Projections Movie Blog

Under the Radar DVD of the Week: 'Operation: Nazi Zombies' April 30, 2012 | Comment on this article

<a href="http://projectionsmovieblog.com/files/2012/04/Nazizombies.jpeg"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-4373" src="http://projectionsmovieblog.com/files/2012/04/Nazizombies.jpeg" alt="" width="300" height="300" /></a>This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is:‘Operation:... Read More

DVD review: 'Chinatown' Blu-ray

April 30, 2012 The best thing about studios celebrating their centennial anniversaries is that they tend to dig into their vaults and roll out restored versions of some of their greatest titles, and they don’t get much greater than Paramount’s 1974 neo-noir nugget, “Chinatown,” now on Blu-ray for the first time. Jack... Read More

DVD review: 'Garbo: The Spy'

April 30, 2012 Woody Allen’s history-hopping chameleon “Zelig” has nothing on the real-life cipher Juan Pujol Garcia, a shadowy Spanish double agent who changed the course of World War II with his amazing espionage exploits, which are compelling detailed in the documentary thriller “Garbo: The Spy.” This insanely... Read More

Movie review: ‘Five-Year Engagement’ takes meandering walk to altar

April 27, 2012 The creative team of actor-writer Jason Segel and director-writer Nick Stoller has made its romantic comedy reputation by gently tweaking the standard boy-meets-girl conventions of the well-worn genre and tilting them slightly askew. They did that quite winningly in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and they do it... Read More

Hugh Grant, Peter Lord unlikely scalawags behind ‘The Pirates!’

April 27, 2012 BY DENNIS KING NEW YORK – Picture a couple of gnarly, cutlass-wielding, Victorian-era pirates of the high seas and the last pair you’d probably envision would be urbane British actor Hugh Grant and pixyish, bespectacled animator Peter Lord. But they are two of the primary scalawags behind Aardman... Read More

Movie review: ‘Pirates! Band of Misfits’ delivers treasure trove of laughs

April 27, 2012 Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of bubbly. Adults and youngsters (especially parents with kids) should raise a toast of fizzy grog to Aardman Animations and its army of painstaking artists, who’ve effectively plundered Hollywood’s archive of swashbuckling tricks to create the zany-quirky spoof “The Pirates! Band of... Read More

‘The Pirates!’ proves glacial pace of stop-motion animation

April 26, 2012 NEW YORK – In what business does a great week of work amount to six seconds of product? In the rarefied world of stop-motion animation, where puppet figures are moved in tiny increments between individually photographed frames to create the illusion of movement, six seconds of animated footage is widely... Read More

Under the Radar DVD of the Week: 'Thor at the Bus Stop'

April 23, 2012 This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is: “Thor at the Bus Stop” The weirdly titled “Thor at the Bus Stop” (due out on DVD Tuesday) is a hipster hash of Monty Python-esque skits, offbeat street denizens, existential philosophizing and low-low-budget ingenuity that shows some promise from... Read More

DVD review: 'Chinatown' Blu-ray

April 17, 2012 The best thing about studios celebrating their centennial anniversaries is that they tend to dig into their vaults and roll out restored versions of some of their greatest titles, and they don’t get much greater than Paramount’s 1974 neo-noir nugget, “Chinatown,” now on Blu-ray for the first time. Jack... Read More

Under the Radar DVD of the Week: 'Man vs. Wild: Top 25 Man Moments'

April 16, 2012 This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is: “Man vs. Wild: Top 25 Man Moments” British adventurer Bear Grylls is famous for seeking out some of the harshest, most life-threatening places on earth and demonstrating some of the radical survival measures necessary to make it out alive. Extreme and... Read More

Movie review: ‘The Three Stooges’ – slightly better than a poke in the eye

April 16, 2012 Since Moe, Larry and Curly made their bones in their 1930s and ’40s heyday with some 200 comedy short subjects for Columbia Pictures, a short review of the Farrelly Brothers’ chaotic but affectionate “The Three Stooges” seems fitting. So here are some highlights and lowlights from the movie that,... Read More

DVD review: ‘Sullivan’s Travels’ (Universal 100th Anniversary)

April 13, 2012 In an amazing burst of brilliance from 1939 to 1943, writer-director Preston Sturges virtually defined the “screwball comedy,” a uniquely American style of comedy characterized by farcical situations, witty dialogue, social satire and cheeky battles of the sexes. In a frantic run of popular hits, Sturges (one... Read More

Ramon Novarro: The life and shocking death of a ‘Latin Lover’

April 13, 2012 During Hollywood’s silent era, most people remember Rudolph Valentino as cinema’s reigning “Latin Lover.” But there was another dashing, dark-eyed actor who, though now mostly forgotten, regularly challenged Valentino for the crown. Ramon Novarro was for many years in the 1920s a hot property in Hollywood... Read More

Under the Radar DVD of the Week: 'Rat Scratch Fever'

April 09, 2012 This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is: “Rat Scratch Fever” Writer, director, cinematographer, editor, actor, special-effects tech Jeff Leroy is the very epitome of do-it-yourself, micro-budget filmmaking. A veteran of the horror and Z-movie fringes with a dozen or so schlocky credits on... Read More

Reporters solve cold-case race killing in fact-based 'Deadline'

April 09, 2012 BY GENE TRIPLETT Newspaper movies were almost a genre unto themselves once upon a time, like Westerns, romances, sci-fi epics and cop thrillers. Intrepid reporters — self-described “ink-stained wretches” — were the heroes (or villains) of such classics as “His Girl Friday,” “The Harder They... Read More

DVD review: ‘George Gently - Series 1’ (Blu-ray)

April 06, 2012 He’s an oddly named London copper with a tragic past and an avuncular, plodding way of getting at the solution to a crime. And he’s shipped off to the foggy northern provinces where he’s partnered with an ambitious, quick-on-the-trigger young detective sergeant who’s brashly impatient with his boss’s... Read More

Movie review: ‘American Reunion’ gross but never mean

April 06, 2012 The “American Pie” series developed a cult following by serving up steamy, seamy helpings of juvenile angst, adult insecurity, sexual humiliation and outrageous potty gags, always leavened with forgiving dollops of sweet sentimentality on top. But “American Reunion,” the fourth slice in the unabashedly... Read More

Film critic combines two passions in ‘Hollywood Rides a Bike’

April 06, 2012 There’s a picture of Sean Connery in white shirt and tie riding a vintage Schwinn bicycle around the Universal back lot during the filming of “Marnie.” There’s Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth pedaling a French-made tandem bicycle on a break from shooting “The Lady in Question.” There’s a photo of Ray... Read More

DVD review: 'The Split'

April 04, 2012 Stephen King once said of novelist Donald E. Westlake that on sunny days he wrote comic crime novels under his real name about a hapless crook named Dortmunder, and on dark and rainy days he wrote serious pulp fiction under the pen name of Richard Stark about a hardboiled heister named Parker. At one point in his... Read More

Under the Radar DVD of the Week: 'Anatomy of a Bigfoot Hoax'

April 02, 2012 This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is: “Anatomy of a Bigfoot Hoax” “Finding Bigfoot,” one of the big-buzz shows on cable’s Animal Planet, is just the latest evidence of our endless fascination with the notion that something big, hairy and mysterious lurks in the deepest, darkest... Read More

2 3 Next

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.