We'll include some information on Board Game Empire in the in-depth show notes for Episode #1, which will come later today, but in the meantime, here's the first episode:
Saturday, January 16, 2016
BOARD GAME EMPIRE with Logan and Dan
Just a reminder, folks: Don't forget to check out Board Game Empire, which features Emerald City Video's own Dan Fecteau and Logan Bretschneider. It's their new tabletop gaming-themed webseries.
We'll include some information on Board Game Empire in the in-depth show notes for Episode #1, which will come later today, but in the meantime, here's the first episode:
We'll include some information on Board Game Empire in the in-depth show notes for Episode #1, which will come later today, but in the meantime, here's the first episode:
Friday, January 15, 2016
Episode 1: STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS and JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS
Yes, I know that Welcome to the Dollhouse is a different movie from House of Yes.
Other than that, I'll just say that this took a long, long time to edit and while it's still not perfect, it's going to be good enough for today.
I'll update the show notes with plenty o' crap tomorrow, but for now...uploading. Then sleep.
Episode 1a: David Nielsen, Kevin Murphy and Tommy Wiseau
So...funny story.
Logan, Dan, and Russ recorded our first episode this week, and David wasn't able to make it. Immediately after we all hung up, having finished the episode and feeling pretty good about ourselves, Dave contacted Russ.
We decided to record David's part separately, so that our audience still had a chance to hear what he had to say and get acclimated to him. It was shorter and easier to edit, so it gets to go up first -- even though it makes frequent references back to the "real" first episode.
Also, to round out the close-to-an-hour that the episode runs, we've included about ten minutes of an interview Russ did earlier this week with Mystery Science Theater 3000 and RiffTrax's Kevin Murphy alongside The Room's Tommy Wiseau.
I didn't do any kind of intro or music or outro here, so think of this as a kind of no-frills pilot for the series. The "real" episode is still coming along tonight, assuming I can finish the editing in time.
In the meantime, check out Episode 1a HERE.
Tuesday, January 5, 2016
The Best of 2015
This is actually later than most people would have done this.
It's January 5 as I write this, which means that most of the End-of-Year lists have already been written. That's part of why I'm looking forward to 2016...but also just because it's a year I'm excited about.
This is Russ Burlingame, of course. So far, I'm the only one who has blogged here...although this week, my co-hosts will each get their own login.
I don't really do lists. There's a lot of stuff I don't see and a lot of stuff I don't care to see, so if I omit, say, a major blockbuster that got both critical and audience acclaim, you can either assume it's not to my taste or that I haven't seen it.
Or that I haven't seen it because it didn't appear to be to my taste.
In any event, here's my list of the best stuff from 2015. One of the reasons I'm making no effort to plant this at a place where I could get paid for it is simple: communicating with my audience directly will likely be easier at the Emerald City blog than at, say, ComicBook.com (my day job).
Besides, by doing it here, I can reserve the right not to write about a particular category. Once in a while, I draw an assignment at work where it's like "Hey, can you come up with the five best [insert thing here] of 2015?"
And I say, "...Not really."
But that's alright. I've already got the assignment.
So, anyway, here goes. I'll list TV, movies and comics -- and then if there's something else that I want to talk about, I'll probably veer into it at some point.
TV
Best Series: The Flash (?)
Honestly, I only really watch a handful of shows, and all for work.
Some of them -- like Arrow, which I generally enjoy -- weren't at their best for a big chunk of 2015. But we got The Flash, iZombie and Supergirl, all three of which were firing on all cylinders for most of the year.
The thing that makes me name The Flash the "winner" is that it had to do so over a longer span of time and manage more variables. Supergirl had only eight episode in 2015, and while iZombie had about 20, it was more or less riffing on the same notes. It's an excellent show that I'll talk more about below, but The Flash just managed to do such a wide variety of cool shit over the life of 2015 that it's hard not to love it.
As a comic book fan for over 20 years now, it's amazing to see The Flash bring the DC multiverse to a mass audience. We had Victor Garber talking about "Earth-2" in primetime. When I was a teenager and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman is what passed for comics adaptations, that was unthinkable.
Ironically, it was Arrow that -- both last year and this year -- totally nailed the crossover episode in a way that surprised me. There's apparently another crossover in the offing for early 2016, before this season of The Flash is even over, so we'll see whether they can step up their game to catch up with the older sibling.
