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That’s a wrap on the 34th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival.

The desert fest rolled its credits Sunday by announcing this year’s slate of award winners, including jury prizes and audience awards. Taking top honors — the Fipresci Prize as voted on by a special jury of international film critics who reviewed 35 of 93 official submission for the Academy Awards international feature film category — was Alice Diop’s legal drama Saint Omer.

The jury praised the French film for how it interrogates issues of society, culture, race and gender. “By harnessing the skills of her technical team, Diop turns Saint Omer into a shrewd, cogent, ambitious and overwhelming film which teases a metafictional awareness while remaining clear-eyed and unsentimental,” the jury said in a statement.

Other Fipresci Prizes went to screenwriters Carla Simón and Arnau Vilaró for Alcarràs for international screenplay (Spain), Oksana Cherkashyna from Klondike for best actress...

Lewis Milestone directed this poetic, optimistic ode to the American infantryman, a ‘lone patrol’ saga that emphasizes its soldiers’ hopes and fears. The lineup of fresh, eager acting talent is remarkable: Dana Andrews, Richard Conte, George Tyne, John Ireland, Lloyd Bridges, Sterling Holloway, Norman Lloyd, Herbert Rudley, Richard Benedict, Huntz Hall, James Cardwell, Steve Brodie. Voiceovers and ‘ballads’ give a six-mile beachhead incursion the tone of a spiritual rumination. A beautiful full film restoration brings the image back to prime quality. The controversial filmmakers and the unusual production circumstances are covered in Alan K. Rode’s commentary.

A Walk in the Sun

Blu-ray + DVD

Kit Parker Films / Mvd Visual

1945 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 117 min. / Street Date January 18, 2022 / The Definitive Restoration / Available from Amazon / 29.95

Starring: Dana Andrews, Richard Conte, George Tyne, John Ireland, Lloyd Bridges, Sterling Holloway, Norman Lloyd, Herbert Rudley, Richard Benedict, Huntz Hall, James Cardwell, Steve Brodie, Matt Willis,...

The Hong Kong International Film Festival Society (Hkiffs) unveils its glittering line-up of Firebird Awards competitions and Fipresci prize jury members. The announcement follows the decision to continue with the competitions despite the earlier cancellation of the 44th Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF44) due to an escalation in Covid-19 cases. Through online judging, five panels of independent juries will select a total of 13 winners from the 42 competition titles.

Hkiffs will announce the results on 20 August.

Leading the jury for the Young Cinema Competition for Chinese Language Films is revered Hong Kong director Stanley Kwan, who has been an iconic figure in local and international cinema for decades. Joining him are fellow director-cum-cinematographer O Sing-pui; and acclaimed independent art and cultural worker May Fung. Together they will identify four winners among the emerging talents in recent Chinese language cinema.

Making up the jury panel for Young Cinema Competition for World...

In a world where a Democrat presidential candidate can insult a Us voter by calling them a "...lying, dog-faced 'Pony Soldier'...", referencing the 1953 John Wayne western "Hondo", the title "Pony Soldier" was actually a 1952 feature starring Tyrone Power as 'Constable Duncan MacDonald' of the 'North-West Mounted Police':

"...in 1876, the 'North-West Mounted Police' send 'Constable Duncan MacDonald' (Power) and 'Blackfoot' scout 'Natayo Smith' (Thomas Gomez) to negotiate with the 'Cree' to sign 'Treaty 6' with the Brit Crown. Initially hostile, the Cree are influenced by a mirage they mistake for the power of 'Queen Victoria'. In addition to negotiating with the Cree, MacDonald rescues hostages 'Jess Calhoun' (Robert Horton) and 'Emerald Neely' (Penny Edwards), arrests a killer and adopts a Cree son (Anthony Earl Numkena)..."

Cast also includes Cameron Mitchell, Howard Petrie, Stuart Randall, Richard Boone, Frank deKova and Earl Holliman, with ending narration by Michael Rennie ("The Day The Earth Stood Still...

Look out! Gamma Gamma Hey! It’s the attack of screaming, arm-waving green goober monsters from a rogue planetoid, here to bring joy to the hearts of bad-movie fans everywhere. Just make sure your partner is agreeably inclined before you make it a date movie — this show has ended many a good relationship, even before the immortal words, “We’ll never make it chief, it’s coming too fast!”

The Green Slime

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1969 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 90 min. / Gamma sango uchu daisakusen / Street Date October 3, 2017 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Robert Horton, Luciana Paluzzi, Richard Jaeckel, Bud Widom, Robert Dunham.

