Author: Will Harris

Although her name still rings a bell with anyone who was tuned in to NBC at 11:30 on Saturday nights from 1975 to 1980, Laraine Newman – one of the original cast members of “Saturday Night Live” – has a tendency to cause people, upon hearing her name, to say, “Hey, what’s she been doing for all these years?” Well, it may surprise you to learn that she’s worked pretty steadily; the majority of her work these days is done in the form of voicing animated characters (she can be heard on various episodes of “The Tick,” “The Oblongs,” and…

Michael Madsen is one of those actors who, as soon as you see him on the screen, you invariably know he’s gonna be playing kind of a tough guy…but that’s what happens when you sign up for Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs” and play Mr. Blonde, the black-suit-wearing, straight-razor-wielding psycho who knows just the right steps to dance to “Stuck in the Middle with You.” One part like that, and it’s easy to forget that the guy also starred in “Free Willy.” Madsen helped celebrate the 15th anniversary of “Reservoir Dogs” (albeit a year early) by contributing to the recent DVD…

In that hazy period of the distant past that’s so often referred to as “back in the day,” Leslie Nielsen was a dramatic actor. No, seriously. It’s often hard to remember it, what with all his work with the Abrahams / Zucker camp (the “Naked Gun” franchise, not to mention “Airplane!”), but in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and even through the ‘70s, the majority of Nielsen’s resume was dedicated to work on dramatic work, both on movies and in television pictures…and one of his first major films was as the lead – the romantic lead, no less – in “Forbidden Planet.”…

I know, I was as surprised as anyone when I asked Chris Matthews a question and he had something to say. The guy so rarely opens his mouth or, really, has an opinion on anything. On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of “The Chris Matthews Show,” Mr. Matthews did a teleconference. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get this up prior to last week’s election, but we think you’ll find it a really interesting read nonetheless. By the way, in the interest of full disclosure, we should mention that this Q&A was actually done by two people – myself and…

He’s a writer, he’s a director, but, perhaps most importantly to those who’ve seen his films, he’s Silent Bob. That’s right, he’s Kevin Smith, and he continues to live the dream of every sarcastic, heavyset, facial-hair-sporting, fart-joke-loving comic geek out there…and, trust me, I resemble that remark. In between his gigs as a major player in Hollywood (relatively speaking, anyway), a pretty accurate barometer of what’s worth checking out in the world of pop culture, and the owner of two – count ‘em – two comic book shops, Smith regularly tours college campuses, delivering a mixture of spoken word and…

Tony Bennett turned 80 this year (happy belated b-day, Tony) and to celebrate, director Rob Marshall (“Chicago,” “Memoirs of a Geisha”) teamed with Bennett to produce an hour long special that commemorates the career of the legendary singer. A portion of the show features celebrity narration from Bruce Willis, John Travolta, Robert DeNiro, and Billy Crystal, discussing the highlights of Bennett’s work. The best bits, however, are the song and dance numbers; Bennett duets with the likes of Barbra Streisand, Christina Aguilera, Diana Krall, and John Legend, with Marshall having recreated sets from various periods in Bennett’s history, including a…

The photo on the cover of VH-1 Films’ “Totally Awesome,” a parody of just about every teen movie made during the ‘80s, walks the line of having you both totally psyched and utterly horrified. Chris Kattan (“Saturday Night Live”) is wearing a black jumpsuit and has a sweatband around his head; James Hong (“Big Trouble in Little China,” “The Golden Child”) has a scarf wrapped around his head, one bearing the Japanese flag; Tracy Morgan (“30 Rock”) has Jeri-curled hair and sunglasses; Dominique Swain (“L%lita”) is wearing an off-the-shoulder striped blouse, white stockings, and pink legwarmers. Throw in the pair…

While in no way as famous as their peers, Hammer Studios, Amicus Productions was a British production company founded by American producers Milton Subotsky and Max J. Rosenberg. Although they scored some notoriety by releasing a pair of “Dr. Who” feature length films, as well as an adaptation of playwright Harold Pinter’s “The Birthday Party” that was directed by William Friedkin (“The Exorcist”), their biggest claim to fame was their many horror films. The folks at Dark Sky Films have been fortunate enough to obtain the right to reissue three films from the Amicus vaults, falling under the banner title…

There have been few cinematic collaborations more creatively and commercially successful than the one between director John Ford and actor John Wayne; the pair teamed up on 21 films. (The only actor-director pairing that even comes close is the one between Toshiro Mifune and Akira Kurosawa, and they’re still a distant second at “only” 16 team-ups.) In addition to the recent 5-film set of some of Ford’s non-Wayne works, Warner Brothers has put together a collection of eight of the aforementioned 21 cinematic excursions. Before you start trying to work out in your head which eight have been included in…

As the creator of a far-too-rarely-updated website called Sale-Bin Cinema, I’m usually one of the first people to launch to the defense of movies that are so bad they’re good, and most people know what I mean; by now, just about everyone has seen an episode of “Mystery Science Theater 3000” and they understand the enjoyment you can get by pointing, laughing, and making fun of how awful a movie is. Inevitably, however, someone will ask the question that always proves to be a bit of a stumper: “Why would I watch a movie that’s so bad it’s good when…