Tag: Malco

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Shocktober V Gets Scary At The Time Warp Drive-In

The Lost Boys leads off the Shocktober Time Warp Drive-In

For the last five years, the October edition of the Time Warp Drive-In has been the most popular. It’s horror movie season after all, and the Warp crew knows what you want.

This year’s ghoulish festivities kick off with a choice slice of ’80s cheese. The Lost Boys made stars of Kiefer Sutherland (who delivers the immortal line “Maggots, Michael. You’re eating maggots. How do they taste?”); Corey Haim and Corey Feldman (collectively known from that moment on as “They Coreys”); and Jason Patric. Joel Shumacher’s best film also features a cameo by Tim Copello, aka Saxophone Guy from Tina Turner videos, whose oiled physique and powerful mullet make him the most pure avatar of the Reagan Era.

Shocktober V Gets Scary At The Time Warp Drive-In

The next film continues the theme of secret suburban vampires. The directorial debut of writer/director/actor triple threat Tom Holland, Fright Night is set in the then-present-day of 1985, but it has a charming classic Hammer horror quality to it. It features Chris Sarandon as Jerry Dandridge, mild-mannered mom-dater by day, bloodsucking freak by night. Or something like that. Fright Night is one of those cult horror films that actually deserves its cult.

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Then the vamp action moves from the ‘burbs to the city. Tony Scott’s illustrious directing career began in 1983 with a bang. The Hunger stars the super-sexy pairing of Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie as vampire lovers on the prowl in New York City, and Susan Sarandon as their next snack. Check out this trailer, which uses “perverse” as a selling point.

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The final Shocktober film takes its vampires to a rural setting. Near Dark was the second film from director Katherine Bigelow, who would later go on to become the first woman to win a Best Director Academy Award. It was a flop upon release, but has been elevated to cult status by horror cinephiles for its sheer inventiveness. Is this the first appearance of the “vampires move around in the day time in blacked out automobiles” trope that Buffy The Vampire Slayer loved so much?

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The Time Warp Drive-In starts at sundown on Saturday, October 20 at the Malco Summer Drive-In. 

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

This Week At The Cinema: The Good, The Bad, and The Anime

Cowboy Bebop: The Movie

It’s a big week at the movies in Memphis, so we’ll get right to it.

Tonight, Tuesday August 14 at 7 p.m., Indie Memphis presents a timely documentary at Studio on the Square. At last year’s film festival, when director Adam Bhala Lough showed two of his films, the documentary The New Radical and his lost narrative feature Weapons, he teased his latest project, Alt Right: Age of Rage. The doc delves into the Trumpian explosion of hate-fueled political movements, centering its narrative around last year’s Charlottesville Unite the Right rally. Tickets are available at the Indie Memphis website.

This Week At The Cinema: The Good, The Bad, and The Anime

Then, a treat for anime fans. The first time Cowboy Bebop: The Movie played Memphis, it was for one week, and only at 9 p.m. I went three times to try to buy a ticket, only to find it was sold out. I finally got into the last screening and wondered, with the rest of the sold-out audience, why it didn’t rate a full screen to itself. Now, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Shinichro Watanabe’s groundbreaking series, Fathom Events is bringing the film (known in Japan as Knocking On Heaven’s Door) back to theaters. Cowboy Bebop‘s hyperreal fusion of American sci fi and western tropes and Japanese manga imagery has been often imitated but never equaled, and its kicking soundtrack by musical polymath Yoko Kanno remains fresh today. The series theme song “Tank!” ranks alongside “Peter Gunn” and the Mission Impossible theme. The influence from Watanabe’s masterpiece has reverberated through pop culture ever since, with entire sequences lifted almost verbatim in The Matrix, and Joss Whedon’s Firefly being practically a live-action adaptation. The big screen version lacks a little of the series’ snap, (and, inexplicably, “Tank!”)  but makes up for it with one of the best space battle sequences ever created. The subtitled version featuring the original Japanese voice actors is Wednesday at the Malco Paradiso, and the dubbed version familiar to American audiences, featuring Steven Blum as Spike, Beau Billingslea as Jet, Wendee Lee as Faye, and Melissa Fahn as Edward, will be Thursday.  See you at the movies, Space Cowboy.