Cinematography: Yoshikazu Yamasawa

Film Editor: Osamu Tanaka

Original Music: Charles Fox, Toshiaki Tsushima

Written by Bill Finger, Ivan Reiner, Tom Rowe, Charles Sinclair

Produced by Walter Manley, Ivan Reiner

Directed by Kinji Fukasaku

It’s a summer evening in 1969. Unable to get into a showing of Butch Cassidy...

Lewis Milestone’s poetic character study of an infantry landing in Italy gives us a full dozen non-cliché portraits of men in war, featuring a dramatic dream team of interesting character actors. Dana Andrews was the only big star in the cast, joined by hopefuls Richard Conte, Lloyd Bridges and John Ireland; the standout crew includes Sterling Holloway, Norman Lloyd, Steve Brodie and Huntz Hall.

A Walk in the Sun

DVD

The Sprocket Vault / Kit Parker Films

1945 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 117 min. / Restored Collector’s Edition / Street Date ?, 2017 / available through The Sprocket Vault / 14.99

Starring: Richard Conte, George Tyne, John Ireland, Lloyd Bridges, Sterling Holloway, Norman Lloyd Dana Andrews, Herbert Rudley, Richard Benedict, Huntz Hall, James Cardwell, Steve Brodie, Matt Willis, Chris Drake, John Kellogg, Robert Horton, Burgess Meredith.

Cinematography: Russell Harlan

Film Editor: Duncan Mansfield

Original Music: Fredric Efrem Rich; ‘The Ballads’ sung by : Kenneth Spencer

Written by: Robert...

Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds and Mary Tyler Moore were just a few of the famous faces that were honored during the in memoriam at Sunday evening’s Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Hosted live from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, Moore — who passed away Wednesday — and the mother-daughter duo — who died one day apart in December — were some of the many late actors and actresses that were recognized on-screen at the annual awards show for their contribution to the world of film and television.

In a touching tribute, the SAG Awards honored the men — Ken Howard, William Schallert, Jack Riley,...

Actor Robert Horton died, March 9, 2016, at the age of 91. Horton rose to TV fame in the role of Flint McCullough, on the long-running Wagon Train TV series. The western ran on NBC from 1957 to 1962, which is when Horton exited, to avoid being typecast. After NBC cancelled it, ABC picked up Wagon Train, where it ran through its eighth season, ending in 1965.

Despite his fear of typecasting, Horton headlined another western -- ABC's A Man Called Shenandoah TV series, playing the title character. That show ran for 34 episodes from September of 1965, to September 1966. He returned to a regular TV series in the 1980s, on the now-cancelled soap opera, As the World Turns. On AtWT, Horton played publishing mogul Whitney McColl.

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A new issue of Film Comment is out and a generous slice of it is online. Amy Taubin talks with David Fincher about Gone Girl, Quintín considers the work of Lisandro Alonso and Robert Horton previews the New York Film Festival's Joseph L. Mankiewicz retrospective. Plus reviews of David Cronenberg's Maps to the Stars, Alex Ross Perry's Listen Up Philip and more. Also in today's roundup: Jonathan Rosenbaum on Béla Tarr, an excerpt from an unrealized screenplay by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Sophia Nguyen on Scarlett Johansson, essays on Federico Fellini's Il Bidone, Ben Rivers and Ben Russell’s A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness and more. » - David Hudson...

A new issue of Film Comment is out and a generous slice of it is online. Amy Taubin talks with David Fincher about Gone Girl, Quintín considers the work of Lisandro Alonso and Robert Horton previews the New York Film Festival's Joseph L. Mankiewicz retrospective. Plus reviews of David Cronenberg's Maps to the Stars, Alex Ross Perry's Listen Up Philip and more. Also in today's roundup: Jonathan Rosenbaum on Béla Tarr, an excerpt from an unrealized screenplay by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Sophia Nguyen on Scarlett Johansson, essays on Federico Fellini's Il Bidone, Ben Rivers and Ben Russell’s A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness and more. » - David Hudson...

“It isn’t necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice. There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia.”

Frank Zappa

For most people nostalgia is just another way of packaging the point of view that, surprise, surprise, the times we lived in were less complicated, better when we were younger. Sometimes that sentiment gets woven into rosy remembrances of past glories or sociopolitical myths built around the alleged pre-Kennedy (or pre-whatever mid-century social upheaval you want to use to fill in the blank) innocence of America and how that innocence was inevitably lost when X, Y or Z happened. And often when we watch movies we loved as kids, when we return to them on our own or in the company of kids whom we hope will be as captivated as we once were, we want nostalgia to be active rather than...

