Chess Moves, Rice Bowls, and Full Throttle Vengeance

|Matt Clark| During the 1970s peak of kung fu film popularity, films from the Shaw Brothers’ legendary studio were known for lavish sets, period detail, and often outrageous kung fu styles. Rival studio, Golden Harvest, was primarily known for promoting international sensation… Continue reading

Interview: A Grandmother on Shaolin vs Lama

|Ben Jarman| Here is a new take from my mom on the film Shaolin vs Lama. The goal here again is to introduce her to genres she is not interested in and gather her thoughts. She is a movie “buff”, but she doesn’t venture much into genre films. Martial arts movies are definitely not her thing. She can handle a horror movie… Continue reading

Be the Wind: Movie Motorbikes and the Power of Bōsōzoku

|Jake Rudegeair| Yeah guys, this film has motorcycles. And lots of other stuff too.  Nobuhiko Ôbayashi’s His Motorbike, Her Island (1986) is a treasure from the annals of motorcycle cinema, bent with nostalgic longing, light on its feet, washing between full color and monochrome classic. Continue reading

Memories of Summer

|Harry Mackin| Spoilers for His Motorbike, Her Island—watch the movie before you read this! We meet several different versions of His Motorbike, Her Island’s protagonist, Koh. First, we meet Koh the narrator. This Koh begins his narration immediately following the opening images of the film, when an appropriately… Continue reading

The Only 35mm Print of Tom Waits’s Big Time

|John Costello| When a character, on stage or on screen, breaks the fourth wall and another character notices and comments, something special happens. A skilled performer involves the audience as performers in the live performance. Unlike plays and fictional films, concert films… Continue reading

The Lyrical Loneliness of Down By Law

|Jackson Stern| Some of the best songs you can listen to when you’re at your lowest are the loneliest ones. When I was near the end of high school, I got my heart broken in a few different ways, like a lot of people do at that age, and I’d go for these long drives. Almost every day after school Continue reading

The Waits is Over: “Big Time” Finally (Kinda, Sorta) Brings Tom Waits Back to Minneapolis

|Chris Ryba-Tures| Y’all. After, like, 25 years of waiting, hoping, dreaming, I finally get to see Tom Waits in concert! Some of you have probably been waiting even longer. Don’t worry, you can come too. Get your ticket to see the mysterious junkyard troubadour, the skid-row Cyrano, Continue reading

Of Teens and Time Travel: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

|Dan McCabe| Time travel is a fantasy. While time travel stories often get lumped in with science fiction, there’s not much “science” behind it. While general relativity and time dilation theories support the possibility of moving forward in time, backwards time travel has about as… Continue reading

A Juggler, an Apple Farmer, and a Psychotic Slumlord walk into a bar in a Bankrupt City…

|Lucas Hardwick| In the hierarchy of entertainment juggling is somewhere between miming and magic outranking puppet shows but only slightly less compelling than street buskers (depending on what the busker is playing, of course). In case you’re wondering how low the bar… Continue reading