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Friday night, director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s cult classic Love & Basketball bounces into the Orpheum Theatre Summer Film Series. Imagine Fifty Shades of Grey, only without the sociopathic capitalism and bad S&M. Actually, forget about Fifty Shades entirely and just watch a movie where actual nice people like Omar Epps and Sanaa Lathan fall in love with each other for a change. Get your tix on the Orpheum website.

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Then Saturday, the Orpheum invites you to indulge in your princess fantasies with Rogers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella. This production was originally made for television in 2000 and became a prized cultural artifact thanks to a fabulous late-career performance by Whitney Houston as the fairy godmother and teen sensation Brandy as the little peasant girl with the slipper. Get your tickets here.

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But what’s that? You’re tired of actual good movies? You’re ready for first class trash? Saturday night, the Time Warp Drive-In has got you covered. Saturday night, the Worst Movies Ever program kicks off with, what else, 1959’s Plan 9 From Outer Space. Recently I was in Los Angeles, and got to visit the space where director Ed Wood had his production offices during his reign of cinematic error. Predictably, it was a dump.

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Next up is the exact point where the horror boom of the 1980s went bust: Troll 2. Feel the terror if you dare:

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Then brace for the Citizen Kane of kung fu rock n’ roll films, Miami Connection. They sing. They dance. They kick ass. They do none of it well.

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Think they only made bad movies in the twentieth century? The modern anti-classic Birdemic will make you think again, and then not think about anything. Just stop thinking, OK?

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Then, drive off into the sunrise with the infamous international production Manos: The Hands Of Fate. Then keep driving. And driving. And driving…

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

This Week At The Cinema: Loving Vincent and Steel Magnolias

Loving Vincent

Tuesday, August 7th at the Malco Ridgeway Cinema Grille, one of the most unusual animated films of all times screens. Loving Vincent was a nominee for the 2018 Best Animated Feature Academy Award. Billed as the “first fully painted feature film,” the European production helmed by Dorota Kobila and Hugh Welchman is a full animation done entirely in oil paintings in the style of its subject, Vincent Van Gogh. Even those unfamiliar with the labor intensive process of creating an animated film can appreciate what a staggering achievement this represents: More than 65,000 individual frames were painted by a team of more than 120 artists scattered over 20 countries. The fact that they not only completed this massive project, but that it is actually a really interesting film that combines a character study of the great painter with a detective story inquiring about the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death makes this film nothing short of a miracle. Tix available at the Indie Memphis website.

This Week At The Cinema: Loving Vincent and Steel Magnolias (2)

On Wednesday, in case you missed it last Sunday, The Big Lebowski 20th Anniversary screening repeats. Witness one of the great character introductions in cinematic history:

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On Thursday, August 9th at 5:30, big bands come to the Paradiso. And when I say big, I mean enormous. The Drum Corps International (DCI) Championships are the most prestigious event in the marching band world. The event, which brings together 15 of the world’s biggest and best groups, will be broadcast live from the Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana. If you’re like me, and completely tired of filmmakers who can only think to use the incredible surround sound systems in theaters to make dramatic fart noises (thanks, Inception), hearing these talented musicians leave it all on the field will be sweet.

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Friday night, August 10th at the Orpheum Theatre, Sally Field, Dolly Parton, Shirley MacLaine, Daryl Hannah, Olympia Dukakis, and Julia Roberts star in Steel Magnolias. Get your girl gang together and prepare for wine and weeping.
 

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On Saturday at the Pink Palace, Memphis takes a starring role in America’s Musical Journey. The 3D film showing in the museum IMAX theater traces America’s history through our music and the people who make it. Mississippian Morgan Freeman narrates.

This Week At The Cinema: Loving Vincent and Steel Magnolias

See you at the cinema! 

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

This Week At The Cinema: Little Girls and The Big Lebowski

Laia Artigas as Frida in Summer 1993

Tuesday night at Studio on the Square, an acclaimed film from Spanish director Carla Simón, Summer 1993 tells the story of six-yea-old Frida (Laia Artigas), a young girl from Barcelona whose parents die unexpectedly. The little city girl must move to live with her aunt and uncle, and her first summer in the country makes for a memorable movie experience. Showtime is 7:00 PM, and tickets are on sale at the Indie Memphis website.

This Week At The Cinema: Little Girls and The Big Lebowski

Across town, the Paradiso will screen Julie Traymor’s cult musical Across The Universe. The 2007 film is essentially an experimental film set to the music of The Beatles starring Evan Rachel Woods as Lucy, title character from John Lennon’s immortal Sgt. Pepper’s song.

