another idea...
View Article12 Essentials of Christmas - Day 2 - RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER
On Sunday, December 6th of 1964 children across the country settled in around their TV sets to watch a new, eagerly awaited Christmas special. It was a special which told the story of a...
View Article12 Essentials of Christmas - Day 3 - HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS
The idea of the “Christmas redemption” is almost as old as the modern Christmas itself. The most obvious example (and the most often imitated) is A CHRISTMAS CAROL, and though many...
View Article12 Essentials of Christmas - Day 4 - DIE HARD
A movie set on Christmas Eve was released in the Summer of 1988. It is not very often that such a thing happens - movies with Christmas settings invariably getting a December release....
View Article12 Essentials of Christmas - Day 5 - ELF
Earnest Christmas movies are not easy to make these days. We live in times when irony and jadedness seem more authentic than earnestness. Innocence is sneered at. Joy is seen as...
View Article12 Essentials of Christmas - Day 6 - Blackadder's Christmas Carol
Humor is one of those things that defines a nation. Every culture’s sense of humor is distinctive, and every one a bit of a mystery; you either get it, or you don’t. One culture whose...
View Article12 Essentials of Christmas - Day 7 - HOME ALONE
In 1990, a holiday movie was released that received roundly negative reviews. Almost unanimously, critics around the country, while acknowledging some of the film’s merits, panned the...
View Article12 Essentials of Christmas - Day 8 - BLACK CHRISTMAS
Christmas has always had a freely acknowledged dark side. Though for most, it is a time of togetherness and joy, for many it is a time of great loneliness and depression. When our holiday...
View Article12 Essentials of Christmas - Day 9 - THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL
The 1970’s were, one could say, the golden age of cheesy television. While it was the era of undisputable classic TV shows like “M.A.S.H.” and “All in the Family”, it was also the era of...
View Article12 Essentials of Christmas - Day 10 - THE MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL
Charles Dickens’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL is probably the best known and most beloved of all Christmas stories. The tale of the redemption of Ebenezer Scrooge is as resonant today as it was when...
View ArticleA Gift for the Kos Community - My Family's Wassail Recipe
As some of you may know, I enjoy posting diaries about movies during the various holiday seasons. It started as a Halloween thing, but has since spread to Christmas as well. In my most recent diary,...
View Article12 Essentials of Christmas - Day 11 - A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS
The 1960’s was an awesome decade for the Holiday TV Special. The Grinch and the majority of the Rankin/Bass specials came along in the ‘60s - establishing seasonal television traditions...
View Article12 Essentials of Christmas - Day 12 - A CHRISTMAS STORY
What better movie for Christmas Eve than arguably the greatest Christmas movie ever made? A CHRISTMAS STORY captures the essence of the holiday like no other film. It is a movie that...
View ArticleThoughts about the murder of Kelly Thomas
And make no mistake. It was murder.Two Fullerton Cops were acquitted for the beating death of Kelly Thomas. A young schizophrenic man. This comes in the wake of story after story of young people with...
View ArticleHalloween Horror Movies 2014 - Day 1: DRACULA
For me, a proper celebration of the Halloween season really begins with my annual October 1st viewing of DRACULA. Even now, 82 years since it was first released, director Tod Browning’s...
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