Best Actress: Rose McIver
I'm actually not a huge fan of the brain-a-week thing where Liv Moore has to play a radically different (and usually cartoonish caricature of a) character every time she gets a new brain.
That said, it's impossible to deny that McIver nails the difficult task and makes it not only entertaining, but believable. If she didn't, it's likely the whole show would fall apart. No kidding; it's that important to the world.
She's effortlessly charming and incredibly relatable, even as she's forced to convince us that she's about 30% tortured artist or stoned-out fratboy. And, yes, McIver is believable when she goes full-on zombie and has to kick the ass of some dude who weighs more than twice what she does. She's an incredibly versatile actress who likely doesn't get enough credit for the range and imagination she leaves on the screen every week.
Best Actor: Rahul Kohli
Yeah, technically he would be a "supporting actor" if this were a real awards thing, but I don't have a leading man who stands so head and shoulders above the others I watch regularly that I want to recognize him here.
Kohli, meanwhile, is the effervescent heart of iZombie. His Ravi is probably my favorite character on TV, and about 80% of that is down to his portrayal more than the actual writing.
That's high praise, considering that I find the show's writing to be pretty exceptional.
I've often said that despite initial skepticism, I fell in love with iZombie before I'd ever seen a frame of the show because the cast were so incredibly witty, funny, charming and committed when I met them at Comic Con International: San Diego in 2014. Kohli, in particular, left an impression. I'm a huge fan of his work, so much so that while I hope iZombie has a long and happy (after)life, I can't wait to see him take on other challenges as well.
I could obviously do a whole post on just how much I adore iZombie, but I'll leave that for another time.
Other notables: Mehcad Brooks as James Olsen on Supergirl -- as well as Chyler Leigh and Melissa Benoist as Alex and Kara Danvers -- sticks out. I love the earnestness of that show, and can't wait to see how it evolves now that we've had the big Hank Henshaw reveal. Both David Harewood (Henshaw) and Calista Flockhart (Cat Grant) bring gravitas and texture to characters who could easily be pretty dull. Constantine was another great comics adaptation, with exemplary performances around the cast and some really great ideas and visuals. It just got off to a slow start and frankly was likely too expensive to survive without bigger numbers than it was ever going to draw on a Friday night slot.
What did I miss? Psych. God, do I miss Psych. A funny, dopey show that never disappointed, it was one of my favorite turn-of-your-brain-and-watch series of all time...and that it ended in 2014 still has me wishing there was something else I could watch not-for-work that's as good.
What won't I miss? There's always something you end up seeing too much of, don't dig or just would like to burn. For me, Gotham and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. -- both of which have supposedly improved -- wore out their welcomes early and really never won me back. That the second season of Gotham started this fall by making Jim Gordon a literal murderer -- he shot a guy while suspsended from police duty and while on an assignment from The Penguin -- was just a bridge too far for me. I don't want Commissioner Gordon to be Vic Mackey.
And, as always, The Big Bang Theory can cease to exist at any time. It's the only show on TV that I just shake my head and go, "...why?"
Movies
This was a slow year for the comic book movie, which is good because anybody reading this who isn't a personal friend of mine or a serious comic book fan themselves probably doesn't want to hear anymore about those things (some bad news on that front...).
What did I dig? Creed.
I'll mince no words here: I fucking adored this movie. If I had to pick my best picture, actor, actress, writer, director, etc., it would all go to Creed. There was no movie I saw this year that I liked even half as much.
Particular strong spots: The score, which brilliantly melded a contemporary, hip-hop-inspired theme with the traditional Bill Conti orchestration. The performances by all three principal players: Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa, Michael B. Jordan as Adonis Johnson/Creed and Tessa Thompson as Bianca.
Thompson, by the way, is just amazing in this movie, and absolutely charming in person.
Not to mention that awesome second fight that was shot all in one take, really capturing the manic energy of boxing in a way I haven't seen done before. Which is hard, since there's been a lot of good boxing movies over the years and everyone's always looking for a new way to film that stuff.
At $100 million, it's the highest-grossing Rocky movie at the domestic box office, and officially helped Michael B. Jordan steer out of the skid of Fantastic Four -- a movie that was pretty mediocre, but not even the worst superhero movie this year.
