New Catallaxy

Category: Popular Culture

  • WolfmanOz at the Movies #50

    Laurel & Hardy Well for my last post before Xmas, and to bring a smile to Cats faces, I can think of no better topic than to discuss the most beloved comedy duo in cinema history in Laurel & Hardy. Stan Laurel (1890-1965) and Oliver Hardy (1892-1957) started their career as a duo in the silent…

  • WolfmanOz at the Movies #49

    B movies In old Hollywood, B grade movies identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicised bottom half of a double feature. However, this practice largely ceased by the end of the 1950s with the studios changing their departments into TV production divisions. B movies often represented a particular genre e.g. westerns while low-budget science-fiction and horror…

  • WolfmanOz at the Movies #48

    Yipee-ki-yay, motherfucker Was the catchphrase used by New York police detective John McClane in the action thriller Die Hard. Since it’s release back in 1988, Die Hard has stood the test of time to be considered one of the best action thrillers ever made. And because of its’ Christmas setting it has become a favourite…

  • Rabz’ Radio Show December 2022: Covers and the Covered

    It’s always “interesting” to discover that a song you may have assumed was written by a certain artist or band turns out to be a cover. A classic example of this is posted below as the first of the intro tracks. Another interesting aspect of covers relates to the lively discussion/arguments/shouting matches that might arise…

  • WolfmanOz at the Movies #47

    Men of Harlech The Battle of Rorke’s Drift between a small British army contingent and a huge army of Zulus in January 1879 was memorably presented in the splendid 1964 film Zulu which depicts how 150 British soldiers successfully held off an army of 4,000 Zulu warriors. The battle followed on after the Battle of…

  • You’re the farm

    I was stooged again by the missus and ended up at Southland Shopping Centre on Sunday. She’s got a way of making lunch not seem like shopping and I fell for it again like the pasty I am. So there’s a new Japanese that seems nice and the missus told me about the robots that…

  • WolfmanOz at the Movies #46

    Biopics . . . have been a staple of cinema for ever and a day in dramatising the life of a historically-based or non-fictional person or people. Such films show the life of a historical person and they differ from docudrama films and historical drama films in that they attempt to comprehensively tell a single person’s…

  • WolfmanOz at the Movies #45

    Great movie endings Sometimes the ending of a movie can elevate it to another level – think of The Bridge On The River Kwai, Casablanca and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest to name a few classics. So the following 3 selections are from lesser known films that have an outstanding ending/climax. With the release…

  • WolfmanOz at the Movies #44

    Demonic Possession It’s now 49 years ago that William Friedkin’s supernatural horror classic The Exorcist was first released (actually at Xmas in 1973). The film is based on the novel by William Peter Blatty, which it follows very closely in depicting the demonic possession of a young girl and her mother’s attempt to rescue her through…

  • Rabz’ Radio Show November 2022: Movie Soundtracks

    The use of music in movies generally takes two forms – building or essaying the mood of a particular scene, (“the score”) or the use of a particular song (or theme) to emphasise a scene’s context. I’ve only got about four movie soundtracks in my collection that I’m aware of – they include: Betty Bleu…