This week sees the release of Snowden, the new movie from director Oliver Stone. The movie is certainly politically tinged, telling the story of an infamous NSA whistleblower who exposed the agency's bad actions, mostly around setting up a surveillance state here in the United States. It's hardly the first time Stone has gotten political … Continue reading Flashback MMM: JFK
Flashback MMM: Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of “Star Trek” debuting on CBS, kicking off a science fiction franchise that’s still going strong, even if it’s had a few dry spells and certainly, as many have recollected, wasn’t an unqualified cultural hit right out of the gate. Indeed, the franchise languished for 10 years between the time … Continue reading Flashback MMM: Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Flashback MMM – Play Misty For Me
This week sees two movies hitting theaters/VOD that are directed by actors. Sully comes from Clint Eastwood, who's been directing movies for over 40 years while Ithaca represents actress Meg Ryan's directorial debut. So this week we turn our attention to the movie that took Eastwood from being just an actor, though a relatively respected … Continue reading Flashback MMM – Play Misty For Me
I Don’t Think We’re Going to Make It Past the Cops – The Marketing of Wilder and Pryor
Earlier this week we lost an acting genius when Gene Wilder passed away at the age of 83, reportedly of complications from Alzheimer's Disease. It's just the latest of a string of passings in 2016 that feels like we're losing too much of our cultural weirdness too quickly, and the supply isn't being replenished. David … Continue reading I Don’t Think We’re Going to Make It Past the Cops – The Marketing of Wilder and Pryor
Flashback MMM – The Apartment
When I saw a Tweet saying Chicago's Music Box Theater was showing The Apartment, the classic Billy Wilder comedy with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, this weekend, I thought he, what a great excuse to revisit an older movie's marketing campaign and see how United Artists sold what went on to become one of the … Continue reading Flashback MMM – The Apartment
Flashback MMM – Mallrats
"So what's he going to do next," we were all asking about Kevin Smith following his debut hit Clerks. It was easy to see him going back to the well and making something stylistically similar, a low-concept dialogue-driven story of the wacky characters inhabiting some other service industry or area of everyday, non-extraordinary life. I … Continue reading Flashback MMM – Mallrats
MMM Flashback Friday: Ghostbusters
By the time 1984 came around, Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd and Harold Ramis were, in their own ways, some of the biggest comedy names around. Murray, of course, had starred in Meatball’s, Caddyshack and Stripes. The latter also features Ramis, who’d made his name on “SCTV” as well as as the director of Caddyshack and … Continue reading MMM Flashback Friday: Ghostbusters
MMM Flashback Friday: Brewster’s Millions
Recently, Mental Floss published this feature highlighting 10 things we may not have known about the Richard Pryor-starring Brewster’s Millions. It was an alright list with a few interesting bits of trivia but it got me thinking about how much I’d watched this movie when I was younger as it was one of those that … Continue reading MMM Flashback Friday: Brewster’s Millions
MMM Flashback Friday: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
I don’t think I saw Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in theaters. I was 11 at the time it came out so I may have been just a tad too young for the movie when it came out, though I’m sure it wasn’t long after it came out on home video before I finally corrected that … Continue reading MMM Flashback Friday: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
MMM Flashback Friday: The Jerk
Last week Patrick Havens passed away. Havens was the casting director of a number of movies, most notably the Steve Martin star-making vehicle The Jerk and it’s there we’re turning our attention today. Martin stars in the Carl Reiner-directed comedy as Navin Johnson, a...simple-minded individual who one day leaves his adopted family to make it … Continue reading MMM Flashback Friday: The Jerk
Chris Thilk 