At the recent Seattle Film Festival, Eric Kohn of Indiewire (@erickohn) moderated a panel discussion of the current state of film criticism and coverage today. I joined Seattle critics Robert Horton (@citizenhorton), Sean Axmaker (@seanaxmaker), Keith Simanton of IMDb (@IMDbKeith) and Lindy West of Jezebel (@thelindywest). We dig into long vs. shortform criticism, print vs. online, the social media conversation and how to communicate with audiences, what our role should be in promoting films, and where things are going. Eric Kohn: The conversation about movies is evolving and changing based on the ways the media landscape is shifting. Use your sensibilities as a critic to tell us about a movie that you think didn't get the attention it deserved. Robert Horton: A small movie that just came to Seattle that I loved was "Something in the Air," the new film by Oliver Assayas. It played for a week. It...

HollywoodNews.com: The 38th Seattle International Film Festival, the largest and most highly-attended event of its kind in the United States concluded today with the announcement of the Siff 2012 Competition Awards and Golden Space Needle Audience Awards. The 25-day Festival, which began May 17, featured over 460 films from more than 70 countries, including 65 feature premieres (24 World, 25 North American, 16 U.S.) and over 700 screenings. Additionally, Siff brought in more than 300 directors, actors and industry professionals.

“A festival’s success is dependent on two basic principles: providing a platform for filmmakers to be celebrated and connecting them to audience members that would not otherwise be aware of their remarkable stories,” said Siff Artistic Director Carl Spence. “This year a record number of filmmakers participated in person and online with virtual Q&A’s successfully expanding the conversation around the best in cinema with passionate audiences, illuminating guests and distinguished industry in attendance.”

Siff Managing Director Deborah Person said,...

"Haywire reunites director Steven Soderbergh with screenwriter Lem Dobbs," begins Josef Braun. "Though not as revelatory or formally engaged as The Limey, the pair's 1999 sleeper, which marked a comeback for its star, Terrence Stamp, Haywire is nevertheless, like The Limey, a smart, playful vamp on old tropes: lone wolf hired muscle takes a gig that turns out to be a double-cross; she becomes a loose end; corrupt former employer now seeks to eliminate her... you know the tune. Like The Limey, Haywire is also a film unusually concerned with geographical coherence, thus we get chase scenes that work up quite a sweat ensuring that we understand exactly how we got onto the fourth floor of this particular building or down that particular alleyway — there's even a pair of demonstrative scenes in which our heroine, Mallory Kane (Gina Carano), carefully consults a covert Gps device. Soderbergh, as always, operating as his own cinematographer,...

Appropriately for the last day of the year, we've got some major additions to the Awards and Lists 2011 Index, beginning with "Moments of 2011." Moving Image Source has asked around 50 "regular contributors and colleagues, as well as a few writers and artists, to select their moving image moment or event of 2011 — anything from an entire movie or TV series to an individual scene or shot, from a retrospective or exhibition to a news story or viral video." Quite a varied roster of filmmakers, critics, programmers, museum directors, editors and so on reflect on an even wider range of moving images, from animated gifs to news footage to exhibitions and, of course, films projected in darkened theaters. Parts 1 and 2.

Editors Michael Koresky and Jeff Reichert: "We can't remember a year since we kicked off Reverse Shot back in 2002 that delivered so many contenders for our final ten spots (and, we should mention,...

From Team America: World Police (2004)

"The task set before the cinema today is one of contributing to people's development into true communists... This historic task requires, above all, a revolutionary transformation of the practice of directing."

That's from the preface of On the Art of Cinema (1973) by Kim Jong-il, North Korea's Dear Leader, who, as you'll have heard by now, died this weekend at the age of 69. His "love of the cinema bordered on the obsessive," notes the BBC in its obituary. "He is said to have collected a library of 20,000 Hollywood movies…. In 1978, he ordered the abduction of a South Korean film director, Shin Sang-ok and his actress wife Choi Eun-hee. They were held separately for five years before being reunited at a party banquet. They said afterwards that Mr Kim had apologized for the kidnappings and asked them to make movies for him. They completed seven before...

