REVIEW: An American Werewolf in London [1981]

Beware the moon, lads. It’s not hard to believe John Landis wrote his first draft of An American Werewolf in London at eighteen. The male gaze throughout is right in line with the comedies he would bring to life (The Kentucky Fried Movie and National Lampoon’s Animal House) to achieve the success necessary to secure a ten million dollar budget more than a decade later. By focusing on two co-eds crossing the Atlantic to backpack through the moors around his age while writing, he’d of course end up injecting a…

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REVIEW: The Howling [1981]

Well he didn’t get up and walk out on his own. With the amount of 1980s horror films that go all-in on the blood and gore from frame one, the few that don’t can’t help but standout. What’s funny is that the latter were the types I disliked as a kid. I remember watching Joe Dante‘s The Howling decades ago on television and thinking it was too boring to ever want to watch again. We don’t even get to see a werewolf—the supernatural entity we’re promised—until two-thirds of the runtime…

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The 83rd Oscars recap through tweets …

@jaredmobarak • Oscar time … congrats to The King’s Speech … why bother with the show when everyone thinks they know the winner? The 83rd Annual Academy Awards ceremony was quite possibly its worst incarnation the past decade. And things finally seemed to be going the right way. Hugh Jackman was fun; Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin were lukewarm, but the show was fun; and Neil Patrick Harris is Neil Patrick Harris. NPH can do no wrong. Much in that vein, I thought the pairing of James Franco and Anne…

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