That, ahem, "honor" would go to Ant-Man. I know a lot of people enjoyed this movie...but I'm not one of them. The last 15-20 minutes were pretty good, but the build-up was boring as hell, not a single word escaped Michael Douglas's lips that wasn't forced exposition and it was so full of faulty logic that there was basically no way to take the third act seriously, even as it entertained you.
Also -- and frankly this scares me for DC's Legends of Tomorrow a little bit -- there hasn't really been a marked improvement in the handling of the shrinking scenes since Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
And, yes, I liked Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It wasn't my favorite movie of the year -- but it shared a lot in common with Creed. People criticize it for being too familiar and drawing too much on nostalgia and history, but I understand why the filmmakers did that. I also think it worked pretty well.
But let's not get too far into that before the January episode of the podcast...!
Comics
This is, of course, the least "video" thing about the post, but it works for me since comics are the source of so much TV and movie revenue and attention right now.
Also, if I were talking to you at the video shop about my favorite things at the end of the year, comics would absolutely come up.
Best Ongoing Series: Superman: Lois and Clark
We only got three issues of Dan Jurgens and Lee Week's Superman: Lois and Clark in 2015, but that was enough for me to fall completely in love with it.
It's always hard to say the best series of the year was a mainstream superhero book...and all of my picks this year fall into the "mainstream" range. But it is what it is: This is the comics equivalent of Creed for me this year: everything just worked.
Best Single Issue: Convergence: Superman #2
Setting the stage for Superman: Lois and Clark, Dan Jurgens wrote and drew the story that saw the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths, pre-Flashpoint Superman watch as his wife, Lois, gave birth to their son, Jonathan. From the man who drew the death and return of Superman as well as his wedding, it was a great story and an emotional moment you rarely get from corporate superhero comics.
Best Event Book: The Valiant
While I enjoyed Convergence more than most, The Valiant is a beautifully-executed book that managed to feel huge and intimate at the same time, with stakes both global and personal. Pick up the deluxe hardcover edition; it's totally worth it.
Other Notables: This one could fill a fucking book.
The reality of it is, there are a few things that could easily have taken the Best Ongoing Series for me. The reason they didn't is simple: I fell in love with Lois and Clark right away. I'd been re-reading my '90s Superman books and have always loved how Dan Jurgens writes the characters.
So...what might have been in that spot if Lois an Clark didn't exist?
Amelia Cole is one of my favorite comics. Gorgeously illustrated and written by a couple of guys who have a great sense of pacing, character and dialogue, this digital-first series from Monkeybrain is the kind of thing you really should just give up and buy ALL of in one fell swoop. It would be less than $50 for 24 issues (and another one coming tomorrow): https://www.comixology.com/Amelia-Cole/comics-series/8518?ref=c2VhcmNoL2luZGV4L2Rlc2t0b3Avc2xpZGVyTGlzdC9zZXJpZXNTbGlkZXI
Another great series that's digital-first with a collected edition on theway is The Only Living Boy. You can check it out here: https://www.comixology.com/The-Only-Living-Boy/comics-series/8579?ref=Y29taWMvdmlldy9kZXNrdG9wL2JyZWFkY3J1bWJz
Want some superhero action that's a little bit more hardcore? Well, Savage Dragon has been firing on all cynlinders since I jumped back onto it at #150...that means more than five years now of general kick-assery. This year saw the 200th issue of the comic and had the main character graduate high school, join the police force, get married and more. https://www.comixology.com/Savage-Dragon/comics-series/739?ref=c2VhcmNoL2luZGV4L2Rlc2t0b3Avc2xpZGVyTGlzdC9zZXJpZXNTbGlkZXI
...Wow, that was a lot of writing. Lemme get on the whole "looking forward to 2016" thing later.
It's January 5 as I write this, which means that most of the End-of-Year lists have already been written. That's part of why I'm looking forward to 2016...but also just because it's a year I'm excited about.
This is Russ Burlingame, of course. So far, I'm the only one who has blogged here...although this week, my co-hosts will each get their own login.
I don't really do lists. There's a lot of stuff I don't see and a lot of stuff I don't care to see, so if I omit, say, a major blockbuster that got both critical and audience acclaim, you can either assume it's not to my taste or that I haven't seen it.
Or that I haven't seen it because it didn't appear to be to my taste.
In any event, here's my list of the best stuff from 2015. One of the reasons I'm making no effort to plant this at a place where I could get paid for it is simple: communicating with my audience directly will likely be easier at the Emerald City blog than at, say, ComicBook.com (my day job).