"Brutal men in desperate situations are Nicolas Winding Refn's stock and trade," begins Nick Schager, "a preoccupation that continues with Drive, the story of a nameless Hollywood stuntman and auto-mechanic (Ryan Gosling) who spends his evenings working as a wheelman for heists set up by boss Shannon (Bryan Cranston). Like many of Refn's prior protagonists, Gosling's Driver is a lone wolf with a volatile streak, though in this case, he's less an embodiment of barely contained masculine rage than a neo-noir cool customer (toothpick in mouth, puffy silver jacket embroidered with a giant red scorpion on its back) in the mold of Alain Delon's Le Samouraï crook or James Caan's titular Thief."

"The plot could nearly be inscribed on the head of a pin," suggests the Voice's J Hoberman. "A chivalrous loner participates in an armed robbery to help out the woman he loves; the deal turns out to be a setup,...

"Cars 2, directed (like several great Pixar films of the last two decades) by John Lasseter, finds itself in the unlucky position of the not-so-bright kid in a brilliant family," finds Slate's Dana Stevens. "No matter if his performance in school is comfortably average; he'll always be seen as a disappointment compared to his stellar siblings. There's nothing really objectionable about Cars 2, although parents of young children should be warned that a few evil vehicles meet violently inauspicious ends. It's sweet-spirited, visually delightful (if aurally cacophonous), and it will make for a pleasant enough family afternoon at the movies. But we've come to expect so much more than mere pleasantness from Pixar that Cars 2 feels almost like a betrayal."

Nick Schager for the Voice: "Pixar's Cars franchise takes a sharp turn from Nascar mayhem and rural red-state-targeted 50s nostalgia to 007 espionage with this upgraded sequel, though in its...

Of all the movies that have opened this weekend, the one that's generated the most interesting press by far is Page One: Inside The New York Times. The usual round of promotional interviews, for example, turns out to have been not so usual. Talking with writer-director-cinematographer Andrew Rossi and co-writer Kate Novack, a husband-and-wife team of a documentary filmmaker and a former media reporter, Eric Hynes acknowledges that his piece for the Voice can't help but lay on another layer of meta. Right off, he has Novack commenting on Page One's focus on the Nyt media desk: "It was journalists reporting on journalism, and we were working as journalists covering that."

So it goes in other interviews: Drew Taylor's with Rossi for the Playlist; Stephen Saito's with Rossi and Nyt media reporter David Carr, indisputably the star of Page One, for IFC; Sarah Ellison's with Gay Talese, author of the 1969 classic,...

"With his Bud Cort haircut and morbid sensibility, Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) is too smart for Swansea, Wales, an industrial city mired in some seriously mid-80s Thatcherite doldrums," begins Vadim Rizov at GreenCine Daily. "The trouble with Oliver is that he knows he's clever, which could justify anything: surreptitiously monitoring his parents' sex life, taunting an overweight girl to make local cutie Jordana (Yasmin Paige) notice him as a real livewire, or trying to trash the house of downhill neighbor Graham Purvis (Paddy Considine) who may be having an affair with mom (Sally Hawkins). Fortunately, Submarine, Richard Ayoade's feature debut, is aware of Oliver's self-justifying nature and the ways it could warp him…. Acutely aware of the long tradition of films about disaffected young men coming to terms with themselves, Ayoade doesn't duck the precedent: instead, like Oliver…, he nods to seemingly every single precursor. There's a 400 Blows-quoting dash across the beach,...

As the wave of zombie appreciation continues to ebb and flow, fans have already begun their search for the next phase of undead stories. The “siege” mentality (“They’re at the door trying to break in and eat us… what do we do?”) has become such a well-trodden road that many fans find themselves on a quest for the next idea. Some writers are already ahead of the curve and have been able to think outside the box, creating a new chapter in the living dead mythos. Mira Grant’s exemplary book Feed is one. Mark Rahner is another with his Moonstone comic series, Rotten. The ongoing comic takes the undead nightmare and sets it in the Old West amidst a thrilling backdrop of intrigue and adventure: think equal parts Joe R Lansdale’s Dead in The West and Deadman’s Road and the 1965 CBS television series Wild Wild West…...

Rotten is the S'mores of zombie comics. The Rocky Road of westerns. Meaning; it combines 3 of my favorite things into one delicious package. Namely; zombies, westerns, and a tough as railroad-spikes hero. It's horror with history. The Walking Dead in the old west. Romero-Eastwood. A top notch zombie comic. Not as good as Wd, but so far it's a cut above the rest. Grade A undead meat ripe for mass-consumption while you wait for the main course...

