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Warning: This article features in depth plot analysis. If you have not seen this film you are urged not to read on. Spoiler alert administered. John Hughes was a big name in the 1980s, but more so as a writer/producer than as a director. He started off as a writer with the National Lampoon’s crew. read more

As I mentioned on Monday, this is the book that inspired me to take a closer look at Poverty Row studios and seek out more of those films. However, the book itself does deserve some highlighting. Clearly, when you’re dealing with non-fiction film writing there will be some occasions when an op read more

Introduction Welcome, to another month and another theme. My plans for this one I believe will be similar to 31 Days of Oscar, which means that I believe I will keep this theme to one running log, and if I should find occasion a few additional posts to fill in some detail. The theme for April will read more

This Goofy short is notable for a few reasons. The least of which is that this was another chapter in the series of shorts that saw Goofy take up recreational activities or sports with predictably disastrous and hilarious consequences. More interestingly than that is that later in Goofy’s film read more

Warning: this article features in depth story analysis and several plot points are revealed. If you have not seen the film, read at your own peril. What The Neverending Story is to 80s fantasy Parenthood is to the family film of the 80s, although I doubt you’ve ever seen anything like it before or read more

This is a series of posts this month wherein I will focus on Disney films. For more on my background with Disney films and about the timing of this focus please read the introductory post here. To be honest, this list was part of the motivation for me to do this theme. Another, as has been the case read more

To be brief, I completely and totally understand the inherent logic of Disney’s vaulting strategy. As a business model, it seems to have worked, because if it wasn’t working the practice would’ve been discontinued by now. Essentially the idea is: if you make a film available only f read more

Warning: Spoiler alert! There is story analysis that reveals key plot points below, proceed with caution. If there’s one misconception about Disney films that bothers me it’s the tonality myth of the happy ending. Firstly, A lot of people act as if this applies only to Disney films an read more

Note: This piece contains in depth story analysis. It is not recommended reading if you’ve not seen the film. Five Films We’ve taken a very broad look at the 80s. Now I want to take a closer look at five films that in their own unique way captured a different part of the 80s flavor. In my opin read more

I’ve always believed that drama is the foundation of all other genres, which could be interpreted to mean that everything is essentially a cross-genre piece, but essentially what lead me to this premise was thinking about how to to approach myriad genres as a writer, I think this can also appl read more

This is a series of posts this month wherein I will focus on Disney films. For more on my background with Disney films and about the timing of this focus please read the introductory post here. It’s almost as unoriginal to say all sports films are essentially the same as sports films are, at read more

Introduction I don’t frequently write DVD reviews, but upon seeing this film I was compelled to watch the special bonus features on it as well. Typically, I would stick to a review of the program on the disc, but have included thoughts on the features below. Film The film has a very basic sy read more

This is a recapitulation of a paper I did in college. This is part eleven in the series to read other parts go here. As time has moved on the line between television and the movies has become blurred. In the 90s and continuing through until today no TV show is safe from becoming a feature film at so read more

This is a series of posts this month wherein I will focus on Disney films. For more on my background with Disney films and about the timing of this focus please read the introductory post here. Disney has two fairly recently initiated and under-exploited and under-publicized home video lines. I may read more

This is a series of posts this month wherein I will focus on Disney films. For more on my background with Disney films and about the timing of this focus please read the introductory post here. What’s been great is that I have through sheer luck managed to come across titles I had previously read more

This is a series of posts this month wherein I will focus on Disney films. For more on my background with Disney films and about the timing of this focus please read the introductory post here. It’s rather impressive how many Disney themes can run through one innocuous little film like The Gn read more

This is a series of posts this month wherein I will focus on Disney films. For more on my background with Disney films and about the timing of this focus please read the introductory post here. When one looks at a studio and all the films they’ve made in a given subgenre, it could be easy to read more

I saw this film plenty of times growing up. I think once upon a time Disney had a VHS collection of wartime shorts. This became one Disney would make sparse over years until the Disney Treasures line was launched and all the World War-Two era shorts were re-collected. Leonard Maltin typically not on read more

This is a recapitulation of a paper I did in college. This is part eight in the series to read other parts go here. Gremlins, Ghostbusters, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Creepshow, Weird Science, Time Bandits, Splash, Big, Back to the Future, The Witches of Eastwick and My Stepmother is an Alien all of t read more

This is a series of posts this month wherein I will focus on Disney films. For more on my background with Disney films and about the timing of this focus please read the introductory post here. One of my more recent revisits in the Disney library were the two Rescuers films. There are a few interes read more