Projections Movie Blog

Under the Radar DVD of the Week: 'How the States Got Their Shapes: Season 1' October 31, 2011 | Comment on this article

This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is: “How the States Got Their Shapes: Season 1” Ever wonder why Oklahoma has a panhandle? Or why is Texas so darned big? Well, curious map lovers can luxuriate in the wealth of cartographical, topographical, geographical and sociological information... Read More

John Huston biography: A man larger than life on screen and off

October 31, 2011 Some iconic movie directors’ off-screen lives seem so large, dramatic and event-packed that they threaten to overshadow their works on screen. Big, brawling, boozing, men’s-men directors such as Raoul Walsh, John Ford, Nicholas Ray and Howard Hawks boast colorful, rousing, trouble-filled private biographies... Read More

Banderas, Hayek form another purrfect match

October 28, 2011 BY GENE TRIPLETT GRAPEVINE, Texas — You can light up a cigarette in a smoke-free hotel when you’re as big as Antonio Banderas. Who can say no to the voice of Puss in Boots, the feline fighter, lover and outlaw, or the man behind “The Mask of Zorro,” or the guitar-strumming, gunslinging El Mariachi, eh?... Read More

Stefanie Powers still gets around like ‘The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.'

October 28, 2011 BY GENE TRIPLETT Stefanie Powers never really was a globe-trotting spy, she just played one on TV. But if she ever decided to become a secret agent for real, she certainly has a lot of the right qualifications. The actress lives in three different countries, speaks eight languages, is a cultural scholar,... Read More

Movie review: 'Puss in Boots' is full of family fun

October 28, 2011 Few things are funnier than a real-life feline fighting a ball of yarn, but the animated antics of “Puss in Boots” come pretty close. Being a cartoon cat, young Puss has some advantages over your common household kitty, such as opposing thumbs, the skill to match blades with the fiercest of swordsmen, and the... Read More

These movies will haunt you after trick-or-treaters go home

October 26, 2011 BY GENE TRIPLETT When the last trick-or-treaters disappear into the dark with their sweet swag in tow, it’ll be time to turn the lights down low, pop your favorite fright film in the player and subject yourselves to a couple of hours of harrowing horror, or at least some nail-biting suspense. Of course the... Read More

Movie review: Whimsy often trumps profound in ‘The Future’

October 26, 2011 The work of writer, director, actress and hipster waif Miranda July is definitely an acquired taste. As demonstrated in her 2005 debut film, the Sundance darling “You and Me and Everybody We Know,” she’s a master of studied funkiness, and her style is a contradiction of cultural poses, at once naïve and... Read More

Under the Radar DVD of the Week: 'The Bradys Go Bowling'

October 24, 2011 This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is: “The Bradys Go Bowling” America’s first family of middlebrow kitsch racks up a few strikes and spares on the reality TV lanes in “The Bradys Go Bowling,” due out on DVD Tuesday. One of the earliest reality TV series was “Celebrity... Read More

DVD review: 'Red State'

October 21, 2011 “Silent Bob” makes some pretty loud and uncharacteristically frightening noise in his first outing as a writer and director of thrillers, and it’s pretty safe to assume that “Red State” won’t be Kevin Smith’s last venture into the genre. The man who brought us such hipster-geek comedies as... Read More

Dennis Hopper bio follows erratic course of artist’s high-low life

October 20, 2011 One of the most enduring cinematic images of the hippie-dippy 1960s is of Dennis Hopper’s defiant biker Billy tooling down the highway – flowing long hair, floppy bushman’s hat and bandito mustache – astride a souped-up Harley chopper. The film was 1969’s “Easy Rider,” and Hopper was not only its... Read More

Under the Radar DVD of the Week: 'Death Will Have Your Eyes'

October 17, 2011 This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is: “Death Will Have Your Eyes” Hardcore fans of “spaghetti noir,” or more precisely the arcane Italian hybrid of gritty crime/mystery, thriller and horror known as “giallo” films, might be the only ones celebrating the resurrection of the pulp... Read More

DVD review: 'Footloose' (Blue-ray)

October 14, 2011 Cocky city boy Ren McCormack is a rebel with a cause, and his cause is to defy the straight-laced prudes of a dusty little Bible-belt burg and restore rock ’n’ roll music and dancing to the town’s repressed teens, just in time for the prom. That’s the essential storyline of the mini-classic 1984 musical... Read More

Movie review: 'Footloose' dances into the 21st century

October 14, 2011 It takes a fan like director Craig Brewer to bring an iconic and beloved movie of the ’80s like “Footloose” dancing into the 21st century without trampling over the fond memories of those who grew up in the decade of Walkmans and legwarmers and thrilled to the music and gyrations of Kevin Bacon’s breakout... Read More