Over a decade after the Civil War Agent Wade is forced back into the uniform he hates, and sent to investigate a hushed crisis at Fort Valhalla with his former comrade in arms J.J. Flynn; who was sent to keep an eye on Wade and report any of the mission's progress (even after they are separated). On his way Wade gets detoured in the middle of the night when a lookout shoots his horse in the head,...

Imagine a film that combines the plots of Armageddon and Alien, and puts everyone in swinging 60s attire. That more or less approximates to The Green Slime, a film that so perfectly embraces the schlock sci-fi genre with everything from cardboard characters, clichéd dialogue, rubber suit monsters, and horrifically flawed science. A recipe for cinematic entertainment if ever there was one.

Oscar caliber filmmaking this is not. Yet, that doesn't make it the kind of film that we all love sitting down to watch from time to time, if only to make fun of how terrible it is. The story follows the crew of a space station who are tasked with docking with a large planet-like object that is on a collision course with Earth, drill into it, set explosives and then outrun the blast (Bruce Willis and Michael Bay not included). Seems like more than enough plot for any film,...

The Green Slime

DVD Remaster

Directed by Kinji Fukasaku

Starring Robert Horton, Luciana Paluzzi, Richard Jaeckel

Warner Bros Home Entertainment

Release date: October 26, 2010

The year 1968 was quite a time for science-fiction. On television the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise was in the midst of a five-year adventure traveling to strange new worlds under the command of Captain James Tiberius Kirk. Meanwhile on movie screens around the world Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was launching a bold new vision of the future of its very own with Stanley Kubrick’s long-in-the-works outerspace epic 2001: A Space Odyssey, an adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke‘s short story "The Sentinel." What Star Trek and 2001 represented at a time when the country was neck deep in the bloody apocalypse of Vietnam was a vision of an optimistic future where mankind could sail an endless ocean of stars to places unknown without having to face the threat...

The Green Slime Directed by: Kinji Fukasaku Written by: William Finger, Ivan Reiner, Tom Rowe, Charles Sinclair Starring: Robert Horton, Luciana Paluzzi, Richard Jaeckel In the futuristic world of The Green Slime, people travel through space freely, and nuke incoming asteroids by drilling into them a whole lot easier than Bruce Willis and crew did. With all of these gadgets around, blinking lights on sterile-colored walls, the epitome of '60s sci-fi, one has to question why a woman is clearly seen using a typewriter in the control room's second floor. Computers can transfer video calls, control all of the equipment aboard space station Gamma 3, but word processing? Forget it. It's one of those ludicrous details that makes this obscure Japanese/American/Italian production such a blast, a kooky space saga involving miniatures from Godzilla effects artist Akira Watanabe, English-speaking actors who still seem to be dubbed over, and a...

Richard Delvy was drummer and composer for such early surf-rock groups as the Bel-Airs and the Challengers. He also provided the rockin’ theme song for the 1968 cult sci-fi film The Green Slime, starring Robert Horton, Richard Jaeckel, and Luciana Paluzzi. Delvy belted out the unforgettable lyrics “Will you believe it when you’re dead? Gree-ee-eenn Slii-ii-ii-iime!! Gree-ee-eenn Slii-ii-ii-iime!! Gree-ee-eenn Slii-ii-ii-ii-ii-iime!!!!.”

Delvy was born Richard Delvecchio in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on April 20, 1942, and moved to Southern California in the late 1950s. He played on several minor surf-rock hits including “Mr. Moto,” and acquired the rights to such hits as “Wipe Out” and “Chick-a-Boom (Don’t Ya Jes’ Love It)”. He also contributed music for such animated series as Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, My Favorite Martian, The Archies, and The Groovy Ghoulies.

Delvy died after a long illness in a West Hills, California, hospital on February 6, 2010, at age 67.

Mixing the Old West and zombies has never received a decent translation yet (maybe once Wesley Snipes' Gallowwalker comes out, but probably not), but it can have a life in comic books. Rotten, written by Seattle Times columnist Mark Rahner and Robert Horton, and drawn by Dan Dougherty, and, according to Rahner, also has an edgy, current-events side along with the zombie-killing.

We're going back to basics, in one sense. A lot of stuff pisses me off, and I think it makes good fodder for edgy stories in a fantasy setting. George Romero's commentary was inseparable from his flesh-eaters, Battlestar Galactica was great at reflecting current events in a nervy way and Rod Serling is on my Mt. Rushmore of heroes. I love zombie stuff, but don't understand why so much of it really isn't about anything. Especially when there's so much heinous material that presents itself in real life these days.