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Wednesday night at Crosstown Arts, Indie Memphis Microcinema teams up with Film Fatales to bring a program of shorts made by women. One of the nine films screening at 7:30 is Camilla Hall’s An Everyday Problem, a documentary/narrative hybrid tackling the issue of gun violence by focusing on the experience of students in one Los Angeles high school.

Still from ‘An Everyday Problem’

Thursday night at the Memphis Jewish Community Center, the film that swept last year’s Indie Memphis Hometowner awards, Good Grief, will screen in an encore presentation. The film by directors Melissa Anderson Sweazy and Laura Jean Hocking delves into the lives of kids who are being treated by the Kemmons Wilson Center for Good Grief in Collierville. You can get tickets to the 7 PM screening on the MJCC website.

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And, finally, on Sunday, The Big Lebowski. The Cohen Brothers comedy classic contains career-high performances from legends Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, and Steve Buschemi. The goofy film noir parody that became a lifestyle is being feted on its 20th anniversary by Tuner Classic Movies with a 2 p.m. screening at the Paradiso. Expect a full house of Achievers. Here’s the original 1998 trailer, which only hints at the greatness within.

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See you at the movies! 

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

This Week At The Cinema: Sordid Lives and Reefer Madness!

It’s gonna be stupid hot outside this week, so cool off with one of the many special film events hitting big screens in the 901.

Sordid Lives

Tonight, Tuesday, June 26th at Studio on the Square, Indie Memphis presents The King, a documentary by two-time Sundance winner Eugene Jarecki. The filmmaker takes Elvis’ Rolls Royce on an epic road trip through America, seeing sites and interviewing guests from Presley biographer Peter Guralnick to Chuck D. This one’s a don’t-miss. Tickets are available on the Indie Memphis website.

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On Wednesday, June 27th, the Malco Kids Summer Film Fest presents the 1998 Dreamworks animated musical The Prince of Egypt at the Paradiso and various other theaters all over their network.

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That night (Wednesday), the final film of the Outflix Summer Series screens at Studio on the Square. Sordid Lives is a cult-classic, LBGTQ comedy of the culture clash that comes when the matriarch of a small-town Texas family unexpectedly dies in the midst of a tryst with a much younger man. This 2000 film by playwright turned filmmaker Del Shores stars Olivia Newton John and Delta Burke, and later spawned a TV series.

This Week At The Cinema: Sordid Lives and Reefer Madness!

Across town at Railgarten, Indie Memphis presents an encore performance of the 2017 Memphis music video bloc, featuring 28 works pairing Memphis filmmakers and musicians.

Here’s just one example from hip hop mogul and Memphis Flyer‘s current cover model IMAKEMADBEATS. This animated extravaganza was #2 on our list of Best Memphis Music Videos of 2017.

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Then, on Friday and Saturday, June 29th and 30th, a new screening series debuts. Curated by Memphis’ own master of psycho-tronic madness, Mike McCarthy, Midnight At The Studio sets the tone for late-night, cinematic mischief with the accidental 1936 classic Reefer Madness. As the laugh-a-minute trailer so seriously intones, “see this important film now, before it’s too late.”

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See you at the cinema! 

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

This Week At The Cinema: Singing, Art, Poetry, Dance, and Gymnastics

Brown Ballerina

Toni Morrison, poet, Nobel laureate, and all-around advocate for empathy, curated an art show at the Louvre in 2006. The Foreigner’s Home is a documentary based on the exhibit and the conversations about “otherness” that sprung up around it. Indie Memphis will be presenting the film at 7 PM Tuesday, June 14, at the Malco Ridgeway.

The Foreigner's Home – Trailer from Rian Brown on Vimeo.

This Week At The Cinema: Singing, Art, Poetry, Dance, and Gymnastics

Wednesday, June 20th, Indie Memphis takes part in a special program with Collage Dance Collective. “Brown Ballerina” is a short film by director Chassidy Jade about one woman’s quest to dance at the highest levels of the art. Jade will be in attendance to discuss the film, and there will be performances by Shanna Wood and the Collage Dance Collective. Demand for this event has been high, so they’ve added a second screening.

Brown Ballerina Official Trailer from ChassidyJade :: CrownMeRoyalLabs on Vimeo.