Besides, by doing it here, I can reserve the right not to write about a particular category. Once in a while, I draw an assignment at work where it's like "Hey, can you come up with the five best [insert thing here] of 2015?"
And I say, "...Not really."
But that's alright. I've already got the assignment.
So, anyway, here goes. I'll list TV, movies and comics -- and then if there's something else that I want to talk about, I'll probably veer into it at some point.
TV
Best Series: The Flash (?)Honestly, I only really watch a handful of shows, and all for work.
Some of them -- like Arrow, which I generally enjoy -- weren't at their best for a big chunk of 2015. But we got The Flash, iZombie and Supergirl, all three of which were firing on all cylinders for most of the year.
The thing that makes me name The Flash the "winner" is that it had to do so over a longer span of time and manage more variables. Supergirl had only eight episode in 2015, and while iZombie had about 20, it was more or less riffing on the same notes. It's an excellent show that I'll talk more about below, but The Flash just managed to do such a wide variety of cool shit over the life of 2015 that it's hard not to love it.
As a comic book fan for over 20 years now, it's amazing to see The Flash bring the DC multiverse to a mass audience. We had Victor Garber talking about "Earth-2" in primetime. When I was a teenager and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman is what passed for comics adaptations, that was unthinkable.
Ironically, it was Arrow that -- both last year and this year -- totally nailed the crossover episode in a way that surprised me. There's apparently another crossover in the offing for early 2016, before this season of The Flash is even over, so we'll see whether they can step up their game to catch up with the older sibling.
I'm actually not a huge fan of the brain-a-week thing where Liv Moore has to play a radically different (and usually cartoonish caricature of a) character every time she gets a new brain.
That said, it's impossible to deny that McIver nails the difficult task and makes it not only entertaining, but believable. If she didn't, it's likely the whole show would fall apart. No kidding; it's that important to the world.
She's effortlessly charming and incredibly relatable, even as she's forced to convince us that she's about 30% tortured artist or stoned-out fratboy. And, yes, McIver is believable when she goes full-on zombie and has to kick the ass of some dude who weighs more than twice what she does. She's an incredibly versatile actress who likely doesn't get enough credit for the range and imagination she leaves on the screen every week.
Yeah, technically he would be a "supporting actor" if this were a real awards thing, but I don't have a leading man who stands so head and shoulders above the others I watch regularly that I want to recognize him here.
Kohli, meanwhile, is the effervescent heart of iZombie. His Ravi is probably my favorite character on TV, and about 80% of that is down to his portrayal more than the actual writing.
That's high praise, considering that I find the show's writing to be pretty exceptional.
I've often said that despite initial skepticism, I fell in love with iZombie before I'd ever seen a frame of the show because the cast were so incredibly witty, funny, charming and committed when I met them at Comic Con International: San Diego in 2014. Kohli, in particular, left an impression. I'm a huge fan of his work, so much so that while I hope iZombie has a long and happy (after)life, I can't wait to see him take on other challenges as well.
I could obviously do a whole post on just how much I adore iZombie, but I'll leave that for another time.
Other notables: Mehcad Brooks as James Olsen on Supergirl -- as well as Chyler Leigh and Melissa Benoist as Alex and Kara Danvers -- sticks out. I love the earnestness of that show, and can't wait to see how it evolves now that we've had the big Hank Henshaw reveal. Both David Harewood (Henshaw) and Calista Flockhart (Cat Grant) bring gravitas and texture to characters who could easily be pretty dull. Constantine was another great comics adaptation, with exemplary performances around the cast and some really great ideas and visuals. It just got off to a slow start and frankly was likely too expensive to survive without bigger numbers than it was ever going to draw on a Friday night slot.
What did I miss? Psych. God, do I miss Psych. A funny, dopey show that never disappointed, it was one of my favorite turn-of-your-brain-and-watch series of all time...and that it ended in 2014 still has me wishing there was something else I could watch not-for-work that's as good.
What won't I miss? There's always something you end up seeing too much of, don't dig or just would like to burn. For me, Gotham and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. -- both of which have supposedly improved -- wore out their welcomes early and really never won me back. That the second season of Gotham started this fall by making Jim Gordon a literal murderer -- he shot a guy while suspsended from police duty and while on an assignment from The Penguin -- was just a bridge too far for me. I don't want Commissioner Gordon to be Vic Mackey.
