What's New
20 Dec 25
Are you ready to meet our hero? It's time for Chapter 1 of TKoH. Get ready to go a-questing. In other news, be looking for reviews tomorrow. Try not to get boiled in your own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through the heart in the meantime. Stay tuned.
Posted by: JamesUTC 14:20:15
14 Dec 25
This week we've got three misters, murder and mutiny. From Frank Capra, we have Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Sam Rockwell makes a return after being featured last week, this time with 2015's Mr. Right. Your boy Phillip Marlowe makes another appearance in Murder, My Sweet and Billy Bligh gets a bum rap in Mutiny on the Bounty. In preparation for Christmas, I'm planning on doing a Dickensian special. Also be looking for the next chapter of KoH if all goes well. Stay tuned.
Posted by: JamesUTC 11:22:28
13 Dec 25
When the cat's around, the mice won't be found. Or something like that. I was thinking of opening with the more conventional line, but the cat is obviously here. We've got the boys getting into some mischief in much-delayed and finally delivered Chapter 15 of RttW. In other news, the mythical manga reviews remain a myth, but there will still be reviews of some sort in the offing. Stay tuned.
Posted by: JamesUTC 17:20:26
07 Dec 25
For this week's reviews, we set out for the wasteland in Mad Max, Mad Max 2 and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. The first two reviews have been sitting in the backlog for years and I leapfrogged them until I could take the time to rewatch the third one for review purposes. Moving on, we close things out with the Howard Hawks-directed Monkey Business and 2009's Moon. I missed the story update this time, but I'm pretty confident I can get it out the gate next week and maybe some of those mythical manga reviews might make an appearance as well. Stay tuned.
Posted by: JamesUTC 14:09:23
30 Nov 25
We plumb the depths of the movie review backlog, starting with a couple war movies from the 1950s, Men in War and Men of the Fighting Lady. We follow it with the B-movie scifi flick Millennium. We close with a pair of movies from the Aughts, Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise teaming up for Minority Report and from the Second Disney Dark Age, Meet the Robinsons. I swear I'm going to get some manga reviews written eventually. Also, there are a couple reviews I've skipped over because I need the third entry to complete the set, so I'll make a point to watch that. Now that we're back to getting story updates out, my next trick is to get the next chapter of RttW out, so be on the lookout for that. Stay tuned.
Posted by: JamesUTC 12:08:08
29 Nov 25
It's been about two months, but we've finally got a story update with Chapter 9 of CoP. It's been a rocky road (not the ice cream), but hopefully we can keep things on rails for a while. Looks for reviews tomorrow. Stay tuned.
Posted by: JamesUTC 16:20:58
23 Nov 25
This past Friday was the premier of Mamoru Hosoda's latest film, Scarlet. If I had thought sooner to put the time into it, I would've watched a couple adaptations of Hamlet to go with it, but I didn't, so instead we'll just dip into the backlog for more cinematic fun. We'll go chronologically, starting with Greta Garbo in 1931's Mata Hari. Next is John Ford directing Katharine Hepburn in Mary of Scotland. Next we have Vincent Price in the 1961 adaptation of Jules Verne's Master of the World. And where better to close things out than IN SPACE with Gregory Peck and Richard Crenna in 1969's Marooned. And that does it for now. I've got Monday and Tuesday off, so I'm going to try to work on the things that I've said I'm going to work on, so good luck to me with that. Stay tuned.
Posted by: JamesUTC 14:00:41
16 Nov 25
Well, once again, thing didn't go quite according to plan, but so it goes. Let's move on to this week's reviews. We had a movie by Fritz Lang last week and we get another one this week in the form of 1941's Man Hunt. We had the Marine Corps' birthday last Monday, but we're not going to quite do the Devil Dogs justice with 1944's Marine Raiders. We'll stay military themed with Robert Mitchum in Man in the Middle. I guess we loop back around to WWII (the aftermath at least) with Marathon Man. We then throw any attempt to tie these movies together and close things out with Man of Steel, which I could've sworn I posted years ago. (It would've benefitted from it if I had, as I was more generous back then.) Anyway, that does it for now. I'll repeat my likely empty promises from last time of trying to get some manga reviews written and actually get a story update together. Can it happen? It's not impossible, but don't put all your chips on it. Stay tuned.
Posted by: JamesUTC 13:05:26
09 Nov 25
My Saturday suddenly evaporated on me, so the time I meant to dedicate to getting some manga reviews written failed to manifest. As such, we'll once again dig into the movie review backlog for content. We start with a pair of Peter Lorre films with Fritz Lang's M and Karl Freund's Mad Love. Next up is Frank Capra's Lost Horizon. We then have the English dub of Toei's second animated feature Shounen Sarutobi Sasuke, the far less imaginatively titled Magic Boy. And since we've got Japan on the mind, what better way to cap things off than with Lost in Translation? And with that done, I'm going to make an effort to get some manga reviews together for next time and maybe actually start to do some writing so we can actually have a story update as well. Stay tuned.
Posted by: JamesUTC 14:07:14
01 Nov 25
I know I promised this on Halloween and technically, it's not yet midnight on the West Coast. I got behind on my viewing schedule (along with everything else being a grand tangle) and so we're going to be two entries shy of the nine I promised, but let's get on with the show. I promised all the Halloween heavy-hitters, so let's start with vampires with 1979's Nosferatu the Vampyre and the 2024 version of Nosferatu as well, then let's take a fictionalized look at the creation of the 1922 original in Shadow of the Vampire. Next up is werewolves with 2010's The Wolfman and if you want to smash those two together, there's Underworld. If that isn't enough of a mashup, let's get vampires, werewolves, Frankenstein's monster and more together in 2004's Van Helsing. Last but not least, from the same director, we have Brendan Fraser in The Mummy. And that does it for this year's Halloween feature. I'll be sure to make a note so I don't find myself two weeks in before I get started next year. And with the week's reviews out, well, I don't quite know what's coming next, so I guess we'll find out together. Stay tuned.
Posted by: JamesUTC 06:42:04
26 Oct 25
Making a Ghouls n' Ghosts/Ghosts n' Goblins comment last time was a convenient way to bundle the subjects of this week's reviews. Let's start with the ghouls with Zombieland and its vastly inferior sequel, Zombieland: Double Tap. For the ghosts, if you're wanting a laugh, try 1988's High Spirits and if you want more of a thriller, you can't do much better than The Sixth Sense. And now for the goblins, let's take a trip to Nilbog for OH MY GOOOOOOOOOD Troll 2 and the retrospective documentary about it, Best Worst Movie. If you were looking for actual trolls, try 1986's Troll or the absolute peak of all troll-related media, Ernest Scared Stupid. Next week's feature will come early so that we make it for Halloween itself. Expect all the heavy-hitters to show up. Now, if only I can tear myself away from my current side project and focus on writing to maybe, just maybe get that chapter of CoP out afterward. Stay tuned.
Posted by: JamesUTC 17:02:36