In the month of July, I take a look at films released in my very favorite film stock and aspect ratio: black & white in anamorphic. Unless they’re being financed with credit cards, movies are rarely shot like this anymore because they’re impossible to sell to television. Yet these dreams sneak onto Turner Classic Movies [...]

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In the month of June, Joe Valdez “takes over” programming of the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles with a series of double features on his favorite film themes.
Here’s Part 2 of a bill featuring high tech conspiracies in L.A.

Blue Thunder (1983)
Directed by John Badham
Written by Dan O’Bannon & Don Jakoby and Dean Riesner [...]

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Firefox (1982)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Screenplay by Alex Lasker & Wendell Wellman, based on the novel by Craig Thomas
Produced by Clint Eastwood
136 minutes
Arriving with fanfare in June 1982 and introducing Clint Eastwood to a generation of mallrats — who were either too young to get into R-rated movies or too busy pumping quarters into Q*bert [...]

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Space Cowboys (2000)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Written by Ken Kaufman & Howard Klausner
Produced by Clint Eastwood, Andrew Lazar
130 minutes
There’s junk orbiting Space Cowboys, an adventure comedy so good on so many different levels and so pedestrian on the same number of levels. Ken Kaufman & Howard Klausner wrote the script on spec with Paul Newman [...]

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