Long-dormant ‘Footloose’ Broadway cast album being resurrected

October 14, 2011 Face it – “Footloose” is all about the music. As with the movie version of the melodramatic teen-spirit saga, the most memorable aspect of the Broadway stage adaptation of “Footloose” was the musical score. The stage show based on the 1984 movie opened on Broadway in 1998 and ran for 709 performances,... Read More

DVD review: 'Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer: The Complete Series'

October 12, 2011 In keeping with the ultra-hardboiled detective tradition established by crime novelist Mickey Spillane, the 1957-59 version of “Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer” was the most violent series on television, at least in the eyes of some of the TV critics of the day. Certainly Spillane’s novels about the... Read More

Under the Radar DVD of the Week: 'Snuff Box'

October 10, 2011 This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is: “Snuff Box” For fans of twisted British humor of the Monty Python kind, the short-lived, 2006 BBC TV series “Snuff Box” is something of a holy grail. Now this abbreviated but bizarrely beloved series is set to befuddle Americans for the first time... Read More

PaleyDocFest 2011 celebrates cultural reach of documentaries

October 07, 2011 NEW YORK – Through October, the Paley Center for the Media will host PaleyDocFest 2011, an annual series of short documentaries and public programs devoted to the art of documentary filmmaking. The center, located at 25 West 52nd St., was formerly the Museum of Television & Radio and is dedicated to the... Read More

Robert Hays overcomes fear of watching ‘Airplane!'

October 07, 2011 BY GENE TRIPLETT Ted Striker managed to “win one for the Zipper” in the final, funny-bone-shattering moments of “Airplane!”, but like a guy with a fear of flying, Robert Hays couldn’t stand to watch himself playing that character for years. Named one of the American Film Institute’s “top 10... Read More

DVD review: 'Wishful Drinking'

October 06, 2011 Long before Brad Pitt dumped Jennifer Aniston for Angelina Jolie, 1950s crooner Eddie Fisher played a similar game of matrimonial musical chairs between stars Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor. And from that fan-mag scandal, actress-writer-neurotic-raconteur Carrie Fisher finds much wry irony for her dishy,... Read More

Under the Radar DVD of the Week: 'Caesar and Otto's Summer Camp Massacre'

October 03, 2011 This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is: “Caesar and Otto’s Summer Camp Massacre” If Abbott and Costello were cast in a no-budget indie horror movie for contemporary fans, the result would possibly be something like “Caesar and Otto’s Summer Camp Massacre,” a relatively gore-free,... Read More

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About the writers

Dennis King

Movie Critic

King spent 31 years as an ink-stained wretch working for newspapers in Seminole, Ada, Oklahoma City and Tulsa. He holds a B.A. degree in English from the University of Central Oklahoma and for 16 years served as an adjunct instructor in journalism and English at Tulsa Community College. For 20 years, he was full-time film critic at the Tulsa World.

In 2006, he left Tulsa and along with his wife, Suzan (a retired English professor), moved to a cabin in Dingmans Ferry, PA. There, along the banks for the Delaware River, he chased after two rambunctious Labrador retrievers, fly fished the waters of the Poconos and did his best to become a full-time trout bum. Still scratching a writer’s itch, he freelanced articles for Explorer magazine and Gray’s Sporting Journal and wrote a stage play about classic movies and old movie theaters, titled “Spirits of the Coronado” (after his long-gone boyhood theater at 39th Street and MacArthur Boulevard).

In December, he and Suzan moved into an apartment in upper Manhattan, where they plan to eat bagels for breakfast and street-cart hot dogs for lunch, haunt the Angelika Theater and the Film Forum, go to plays and museums, ride the subways, complain about the subways and generally live like true New Yorkers.

Gene Triplett

Entertainment Editor

Gene Triplett is another Oklahoma newspaper dinosaur who's been cranking out copy for 34 years, first at the upstart, long defunct Oklahoma Journal, covering just about every news beat imaginable, then at The Oklahoman, where's he's bounced back and forth from features to the news side as assistant city editor, city editor and entertainment editor, managing to hold down the latter position for more than 10 years. He holds a B.A. degree in journalism -- also from the University of Central Oklahoma -- and, also like his colleague King, chases after two loony Labrador retrievers. He does not live by a trout-filled river, but he and his wife Carol do own a swimming pool, much to the delight of their dogs.

The Tripletts enjoy gourmet outdoor cooking year-round (rain, sleet or snow), entertaining friends, road trips to scenic wooded parks that rent rustic lakeside cabins, listening to music, watching classic movies and, in the summertime, swimming with their dogs.