CULT FILM STAR Although the mainstream Hollywood press and audiences at large may not have flocked to theaters in support of the initial release of Howard the Duck in 1986, a core group of devoted fans and successive generations of viewers have elevated the film to cult classic status, resulting in a long-awaited special edition DVD release last year.Read more »

CULT CINEMA The 2010 Academy Awards ceremony did indeed mark historic
firsts. Oh, not just the fact that a woman finally won Best Director.
I mean somebody (Alec Baldwin? Steve Martin? I forget) saying
"vagina" live to a bazillion people worldwide, some of them no doubt way short of both voting age and bedtime. Of course you can say fuckwad, fuckhole, and fuckety fuckelstein on cable. But this was network, and the Oscars besides. How community standards do change. Read more »

TV EYED Still stuck on Lost? Executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse are counting on it, and it's about half-past the time to finally wrap it up, because the time-travel device and the many dead people who flitted around the island were starting to make it seem like very little was at stake. Read more »

DVD REVIEW Columbia's new two-volume, eight-film set "Bad Girls of Film Noir" is a delightful addition to any shelf of B-movies, and a damn good excuse to insist on using a friend's DVD projector. Read more »

TOY-NAMATION Denmark has given us so much. In the past few decades alone it has gifted the world with live-sex club acts, Brigitte Nielsen, breakfast pastries, and Lars "Antichrist" von Trier. In 1969 it became the first country to legalize pornography, and two decades later did likewise for same-sex marriage. It is also currently designated the least corrupt nation on earth, with the greatest income equality.Read more »

NEW DVD Considering that it's the most notorious case of its kind in North American history (cannibalism for survival as opposed to lunacy's sake), and that movies have been less than shy about portraying flesh-eating in recent decades (at least the zombie kind), it's a little strange that the Donner Party saga has occupied so little celluloid space to date.Read more »

POP STAR ON FIRE Let's get one thing straight — despite what his album (For Your Entertainment, RCA) and single proclaim, Adam Lambert is not here for your entertainment. Well, sure, he's a performer, and as such he has certain obligations to his fans. But that doesn't mean he exists solely for our benefit. If he did, we'd be able to mold him to our liking, creating either a sexuality-defying glam rock god or, to use a Rufus Wainwright term, the gay messiah.

Lambert is neither of those things, simply because people aren't that easy to define. Read more »

CULT HORROR Many babysitters had the bejesus scared out of them by the 1975 TV movie classic Trilogy of Terror, in which Karen Black is attacked by a "Zuni fetish doll" come to malevolent life. Yet among key 1970s horror films, this one inspired relatively little imitation, unless Chucky and myriad Gremlins knockoffs count. One exception, however, remains among those subterranean titles so improbable people don't quite believe it exists until they see it — then they can't believe what they're seeing. Read more »

FILM NOIR FEST The Columbia trademark: a literal goddess swathed in virginal white robes, she serenely holds aloft a torch à la the Statue of Liberty. What say we gussy her up in black satin and replace that blazing torch with a hot little .45? It seems apropos, considering the Roxie Theater is hosting a "Best of Columbia Noir" retrospective. But does the program manage to eclipse all that angelic light? Yes and no. Read more »