California Literary Review

Articles written for the California Literary Review:

• “Ah, nuts!”: A Warner Bros. Blooper Reel from 1936
  Posted on 23 Feb 2010 in The Fourth Wall
  

  I grew up in the era of videotapes, the advent of which changed the film industry completely and irreversibly. But with VHS we had no idea what we were missing. Video rarely offered special features or accurate aspect ratio (though I do own a widescreen VHS of Halloween with interviews, documentaries, TV spots and trailers [...]

• The I Spit on Your Grave Remake: Why?!
  Posted on 20 Feb 2010 in The Fourth Wall
  

  Slasher movies took a gruesome turn in the 1970s, with flicks like Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left (1972) and Meir Zarchi’s 1978 shocker I Spit on Your Grave (alternately titled Day of the Woman) heading up a strange and disturbing trend: the rape-revenge movie. Whether they were viewed as a backlash to second-wave [...]

• Movie Review: Shutter Island
  Posted on 20 Feb 2010 in Movies, Movies & TV
  

  Martin Scorsese’s newest picture Shutter Island is a creepy cinematic passage into paranoia, guilt, and insanity—a classic thriller with undertones of gothic romance and the failed American dream. The trailers, which anyone who’s taken in a movie in the last year has seen, reveal little but hint at a lot. Fortunately, the movie is a great watch even if the conclusion may leave some audiences grumbling.

• Cameron Directs Bigelow in Bill Paxton’s Music Video…come again?
  Posted on 19 Feb 2010 in The Fourth Wall
  

  One of the editors at my favorite non-movie blog Jezebel posted this video featuring Oscar nominees galore!
  James Cameron’s Avatar and Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker are among the Oscar nominees for Best Picture of 2009. From 1989-1991, Cameron and Bigelow were married. They apparently parted amicably (or would like us to think so), since they [...]

• The Weekly Listicle: Julia’s Insane-Asylum-Flick Picks
  Posted on 18 Feb 2010 in The Fourth Wall
  

  Cinema has always been big on crazy people. Drama and comedy have portrayed the descent into instability and insanity, but I prefer to look at the way horror handles the subject. Film is of course a visual medium, and it’s troublesome to delve into the mental state of protagonists without physical representations. Enter the brutal [...]

• Julia’s Most Anticipated 2010 Movie Releases
  Posted on 16 Feb 2010 in The Fourth Wall
  

  It’s mid-February, 2010, and I’m only just getting the year right on checks (I’m one of those jerks who spends the first six months of any year writing the last one on everything). Some of my most anticipated movie releases have already passed, and unfortunately none of them were mind-blowingly great. The Lovely Bones didn’t [...]

• Movie Review: The Wolfman
  Posted on 13 Feb 2010 in Movies, Movies & TV
  

  Werewolves in cinema have had many incarnations, but most modern lore stems from the 1941 Universal picture The Wolf Man. The unforgettable image of a monstrously deformed Lon Chaney, Jr. thrusting out his chest, baring his claws, and baying at the full moon is one of Hollywood’s most lasting. Director Joe Johnston’s The Wolfman, also a Universal production, is a pitch-perfect reboot of the classic horror movie.

• Julia’s Anti-Valentine’s Movies
  Posted on 11 Feb 2010 in The Fourth Wall
  

  Ah, Valentine’s Day. In elementary school, we were forced to address valentines to everyone in class (even that boy who had a penchant for under-the-desk nudity and the girl who picked her nose). At my high school, students were encouraged to buy red roses and have them delivered to sweethearts in class. I generally wore [...]

• Introducing…William Bibbiani!
  Posted on 09 Feb 2010 in The Fourth Wall
  

  While Snowmageddon, Part One raged around us here on the east coast, the amazing and talented William Bibbiani granted me an email interview. Now, as Snowpocalypse 2010, Part Deux, creeps up (a new snow is currently falling hard outside the window to settle lightly on the two-plus feet already on the ground), I give you, [...]

• Movie Review: Legion
  Posted on 23 Jan 2010 in Movies, Movies & TV
  

  According to the script, God has lost faith in humanity, ostensibly because he grew “tired of all the BS.” Thus He orders the angels to exterminate mankind—just to switch it up a bit, since last time He went with a flood. The angel Michael (Paul Bettany) disagrees with God’s order and falls from heaven to save the human race. Michael chooses a tiny town called Paradise Falls (a clever but gauche touch of Dante), at the edge of the Mojave desert, in which to prove that humans are worth saving.