And, as always, The Big Bang Theory can cease to exist at any time. It's the only show on TV that I just shake my head and go, "...why?"
Movies
This was a slow year for the comic book movie, which is good because anybody reading this who isn't a personal friend of mine or a serious comic book fan themselves probably doesn't want to hear anymore about those things (some bad news on that front...).
What did I dig? Creed.
I'll mince no words here: I fucking adored this movie. If I had to pick my best picture, actor, actress, writer, director, etc., it would all go to Creed. There was no movie I saw this year that I liked even half as much.
Particular strong spots: The score, which brilliantly melded a contemporary, hip-hop-inspired theme with the traditional Bill Conti orchestration. The performances by all three principal players: Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa, Michael B. Jordan as Adonis Johnson/Creed and Tessa Thompson as Bianca.
Thompson, by the way, is just amazing in this movie, and absolutely charming in person.
Not to mention that awesome second fight that was shot all in one take, really capturing the manic energy of boxing in a way I haven't seen done before. Which is hard, since there's been a lot of good boxing movies over the years and everyone's always looking for a new way to film that stuff.
At $100 million, it's the highest-grossing Rocky movie at the domestic box office, and officially helped Michael B. Jordan steer out of the skid of Fantastic Four -- a movie that was pretty mediocre, but not even the worst superhero movie this year.
That, ahem, "honor" would go to Ant-Man. I know a lot of people enjoyed this movie...but I'm not one of them. The last 15-20 minutes were pretty good, but the build-up was boring as hell, not a single word escaped Michael Douglas's lips that wasn't forced exposition and it was so full of faulty logic that there was basically no way to take the third act seriously, even as it entertained you.
Also -- and frankly this scares me for DC's Legends of Tomorrow a little bit -- there hasn't really been a marked improvement in the handling of the shrinking scenes since Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
And, yes, I liked Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It wasn't my favorite movie of the year -- but it shared a lot in common with Creed. People criticize it for being too familiar and drawing too much on nostalgia and history, but I understand why the filmmakers did that. I also think it worked pretty well.
But let's not get too far into that before the January episode of the podcast...!
Comics
This is, of course, the least "video" thing about the post, but it works for me since comics are the source of so much TV and movie revenue and attention right now.
Also, if I were talking to you at the video shop about my favorite things at the end of the year, comics would absolutely come up.
Best Ongoing Series: Superman: Lois and Clark
We only got three issues of Dan Jurgens and Lee Week's Superman: Lois and Clark in 2015, but that was enough for me to fall completely in love with it.
It's always hard to say the best series of the year was a mainstream superhero book...and all of my picks this year fall into the "mainstream" range. But it is what it is: This is the comics equivalent of Creed for me this year: everything just worked.
Best Single Issue: Convergence: Superman #2
Setting the stage for Superman: Lois and Clark, Dan Jurgens wrote and drew the story that saw the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths, pre-Flashpoint Superman watch as his wife, Lois, gave birth to their son, Jonathan. From the man who drew the death and return of Superman as well as his wedding, it was a great story and an emotional moment you rarely get from corporate superhero comics.
Best Event Book: The Valiant
While I enjoyed Convergence more than most, The Valiant is a beautifully-executed book that managed to feel huge and intimate at the same time, with stakes both global and personal. Pick up the deluxe hardcover edition; it's totally worth it.
Other Notables: This one could fill a fucking book.
The reality of it is, there are a few things that could easily have taken the Best Ongoing Series for me. The reason they didn't is simple: I fell in love with Lois and Clark right away. I'd been re-reading my '90s Superman books and have always loved how Dan Jurgens writes the characters.
So...what might have been in that spot if Lois an Clark didn't exist?
Amelia Cole is one of my favorite comics. Gorgeously illustrated and written by a couple of guys who have a great sense of pacing, character and dialogue, this digital-first series from Monkeybrain is the kind of thing you really should just give up and buy ALL of in one fell swoop. It would be less than $50 for 24 issues (and another one coming tomorrow): https://www.comixology.com/Amelia-Cole/comics-series/8518?ref=c2VhcmNoL2luZGV4L2Rlc2t0b3Avc2xpZGVyTGlzdC9zZXJpZXNTbGlkZXI
Another great series that's digital-first with a collected edition on theway is The Only Living Boy. You can check it out here: https://www.comixology.com/The-Only-Living-Boy/comics-series/8579?ref=Y29taWMvdmlldy9kZXNrdG9wL2JyZWFkY3J1bWJz
Want some superhero action that's a little bit more hardcore? Well, Savage Dragon has been firing on all cynlinders since I jumped back onto it at #150...that means more than five years now of general kick-assery. This year saw the 200th issue of the comic and had the main character graduate high school, join the police force, get married and more. https://www.comixology.com/Savage-Dragon/comics-series/739?ref=c2VhcmNoL2luZGV4L2Rlc2t0b3Avc2xpZGVyTGlzdC9zZXJpZXNTbGlkZXI
...Wow, that was a lot of writing. Lemme get on the whole "looking forward to 2016" thing later.