Its beginning to smell a lot like Christmas but its not too late to get some great DVD’s for the movie lovers on your list. To help you decide just what to get, here’s a list of some of the new movie and TV shows coming to DVD and Blu-ray this week that we’re looking forward to seeing. Also, there’s some classic, and not-so-classic, movies hitting Blu-ray for the first time.

Of all the new releases, we’re particularly interested in the Blu-ray versions of movies and TV shows such as The Hangover, The Goods, Star Trek: the Original Series and the Blu-ray debut of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (shown above with Brad Pitt and Eli Roth).

Check them out:

Movies

Cake Boss ~ Buddy Valastro, Joey Faugno, Mary Sciarrone (DVD)

G-Force (Single Disc Widescreen) ~ Nicolas Cage, Jon Favreau (DVD and Blu-ray)

The Goods: Live Hard,...

Coming soon (this month to be exact) to a bookstore near you is Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the VHS Box, edited by Jacques Boyreau, the guy behind Trash: The Graphic Genius of Xploitation Movie Posters. This 200-page soft cover tome documents our ghoulish favorites from video stores past in full splatterific detail, encased, ever so snugly, in a "facsimile VHS slipcase".

I can’t even begin to tell you my excitement. But wait ... there’s more!

On Saturday, December 12th, from 6:00 to 9:00 pm Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery in Seattle, Washington, will hold its 3rd Anniversary Party featuring the Portable Grindhouse book launch.

Then, on Sunday, December 13, from 4:00 to 6:00 pm, as a continuation of the anniversary celebration, the Gallery will feature a five-person panel of genre experts focusing, again, on Portable Grindhouse. Its editor, Jacques Boyreau, will be moderating the discussion, which will cover exploitation favorites,...

Here’s a list of some of the new movie and TV shows coming to DVD and Blu-ray this week that we’re looking forward to seeing. Also, there’s some classic, and not-so-classic, movies hitting Blu-ray for the first time this week as well.

Of all the new releases, we’re particularly interested in the Blu-ray versions of movies and TV shows such as J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, Gone with the Wind, Thirst, Rome: The Complete Series and the Blu-ray debut of David Fincher’s awesome Fight Club (shown above with Brad Pitt and Edward Norton). We are Jack’s excitement at this release finally coming out.

Check them out:

Movies

Bruno ~ Sacha Baron Cohen, Paula Abdul (DVD and Blu-ray)

Clerks ~ Brian O’Halloran, Kevin Smith (Blu-ray)

Downhill Racer (The Criterion Collection) ~ Robert Redford, Gene Hackman (DVD)

Fight Club ~ Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter (Blu-ray)

Galaxy Quest ~ Tim Allen,...

Attention, all nerds, geeks and fanboys (and, trust me, I count myself among your ranks): The Los Angeles Comic Book and Science Fiction Convention is coming, and this year’s festivities feature a healthy dose of campy cult goodness!

This year’s show, on Sunday, November 8, will feature an exclusive 40th anniversary screening of The Green Slime, the 1969 cult science fiction classic. Notorious for its unequaled goofiness, which manifests in every element from its theme song to its low-budget effects, the film was a success thanks to aggressive marketing, including an appearance on the cover to Famous Monsters of Filmland #57.

The Green Slime, which follows the inhabitants of a space station as they’re attacked by tentacled green aliens that multiply when they’re shot, was directed by Kinji Fukasaku, who would become more of a cult figure in later years with his adaptation of Battle Royale. The screenplay was penned by Bill Finger,...

Releasing a new zombie comic onto today’s ghoul-filled shelves might seem like beating a dead horse, unless you’ve a got a super-cool approach—and Mark Rahner definitely does. Debuting in May from Moonstone Books is Rotten, an undead Western he co-wrote with Robert Horton, featuring art by Dan (Tall Tales) Dougherty. The storyline follows Civil War veteran William Hade, who’s pulled back into service as a secret agent for President Rutherford B. Hayes. His mission is to control a terror crisis plaguing the nation: that of living corpses violently making their way through the West.

Perhaps the best thing about Rotten is Rahner’s determination not to camp it up, but play it with real Western grit. “Rotten started out as a combo of genres that I’d always wanted to see smashed together,” he tells Fango. “Zombies, Westerns and secret agents, and dark—not ruined by a tongue-in-cheek approach.