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Wednesday night at Studio on the Square, Outflix is presenting their 2007 Jury Award Winner The Gymnast, a love story by Ned Farr starring famed arealist Dreya Weber.

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On Sunday at the Malco Paradiso, Turner Classic Movies presents West Side Story, the 1961 Best Picture winner which still holds the record for most Oscars claimed by a musical. Here’s Rita Mareno taking control of your screen with “America”. 

This Week At The Cinema: Singing, Art, Poetry, Dance, and Gymnastics (4)

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Iggy and the Stooges Doc Gimme Danger to Kick Off Indie Wednesday Film Series

Indie Memphis will be launching a new weekly film series on Wednesday, February 1 with a screening of the Jim Jarmusch’s documentary Gimme Danger.

Iggy Pop and the Stooges in Gimme Danger.

The documentary traces the short but legendary career of The Stooges, the Ann Arbor, Michigan band who, led by Iggy Pop, laid out the blueprint for punk rock in the late 1960s. Jarmusch, an indie film legend whose 1989 Mystery Train was a landmark in Memphis film history, conducted extensive interviews with Pop to create a decisive chronicle of a band ahead of its time.

The Indie Wednesday series will bring new film programming to Memphis weekly, with shows rotating between Crosstown Arts, and Malco’s Ridgeway and Studio On The Square theaters. The existing Microcinema series will continue on February 8 with “Sequence”, a short film cycle by Mississippi filmmaker James Alexander Martin. On Wednesday, February 15, the documentary A Song For You: The Austin City Limits Story, collects highlights from the famous PBS live music show’s long history. Programming will continue throughout the year, and you can check on the constantly updated schedule at this link.

Indie Memphis is offering discounted ticket packages to Indie Wednesday programs through an IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign. A 10 pack of tickets is available for $50 until the end of the campaign on January 20.

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Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Imagine on the Move, other news


Imagine Vegan Cafe announced last week on its Facebook page that it is moving from its current location in November to a new space very close to where Imagine originally opened.

The restaurant is moving east to 2158 Young in the same building where it opened, only a few doors down. 

From the announcement: 

We’re hoping to be up and running in the new location the first part of November, but until then we are still in our current location. We ask for everyone’s patience as we journey into this new adventure. Also, look for our Go Fund Me that will be starting soon to raise money for our very own SOFT SERVE VEGAN ICE CREAM MACHINE!!!!!! Yes, you heard right! We’ll keep you all updated as we move along. Thank you!

• I sorta love hate Gilmore Girls. I love any show I can bingewatch 8 million episodes in a row, but I sorta suspect Lorelei had a cocaine problem (don’t @ me). Whatever … the reboot is coming in November and in anticipation of that, on October 5th, starting at 7 a.m., Netflix is turning 200 cafes into a Luke’s Diner for the day! In Memphis, the locations are: both Tamp & Taps, City & State, and 387 Pantry. 

• The annual Mid-South Great Steak Cook-off is returning to Southland Park Gaming and Racing on October 15th. Participants compete in the categories Appetizer Challenge, People’s Choice, Showmanship, and Steak Cook-off. 

It’s a lot of fun, and entertainment this year includes Ratt! 

• Starting today Hard Rock Cafe is running a special, limited-time vegetarian menu, and, son, it looks good. 

It features Buffalo-style wings made from cauliflower, a ratatouille wrap, and a cauliflower burger with garlic, egg, goat cheese, oregano and breadcrumbs, topped with zucchini, squash, Monterey Jack cheese, arugula, tomato and garlic aioli, served on a toasted brioche bun.   

Through the end of the month. 

• Malco Ridgeway Cinema Grill is hosting a fall-themed wine tasting with reds and whites on Thursday, October 13th, 6-7:30 p.m.

Animals from the Humane Society will be there and admission is $13. 

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Fly On The Wall Blog Opinion

Meme the Malco Bootlegging Hoodie Guy, Please

You may not know that you know him, but if you have ever arrived at a Malco movie early enough to watch the pre-show trivia and ads for local dentists, you probably also have met Bootlegging Hoodie Guy.

