Blu-ray Review: Airplane! (Paramount Presents Edition)
A frenzied parody of the underrated Airport series (which, incidentally, had already parodied itself by 1980 with the atrocious Concorde: Airport ‘79), many of the gags used in Airplane! have been copied and reworked countless times over the past forty years, resulting in a kind of staleness when seen in their original context. Added to […]
Blu-ray Review: Harlow
Released in 1964, Harlow: An Intimate Biography, co-written by Irving Shulman and Jean Harlow’s one-time agent Arthur Landau, hit the best seller lists and became one of the hottest books of the year. Critically panned and the subject of several lawsuits—including one from Jean Harlow’s own elderly father—was a decidedly salacious, heavily fictionalized account of […]
Blu-ray Review: The Naked Gun – From the Files of Police Squad!
In the tradition of Airplane!, the ZAZ (Jerry Zucker/Jim Abrahams/David Zucker) triumvirate unleashed The Naked Gun in theaters in 1988. Based on their short-lived 1982 ABC television series Police Squad!, which was cancelled after six episodes, the frenetic pace and nonstop verbal zingers throughout the film proved to be a recipe for box office success. […]
Blu-ray Review: Airplane!
Growing up, I considered Airplane! One of the funniest movies I’d ever seen. However, a little more than thirty years after its initial release, I’m said to say, Airplane! hasn’t aged well. Though it still retains the capacity to elicit a few chuckles, modern audiences may be left wondering how critics in 1980 could have […]