By - Gareth Jones For fans of campy humor, Charles Busch, satires of Hollywood When I saw that Birmingham Festival Theatre was doing a stage production of Charles Busch’s play “Psycho Beach Party” it immediately took me back to the year 2000 when the filmed adaptation of that play premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. It was my introduction to the world of playwright, and drag icon Charles Busch.  A […]

By - Gareth Jones For fans of Jewish folktales, independent Israeli filmmaking, modest horror films In preparation for the No Longer Silent/ Under the Mountain screening of the classic 1920 film, The Golem: How He Came Into the World, I have been watching many other iterations of the Golem, including the wonderful X Files episode “Kaddish” and the Simpsons Treehouse of Horrors episode where Bart creates his own golem. The […]

By - Gareth Jones For fans of Jeremy Saulnier, Aaron Pierre, Rambo action films with a strong message Every once in a while you see a film with a new actor and instantly you know this person is going to be a huge star. I had that feeling when I watched Winter’s Bone with Jennifer Lawrence, and I had the same feeling the minute I finished Rebel Ridge and Aaron […]

By - Gareth Jones For fans of Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, George Cukor, and early Queer Cinema George Cukor was still at the beginning of his career as a Hollywood director when he directed Sylvia Scarlett, but it starred for the third time Katherine Hepburn.  They would go on to work together on 10 films.  Even before he had directed the film The Women, Cukor was already being labeled a […]

By - Gareth Jones For fans of psychedelic horror from the 70s, crazy overacting by Zalman King, alopecia Jeff Lieberman has become a bit of a cult diretor for two films he directed in the 70s and one in the 80s, Squirm (1976), Just Before Dawn (1981), and most impressively with Blue Sunshine in 1977. All were innovative low-budget genre films that showed great creativity and a sense of humor. […]