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I’m hoping to start making News From the Lake a Wednesday update, just for the sake of uniformity.  With that, boy are there a lot of upcoming DVDs heading to store shelves soon!  In this update, we’ll look at some upcoming DVDs coming out, and see how many are worth purchasing.  Remembe read more

Easter’s come and gone, and I generally don’t celebrate the holiday by watching movies; that’s going to change today!  Twilight Time has released The Song of Bernadette, the 1943 Oscar nominated film that gave Jennifer Jones her first (and only) Oscar for Best Actress.  The win is read more

Over the next few days, I’ll be discussing and reviewing the latest crop of Blu-Ray releases from the fantastic Twilight Time Studios.  If you haven’t bookmarked their site, Screen Archives, do so now because they’re the go-to place for quality Blu-Rays of classic films.  In the read more

Did you wish you had an encyclopedia filled with biographies of all the excellent femme fatales who made their mark during the film noir period?  Look no further than Karen Burroughs Hannsberry’s fabulous two-volume series Femme Noir: Bad Girls on Film.  This 643 page compendium, split into read more

Biopic Theater returns to its roots this week with the 1980 made-for-television exploration into the life of Jayne Mansfield.  We also see a return to the leading lady we started this series with: Loni Anderson.  As I mentioned in my original review of White Hot: The Thelma Todd Story, Anderson isn& read more

As a child, The Black Cauldron was the “red-headed stepchild” of the Disney canon.  And not just the stepchild, we’re talking the stepchild you kept under the stairs!  The movie was a commercial failure, and almost cemented the demise of Disney animation entirely.  The problems read more

Last week I reviewed author Robert James’s book Who Won?!?: An Irreverent Look at the Oscars, Volume 1, a book I thoroughly enjoyed in its light-hearted, but insightful, analysis of the winners (and such have beens) of the Academy Award for Best Picture.  Around Oscar time James helped me out read more

With the repairing of Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, the script for Indiscreet could coast on the presence of the two stars alone, and the sad fact is, it does.  Despite being directed by the legendary Stanley Donen, and being written by Norman Krasna, the movie feels like a cold, talky stageplay br read more

The Exorcist has received its fair share of reviews since originally traumatizing audiences in 1973.  It’s one of the first films – that I can recall – that implemented barf bags in the theater.  With that, I was prepared to have more than a few friends leave last week’s Amer read more

It’s been awhile since I included any new winners of The Veronicas, and that’s simply because I wanted to balance it out with one actor and one actress, and it’s been hard to get a coveted five movies per actor.  With that, we finally have a pair entering the vaunted hall of past read more

    I’ve mentioned on Twitter over the last month or so about doing a feature wherein I give my casting suggestion on the countless unnecessary remakes of classic films that are being touted.  The best part of this feature is that anyone can agree or disagree with me, and give me read more

**This is my contribution to The Movie Projector’s James Cagney Blogathon.  You can visit and read the other submissions here.** I always enjoy participating in actor/actress blogathons as they finally force me to open up those individual DVDs I purchased months ago.  My choice for the James read more

So Biopic Theater is moved to Monday this week as my pick for the upcoming Jimmy Cagney blogathon (hosted over at The Movie Projector) works as a biopic so it’ll be pushed out to Monday.  With that, I figured a quick News From the Lake would be good on this lazy Sunday.  Today, we have more read more

    The next five weeks sees us navigating the hostile waters of the Walt Disney Company in the 1980s, which will eventually end with us entering the last golden age Disney’s had for a while.  The Fox and the Hound continues the trend of downbeat stories we saw in The Rescuers, but read more

We conclude our Topper trio with a look at the final, and weirdest installment in the series.  Topper Returns is a Topper film in name only because our beloved wealthy leader is marginalized and reduced to befuddled detective in a movie that has nothing to do with any of the themes or characters set read more

I’m in the midst of a Topper trio; reviewing all three films, in order.  I re-posted my review of the first Topper film yesterday, and we continue with a look at the 1938 sequel, Topper Takes a Trip.  This is the final film to have include the cast from the original – although Cary Grant read more

I’m running through all three Topper films, so today’s repost looks at my original review. It’s easy to confuse today’s film with several others that deal with lovable spirits trying to make amends.  When I sat down to watch Topper, and well into the film’s runtime, I read more

An all-DVD release date edition of News From the Lake.  Here, we’ll discuss upcoming release dates for DVDs and Blu-Rays from Universal, Olive Releasing, and Fox.  I’ll also include a brief Lake Update for April at the end. On May 7th, you can own The Great Escape on Blu-Ray.  The film read more

I’m finding myself in a film noir groove between this and my reviews of The House on 92nd Street and The Narrow Margin.  Tension doesn’t set out to espouse grand themes as in House; if anything, I’d consider it in the vein of The Narrow Margin with its B-movie plot and cast.  Despi read more

Voting slowed down towards the end, and I’m not quite sure how many Gingerology fans turned out, but Ginger was a powerhouse next to Diane Keaton.  Out of 24 votes this week, Ginger got 20 to Diane’s lowly 4.  Overall, Ginger gained 68 votes throughout the length of the tournament.  Shoc read more