The Lighthouse

Two men must spend 4 weeks together maintaining a lighthouse on an isolated island in the late 19th century. Sounds pretty straightforward, right? There’ll be some butting of heads as their personalities clash and cabin fever sets in, but eventually they’ll either become friends, lovers, or they’ll kill each other, but however it turns out, the story will be clear and everything will be resolved, yes? After all, the film is called The Lighthouse, and the primary job of a lighthouse is to reveal what would be otherwise hidden and dangerous, so calling a film The Lighthouse when it’s actually a near-impenetrable sack of confusion would be ludicrous!

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Shark Bite lyrics and music video

First off, a little back story. As you may know, I’m one of the hosts of Deep Blue Sea: The Podcast, where we’ve covered the entire Deep Blue Sea trilogy one DVD chapter at a time, and are now watching Deep Blue Sea-adjacent films, one a week, with the vain hope that eventually Deep Blue Sea 4 will be released and deemed good enough to spark a box office shattering franchise. Essentially we’re hoping it pulls a Fast & Furious, but with significantly more sharks and an at least equal amount of Kurt Russell. Recently we covered the 2011 movie Shark Night, directed by David R. Ellis and starring Sara Paxton, Dustin Milligan and Donal Logue. That film features a music video at the end of the credits (on the US release, it appears to have been removed in other countries) featuring the majority of the cast rapping a song inspired by the events of the film. It is exactly as glorious as that sounds, and you should absolutely go watch it here. For our 100th episode of Deep Blue Sea: The Podcast we recorded a special episode digging deep into the song and music video but, in my research, I found that the song’s lyrics were not transcribed anywhere online so, being the hero that I am, I now present to you the lyrics for Shark Night‘s Shark Bite:

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Groundhog Day

Irascible, anti-social weather reporter Phil Connors (Bill Murray) heads to the small town of Punxutawney, Philadelphia with his cameraman Larry (Chris Elliott) and new producer Rita (Andi MacDowell) to cover the Groundhog Day festival ceremony, wherein a prominently dentured rodent allegedly predicts the weather. It’s an annual occurrence Phil despises, and one from which he cannot wait to get away, but unfortunately for him he’s stuck there, reliving the same day over and over again, potentially forever more.

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The Best Years Of Our Lives

After the end of World War II, three American veterans from different military branches and different social backgrounds return home to try and reacclimatise themselves back into society, but the world back home isn’t quite how they remembered it.

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The Thin Man

Dorothy Wynant (Maureen O’Sullivan) is in distress. Her inventor father Clyde (Edward Ellis) has disappeared, after taking $1,000 from his lawyer (Porter Hall) and heading to a secret location, not returning in time for Dorothy’s wedding. Fortunately Nick Charles (William Powell) is in town for the holidays with his wife Nora (Myrna Loy) and their dog Asta (Skippy). Nick is a retired detective who was once hired by Clyde, and after some initial trepidations, Nick is soon on the hunt for the missing man.

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Deep Blue Sea – The Podcast

Folks, it happened, I started another podcast, and this one’s all about Deep Blue Sea. “Wait,” I hear you cry, unable to conceal the slight crack of excitement in your voice, “the 1999 shark-infested masterpiece from Renny Harlin? Surely there are already dozens, nay, hundreds of podcasts already devoted to such an opus of cinema.” Yes, that very film, but no, somehow, inexplicably, despite the film-centric podcast world already overflowing far beyond any reasonable degree of saturation, there are no such shows devoted to the film Roger Ebert once described as “a neat package of terror, sharks and special effects.”

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So what is this delightful new podcast, and where can I listen to it, and is it any good? Well, firstly, stop asking so many questions, calm down, we’re not going anywhere. The show is called Deep Blue Sea – The Podcast, and you can find it pretty much everywhere podcasts are found including iTunes. Here’s a link to it on spreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/show/deep-blue-sea-the-podcast. At the time of writing there are already three episodes out, with more released every Tuesday. The show is hosted by me and Mark Hofmeyer from Movies, Films & Flix, and every week we discuss the next DVD chapter of the film Deep Blue Sea. There’s 33 chapters in the film, so there’ll initially be 33 episodes, followed by some bonus ones on the straight-to-streaming sequels etc. We will not, I repeat, WE WILL NOT, be covering the sequels chapter by chapter, because whilst I haven’t seen them at all, just mentioning their existence makes Mark sad.

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It’s not just going to be me and Mark, we have guests, preferably ones who agree on the near-perfect status of the film’s quality, and as for is the show any good, I’ll leave that up to you to determine but I for one am having a very fun time delving into Deep Blue Seas delightful depths. I hope you give us a listen!

Labyrinth

When she is forced to babysit her infant half-brother Toby, selfish teenager Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) invokes a goblin magic spell that summons Jareth, the Goblin King (David Bowie) to snatch Toby and take him to the Goblin Kingdom. Sarah has just thirteen hours to make her way through Jareth’s labyrinth to save Toby, or he’ll be turned into a goblin and will stay there forever.
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JFK

On November 22nd, 1963, President John F Kennedy was killed, supposedly by lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald, who himself was killed by a man named Jack Ruby before the case could go to trial. Despite several other theories, the case was dropped for three years, until Jim Garrison, the District Attorney of New Orleans, picked it up again after noticing some discrepancies within the Warren Report, written to document the details of the assassination. Garrison and his team re-launch the investigation, certain that there is more to it than simply one man and his gun.
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Spring Breakers

This review was originally written as part of my USA Road Trip series for French Toast Sunday.

For this addition of my USA Road Trip I’ll be celebrating – albeit a little tardily – that great American tradition of Spring Break as I delve into the wonderful insanity that is Florida, home state of FTS’ very own Robert, and he has informed me that it is definitively the craziest state in the whole country. Judging by this movie, I’ll have to agree. Spring Break is not a thing in the UK, or at least if it is I was never invited, and for that I’m grateful. I have a reputation for being anti-fun and especially anti-partying, and that goes double for absolutely everything that takes place in Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, a film that, if I were a character in it, I’d have happily remained in the nondescript, comparatively tedious college town at the start because, as I’m frequently told, I fail at life.
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A Hard Day’s Night

John, Paul, George and Ringo, otherwise known as The Rutles, spend their lives fleeing from screaming fans, aggravating their tour manager and generally larking about without a care in the world in this weekend-in-the-life snapshot as they prepare for a live show whilst looking after Paul’s grandfather (Wilfrid Brambell) along the way.   large_a_hard_days_night_blu-ray7alargest Continue reading