See? Bootlegging Hoodie Guy — let’s call him Malco Jedi — is a local hero. He’s a friendly face that reminds us that, while recording films in theaters is illegal, it is also done by cool and weirdly handsome dudes in street wear. In Malco Jedi’s evil-but-slightly-amused expression, we have a memorable anti-hero, a small potatoes local villain who reminds you of that n’ere-do-well guy you dated in college. You know, the one with the contraband. 

Malco Jedi is a meme waiting to happen. He is the defender of the people. He doesn’t need the law because he makes his own rules. He hates authority but has a strong sense of interior justice. This is why Malco Jedi is the rightful defender of the good parts of Memphis. He’s anti-corporate, a skeptic with a cause, a guy you can call when you need someone who won’t tell the cops. 

Meme him. He deserves a meme. We deserve him to be meme-ed. Go forth, download the meme-making app on your smartphone, and put some text on this pic. Do it for the kids. Here are some (not as funny as they could be) examples. 

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Film Features Film/TV

Time Warp Drive-In: It Came From The Drive-In

The Summer Drive-In was built by Malco Theaters in 1950, on the cusp of the country’s big drive-in theater boom. At the height of their popularity, there were more than 4,000 drive-ins all over the country, comprising more than one quarter of all movies screens. Now, that figure is at 1.5 percent.

But the lost pleasures of the drive-in are not lost on Memphis filmmaker Mike McCarthy and Black Lodge Video proprietor Matt Martin, who, last year, started the monthly Time Warp Drive-In series, which brings classic films, both well-known and obscure, back to the biggest screens.

“We were accepted by a large part of the Memphis community,” says McCarthy. “[Malco Theatres Executive VP] Jimmy Tashie took a chance at, not only saving the drive-in, but plugging a program in that would use the drive-in for what its American function used to be.”

The eight-month series will once again run four-movie programs, once a month, each united by a theme, ranging from the deliciously schlocky to the seriously artsy. Last year’s most popular program was the Stanley Kubrick marathon, which ended as the sun came up. “Who says the drive-in is anti-intellectual?” McCarthy says.

The appeal of the drive-in is both backward- and forward-looking. The atmosphere at the Time Warp Drive-In events is relaxed and social. People are free to sit in their cars and watch the movie or roam around and say hi to their friends. It’s the classic film version of tailgating. “Matt from Black Lodge brought this up: It’s a kind of social experiment, like America is in general. It’s getting back to turntables and vinyl. Maybe it’s not celluloid, but it’s celluloid-like. You didn’t get to see that, because you weren’t born. But you can go back to that. It takes a handful of people who believe to make it happen. And that’s why Malco has been around for 100 years. They’ll take that chance.”

Malco’s Film VP Jeff Kaufman worked hard to find and book the sometimes-obscure films that Martin and McCarthy want to program. “I think we’ve got the material, and we’re trying to get things that people want to see, while kind of playing it a little dangerous around the edges,” McCarthy says. “This Saturday’s totally kid-friendly. We make a conscious attempt to show the kid-friendly stuff first, so people can come out with their kids.”

The series takes its name from the most famous song from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, so the opening program is, appropriately, movies that were mentioned in the show’s opening number, “Science Fiction Double Feature,” that also appeared on Memphis’ legendary horror host Sivad’s long-running Fantastic Features program. “We’re showing what many people believe to be the greatest film of all time, the 1933 version of King Kong,” McCarthy says. “It’s not the worst film of all time, which is the 1976 version of King Kong.

The granddaddy of the horror/sci-fi special effects spectacle films, King Kong has lost none of its power. It’s concise, imaginative, and best experienced with a crowd. The evening’s second film comes from 20 years later. It Came from Outer Space is based on a story by sci-fi legend Ray Bradbury and was prime drive-in fare. It features shape-shifting aliens years before Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 3D imagery from the original golden age of 3D, and a twisted take on the alien invasion formula.

It Came From Outer Space

The third film, When Worlds Collide, was made in 1951, but it doesn’t fit the mold of the sci-fi monster movie. Produced by George Pal, whose credits include the original film takes on War of the Worlds and The Time Machine, the film asks what would happen if scientists discover that Earth was doomed to destruction by a rogue planet, presaging Lars Von Trier’s 2011 Melancholia.

The evening closes with The Invisible Man, starring Claude Rains as the title scientist who throws off social constraints after rendering himself transparent. Directed by Frankenstein auteur James Whale, the film has been recognized as an all-time classic by the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry and will richly reward intrepid viewers who stay at the drive-in all night long.