Saturday, December 26, 2015
Five For Five For $5 - Here's some VHS-era movies you should have seen by now!
When Emerald City Video was a thing that existed as a video store, we used to have a five VHS tapes for five nights for $5 sale.
It was, as you would probably imagine, a customer favorite.
You don't have to give me $5 for these -- and I'm not sure there would be a way to do that anyway -- but I figure one of the things we can do with this blog and the podcast is to simulate some of that old fun.
So every so often, one of us will suggest a bunch of movies that you could have got on VHS, and can still rent or buy for fairly cheap now.
Zero Effect
Bill Pullman and Ben Stiller star in...wait, no! It's good! Really!
Here, check out the trailer:
As you can probably tell by the above, it's a riff on Sherlock Holmes, and specifically on A Scandal In Bohemia. The film is one of my favorites ever, and while most people don't fall in love with it the way I did, every customer I ever sold it to at least enjoyed it.
Fun fact about this movie: I hand-sold it so aggressively at ECV that we kept adding more copies to inventory. Since it was a five-day rental, it was often out of stock. One year, it actually made it on our Top 1000 (or maybe 100?) movies of the year...something that the owners steadfastly believed couldn't have happened and that I had to have somehow "rigged" it.
No, I totally didn't.
The Limey
Everybody loves a revenge thriller, and everyone loves -- or at least everyone should love -- Terence Stamp.
This movie comes from the director of Ocean's Eleven and stars, among others, Peter Fonda and Luis Guzman. It's a gritty film that nevertheless manages to be stylish and smart whilst having its most iconic moment be the 70-year-old protagonist screaming "TELL HIM I'M FUCKING COMING!"
Hudson Hawk
This is one of my favorite Bruce Willis movies, even though it's self-evidently a bad film, objectively speaking.
Even just watching this fan-edited trailer, it's pretty obvious that this was made with tongue firmly in cheek and has "camp classic" written all over it.
Seriously, you won't have more fun this side of Die Hard.
Cradle Will Rock
I'm going through a period of historical dramas right now, and this one -- Cradle Will Rock from director Tim Robbins and featuring one of the best casts ever assembled on film -- is probably my favorite of all time.
Politically it's pretty left-of-center, and yes, it's a little didactic. But the way it weaves a half-dozen stories -- some true and some made up -- together to tell a great story of a moment in time is pretty great.
It gets less love than Robbins's previous directorial effort, the award-winning Dead Man Walking -- but I've always found it to be smarter, funnier and more enjoyable.
The Paper
In my day job, I'm a reporter...and for my money, there's never been a better movie about journalism than The Paper.
I count it as director Ron Howard's best work. No kidding.
Everyone in this film gives a great performance, but this is the moment when everyone should have known that Michael Keaton was destined for years of being an Academy Award frontrunner. Of course, it's a comedy, so it's not like anyone was paying attention to that kind of thing.
It's also insanely quotable, which would be more effective if more people had seen it and could understand what you were quoting at them.
-Russ Burlingame
It was, as you would probably imagine, a customer favorite.
You don't have to give me $5 for these -- and I'm not sure there would be a way to do that anyway -- but I figure one of the things we can do with this blog and the podcast is to simulate some of that old fun.
So every so often, one of us will suggest a bunch of movies that you could have got on VHS, and can still rent or buy for fairly cheap now.
Zero Effect
Bill Pullman and Ben Stiller star in...wait, no! It's good! Really!
Here, check out the trailer:
As you can probably tell by the above, it's a riff on Sherlock Holmes, and specifically on A Scandal In Bohemia. The film is one of my favorites ever, and while most people don't fall in love with it the way I did, every customer I ever sold it to at least enjoyed it.
