Reviews

Book Review: ROD SERLING: HIS LIFE, WORK, AND IMAGINATION (Nicholas Parisi)

November 24, 2020 / By / 1 Comment

Eric Gilliland with a review of Nicholas Parisi’s deep dive into one of television’s greatest storytellers…

Few figures have influenced the popular memory more than Rod Serling (1924-1975).

His work continues to captivate the imaginations of millions in the decades since his passing. In our current era of uncertainty with a creeping authoritarianism seeping into the political discourse we turn to Serling’s warnings on the dangers of prejudice, demagoguery, and intolerance going unchecked. Nicholas Parisi’s comprehensive study covers Sterling’s wide-ranging work in multiple mediums that included radio, television, theater, and film.

A volume of perceptive criticism with valuable biographical insights, Parisi traces Serling’s evolution as a writer and the themes he returned to throughout his career as a writer and public personality. …

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Book Review: WHEN THE MOVIES MATTERED – THE NEW HOLLYWOOD REVISITED (edited by Jonathan Kirshner & Jon Lewis)

November 11, 2020 / By / 2 Comments

Eric Gilliland with a review of When the Movies Mattered: The New Hollywood Revisited…

When the Movies Mattered is a collection of ten essays edited by Jonathan Kirshner and Jon Lewis that reassess the New Hollywood years that spanned from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s. As this period in American movies drifts further from the rearview mirror, new perspectives are taking shape. The thematic obsessions of the era – paranoia, political corruption, violence, the Vietnam War, and a general ambivalence towards post-war America influenced a generation of film goers and continues to be discussed and debated.

Many of the contributors were active writers during the era and offer perspectives tempered by the passage of time, free of nostalgia, replete with insight.

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Podcast Review: COLORS OF THE DARK – ‘The History of Splatstick with Ryan Spindell’

October 19, 2020 / By / Leave a Comment

Who here listened to Shock Waves, Fangoria’s leading horror podcast, on a regular basis?

It was a fun show from largely the triumvirate of Dr. Rebekah McKendry, Elric Kane & Rob Galluzzo that explored all angles of the horror genre, replete with interviews from those in the business. Sadly, it seems to have been quietly abandoned following scandal for Fangoria during lockdown it is steadily working to overcome, including the actions of their owner Cinestate and accusations levelled at Galluzzo that has seen him quietly slink from the public space. Shock Waves appears to have been sacrificed at the altar of these issues and, subsequently, a new show has been forged from largely the same DNA – which brings us to Colors of the Dark.

With McKendry & Kane in tow, this could be named Shock Waves II. It feels, in many respects, a natural continuation of a similar format.

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