Category: johnny california
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Johnny California: 4K Roundup
by JB How much do I love these 4K discs? How often do I spin these 4K discs? I will tell you… … I spin so many of these @#&^%$#!! discs I have just blown out my first 4K player. That’s right, gentle readers, a few days ago my Sony UBP- X800 gave up the…
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Johnny California: Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
by JB Well, it took almost a year, but I finally got my Oscar! The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, the official brick-and-mortar sanctuary of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, opened two years ago. Perhaps because I am not as spry as I used to be, it took a little time for…
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Johnny California: THE NUTTY PROFESSOR in 4K
by JB Few figures in the history of film are more divisive than Jerry Lewis.The Nutty Professor is widely considered to be his masterpiece. I was quite happy when Paramount announced it would be releasing the 1963 Nutty Professor on 4K Blu-ray. Although opinions of Jerry Lewis’s body of work run the gamut from “low-grade…
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Johnny California: Thoughts on ROOM 237
by JB We all know what an ill-conceived shit-fest writer/director Rodney Ascher’s “documentary” Room 237 is. Look at it, sitting there, hardly watched since it escaped Ascher’s colon eleven years ago. I could carve a better movie out of a banana. Ascher starts off with a very promising premise, “Discuss competing critical interpretations of Stanley…
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Johnny California: Siempre Pollo
by JB When news of a forgotten genre surfaces or a stash of lost films is found, I make it my business to share the glad tidings with my readers. There is great rejoicing this week in the dual worlds of film preservation and film excavation. Lucio Grosso, the so-called third maestro of the Italian…
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Johnny California: Mailbag
by JB Questions, comments, and great thoughts from my readers. Q: “JB, you have often talked of the dichotomy established by Robert B. Ray in his groundbreaking book, A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, 1930-1980. I recently purchased and read the book. Is Ray saying 1) that post WWII, there is an irreparable, demographic…
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Johnny California: MARTIN in 4K
by JB Second Sight Films has delivered the goods. This odd, one-of-a-kind vampire film has been very difficult to see for a very long time. I’m assuming that copyright issues kept if off home video for a time; theatrical screenings are still very rare. I did not actually see it until I got to college…
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Johnny California: I Want My LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT!
by JB A few weeks ago, the famous, lost Lon Chaney “vampire film” entered the public domain. I’m only going to ask this once. Which one of you wise guys has a copy? Every few years, rumors circulate that one of the most famous lost films, Lon Chaney’s London After Midnight, has resurfaced somewhere, usually…
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Johnny California: THE CAT CREEPS
by JB The Universal Horror Cycle concludes not with a bang, but with a meow. I cannot describe the excitement I felt when the fine folks at Vinegar Syndrome announced that they would be releasing a restored special edition of 1946’s The Cat Creeps, which experts acknowledge as the last of the original Universal horror…
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Johnny California: How About a Record Store Day for Movies?
by JB Last Saturday was Record Store Day. It was two tons of fun. And it gave me an idea… As one of those aging hipster doofuses who still listens to vinyl records, I look forward to Record Store Day (RSD) with excitement and excitement. Meant to bolster the fortunes of independent record stores (Are…