The previews on the VHS tape for the screwball Canadian farce "Friends, Lovers & Lunatics" (which can also be screened in its entirety on YouTube, under the alternate title "Crazy Horse") are far more amusing than anything in the movie itself. Not least because one of the previews is for "Friends, Lovers & Lunatics"! Now …
Author: Sam Weisberg
I'm a lifelong film geek and movie reviewer for Village Voice and Screen Comment. I have always wanted to start a blog about hard-to-find movies (ranging from classy to godawful), informing the public on what deserves long-overdue notice and distribution and what should be kicked right back into obscurity. I am also a financial reporter with 12 years of print journalism experience and a guitarist/singer. I am currently a guitarist in Giggle the Ozone, and was the frontman for Worst Case Ontario. I have been married to my wife Adina, a housing services lawyer for the elderly, for four and a half years and we have a beautiful one-year-old daughter, Rose.
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“Touch and Go” (1986)
A quick bit of trivia about this movie: during their poverty-stricken early days, Slash and Axl Rose of Guns n' Roses took jobs as extras in "Touch and Go's" hockey scenes, which were shot in Los Angeles in 1984 (according to Slash's autobiography). While available on DVD, I watched this movie on a VHS copy …
“Let’s Get Harry” (1986)
Believe it or not, this is the first movie I've covered for this blog to have the "Alan Smithee" designation, that is, a film in which the director (in this case Stuart Rosenberg) was so disgusted with the end product he took his name off of it. Some Alan Smithee movies are a pretty good …
Exciting updates (April 2014)
Hi everyone. I always start these updates with profuse apologies for the scarcity of posts in recent months. The main reason this time is that, as of September, I've been a semi-regular freelance film reviewer for The Village Voice, which has been very exciting but (needless to say) time consuming. My piece on the Tribeca …
Director Charles Lane Reflects on “Sidewalk Stories” and “True Identity”
In October, nearly 25 years after the critically acclaimed but short-lived release of Charles Lane's bittersweet silent comedy "Sidewalk Stories," the Film Forum featured a two-week screening of the film, which has been newly restored and will soon receive a long overdue DVD release (after a nationwide theatrical run). Silent film was not a hot …
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The Early Days of Boston/Cambridge Cinema: An Interview with Director Jan Egleson
I have spent a great deal of time on this blog bringing forgotten or undiscovered trash classics to people's attention, but the first legitimately great film I watched, where I felt a real sense of loss from its obscurity, was Jan Egleson's 1979 drama "Billy in the Lowlands." Shot on location in working-class Cambridge, it is …
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Sung Antiheroes: An Interview with “Goin’ Down the Road” Director Donald Shebib
Paul Lynch's 1973 slice-of-life film "The Hard Part Begins" (previously discussed in a profile of Lynch on this blog) may never have seen the light of day if not for Donald Shebib. Three years earlier, Shebib directed and co-wrote "Goin' Down the Road," a downbeat tale of two drifters that is still considered to be …
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Elliott Gould’s More Obscure Films, Part 3: 1990 to Present
Before I launch into a long overdue defense of the critically savaged "Lemon Sisters" (in which Elliott Gould plays a small but key role), I want to devote a little space to its director, Joyce Chopra, whom I interviewed over the phone in July and who has been sadly out of the public eye for …
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Elliott Gould Discusses His Lesser-Known Films, Part 2: The 1980s
Precious few of Elliott Gould's 1980s films are available on Netflix. The exceptions are "The Muppets Take Manhattan," in which he cameos as a harried police officer; the criminally underrated Christopher Guest Hollywood satire, "The Big Picture," another delicious cameo opportunity for Gould; the lame 1989 horror flick "The Night Visitor"; and two children's films …
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The Lesser Known (or Less Celebrated) Films of Elliott Gould (Part 1)
Most Elliott Gould interviews conducted between 1974 and today chronicle the same career high and lows. Born in 1938 and raised in Brooklyn, he was pushed into show business uneasily at an early age by his mother, presumably to get over a persistent shyness. Nonetheless, he blossomed into a tap dancer, singer and impersonator; he landed a starring …
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Hidden Films 