The Return of the VIDEO WATCHDOG Round Table!

Brad Pitt gets some slobbering love from Brandy the Dog in ONCE UPON A TIME IN... HOLLYWOOD. 

If memory serves, and it doesn't always, the last VIDEO WATCHDOG Round Table Discussion was in VW #136, when Stephen R. Bissette, Shane M. Dallmann, Kim Newman and I discussed Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's self-styled double feature GRINDHOUSE - at great length. After I turned in my recent essay on ONCE UPON A TIME IN... HOLLYWOOD, the folks at the New Beverly Cinema site asked me if I might reunite that particular round table to have a go at Quentin's latest and, happily, everyone was willing, able and excited to take part. Within a few days of starting, the four of us had amassed a highly loquacious - and, we hope, insightful - conversation spanning more than 10,000 words - and it's now available for you to read and enjoy at the other end of this link. 

(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN... HOLLYWOOD Under the Tim Scope

Quentin Tarantino recently invited me to review ONCE UPON A TIME IN... HOLLYWOOD for the New Beverly Cinema's website. That's not a request that comes along every day, nor one I was likely to turn down, but what came out after a week of intensive, enjoyable exploration turned out to be less a review than an essay or an analysis. It's fairly lengthy but I could have gone on even longer, and perhaps someday I will - but, in the meantime, there's a lot here and it just goes to show that the real test of a good movie is how many ideas and how much of a dialogue it generates. Click on this exact spot to gain access! 

(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

Anthony Perkins, PASSWORD Player

For the past several months, Donna and I have been revisiting episodes of WHAT'S MY LINE? at dinner time, but we recently broke our pattern to enjoy some classic episodes of PASSWORD. Here's a treat from March 5, 1964 (see above)...

The celebrity players are Paula Prentiss (plugging the bound-for-immortality MAN'S FAVORITE SPORT?) and Anthony Perkins (who's plugging future hard-to-see cult item THE FOOL KILLER). But they are promoting these films by being themselves, in competition, not by talking them up - and you come away at the end feeling like you've spent some real time with them, gaining a better appreciation for who they are, or were, as real people. Perkins particularly comes across as friendly, worldly, and also fiercely competitive. 

The earlier 9/16/63 episode with Perkins and Carol Burnett (see below) is particularly interesting, with surprising revelations of their past sharing of a theatrical dressing room without ever meeting, and Perkins getting into a dispute with host Allen Ludden, who rightly forbids "a certain four-letter word" ("pimp") as a prompter for "gigolo." At another point in the episode, Perkins offers "mescaline" as a clue for "drugs" in a lightning round!

There are several Anthony Perkins PASSWORD episodes to be found on YouTube, so check 'em out.

(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.