Fun fact about this movie: I hand-sold it so aggressively at ECV that we kept adding more copies to inventory. Since it was a five-day rental, it was often out of stock. One year, it actually made it on our Top 1000 (or maybe 100?) movies of the year...something that the owners steadfastly believed couldn't have happened and that I had to have somehow "rigged" it.
No, I totally didn't.
The Limey
Everybody loves a revenge thriller, and everyone loves -- or at least everyone should love -- Terence Stamp.
This movie comes from the director of Ocean's Eleven and stars, among others, Peter Fonda and Luis Guzman. It's a gritty film that nevertheless manages to be stylish and smart whilst having its most iconic moment be the 70-year-old protagonist screaming "TELL HIM I'M FUCKING COMING!"
Hudson Hawk
This is one of my favorite Bruce Willis movies, even though it's self-evidently a bad film, objectively speaking.
Even just watching this fan-edited trailer, it's pretty obvious that this was made with tongue firmly in cheek and has "camp classic" written all over it.
Seriously, you won't have more fun this side of Die Hard.
Cradle Will Rock
I'm going through a period of historical dramas right now, and this one -- Cradle Will Rock from director Tim Robbins and featuring one of the best casts ever assembled on film -- is probably my favorite of all time.
Politically it's pretty left-of-center, and yes, it's a little didactic. But the way it weaves a half-dozen stories -- some true and some made up -- together to tell a great story of a moment in time is pretty great.
It gets less love than Robbins's previous directorial effort, the award-winning Dead Man Walking -- but I've always found it to be smarter, funnier and more enjoyable.
The Paper
In my day job, I'm a reporter...and for my money, there's never been a better movie about journalism than The Paper.
I count it as director Ron Howard's best work. No kidding.
Everyone in this film gives a great performance, but this is the moment when everyone should have known that Michael Keaton was destined for years of being an Academy Award frontrunner. Of course, it's a comedy, so it's not like anyone was paying attention to that kind of thing.
It's also insanely quotable, which would be more effective if more people had seen it and could understand what you were quoting at them.
-Russ Burlingame
Announcing the Emerald City Video Podcast
If you’ve known me for a while, you probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I sort of miss video stores.
Having worked in them for years, I have an affection for the now-mostly-dead industry, in which each store was its own kind of cultural outpost. The relationships between the staff and clientele were special — so much so that many of my old customers from Emerald City Video in East Syracuse/DeWitt are friends of mine on Facebook.
Well, that and I married one of our regulars.
Anyway, there was something special offered by in-person recommendations, conversations and the like that you just can’t duplicate with a Netflix or Amazon algorithm that fails to take into account things that your kids, your friends or whoever else has your password watched, or that you turned on by mistake while looking for something else.
It’s something that can’t really be recaptured — especially the feel and moment of something as special as what we had for a while at Emerald City, which was a truly fun time (if utterly chaotic).
That isn’t going to stop us from trying to create a new way to have a dialogue with our old customers, our old co-workers…and cinema itself.
Starting in January 2016, I will co-host a monthly podcast with Logan Bretschneider, Dan Fecteau and David Nielsen titled the Emerald City Video Podcast.
You can check out our Facebook page here or follow us on Twitter at @ECV_Podcast.
Each episode, we will discuss a new theatrical release as well as what would have been a “catalog” release at the video store: an old movie that you could have rented as part of a five for $5.00 deal on VHS back in the day. We’ll also have other features like “If you liked this, try this” and a suggested “five for five” that we’ll select using old movies that can be found free on popular streaming sites. We encourage our listeners — and especially our old customers — to call in and get personalized advice and interactions. When you listen to the first episode, we’ll share information there on how to reach us. We’ll get the show set up with an RSS feed and an iTunes account as soon as we have recorded the first episode, which we hope to do in the first week of January.
In all likelihood, episodes will go live on Fridays. The plan at present is to record on Thursdays, and I have Thursdays and Fridays off from work, so I can spend some time editing a podcast I’m not getting paid for then.
The first episode will feature a lot of introductory talk and some feature content, but the two “spotlight” movies will be Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Josie and the Pussycats.
(No, really. Josie and the Pussycats.)
You can reach us on Twitter and Facebook if you want to recommend movies or send us e-mails before the first episode airs. Tag any of your friends who remember Emerald City Video or who might enjoy a crazy idea like this.
Russ Burlingame
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