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220 Heyn Ave. Saginaw, MI 48602 989.607.2777 gdwalton@chartermi.net Greg Walton QUALIFICATIONS A team leader and creative production specialist, my professional experience crosses several mediums – cable, broadcast, radio and print – with a history of innovative ideas and outstanding results. Currently working in the commercial advertising industry with strong skills as a writer, videographer and non-linear editor. EDUCATION 1995-1998 MFA Film Production, University of Utah 1989-1993 BA Telecommunications, Michigan State University EMPLOYMENT 2000- Present Creative Services Manager, Charter Media Writer/Videographer/Editor supervising a staff of six other producers. Responsible for creative execution of local advertising campaigns. Utilizing digital video equipment and Avid editing software along with various post-production tools (AfterEffects, Boris Red, Photoshop). 1999-2000 Copywriter, Serino Coyne Advertising Designed creative print, radio and television campaigns for 90% of the t...

Dear Dr. Sir or Madam, It is with enthusiastic interest that I submit the following materials in consideration for the VISUAL MEDIA SPECIALIST position. Without belaboring the facts spelled out in the attached resume, I’d like to highlight some of my professional qualifications. Coming into the video profession just as the digital revolution hit, I’ve been fortunate enough to work with cutting edge non-linear editing hardware and software (Avid, Smoke, Final Cut Pro, ProTools) throughout my career. As a filmmaker and advertising producer, I’ve pushed the limits of the latest technology and continue to expand my knowledge of the trade. My career has taken me to the heart of Manhattan (both as a freelance editor and copywriter for one of the largest advertising firms in New York) to an active video production management position with Charter Media, the advertising division of the nation’s third largest cable operator. I currently head the area’s premiere production facility with a bevy o...

THE FLICK: If you didn’t grow up with The Warriors the whole thing might seem more than a little ridiculous. Never mind the hardcore 70’s vernacular (“Can you dig it?”) and screaming synthesizer score. What the hell kind of street gang paints their face like KISS and dresses up in leftover NY Yankees uniforms? Enjoying The Warriors means buying into director Walter Hill’s comic book mythological fantasy. But with no pre-film set-up (where are we...the past, the future or some alternate reality) it’s easy to see why audiences expecting a traditional action flick where left scratching their heads. Of course, the film has been appreciated by just as many fans and critics because those questions were left unanswered. But that didn’t stop Hill from jumping at the opportunity to correct (some might prefer “tamper with”) the original version, which was rushed into production to beat a number of other gang related movies headed for the screen. The Ultimate Director’s Cut adds very little (if a...

THE FLICK: Watching an actor as iconic as John Wayne finish out his career can be a painful thing. We’re not talking about some bit player from Omaha. This is John Wayne; a man who played essentially the same character in nearly 200 films over 5 decades and cemented himself into the national identity. So when that identity changed during the Vietnam era – from unquestioning patriotism to cynical mistrust – Wayne became a symbol of right-wing politics gone wrong. And very few members of the free love generation were able – or willing - to separate the actor from the man. Hence The Cowboys, probably Wayne’s best performance in the modern era (he would only make six more films) has slipped into a pile of half-forgotten Westerns the actor crammed into his fading career. His role as Wil Andersen doesn’t differ significantly from any of the other rough, tough cattlemen Duke has played over the years, but his approach to the material is shaded in nostalgia. Like Wayne himself, Wil Andersen is...

THE FLICK: Without getting too philosophical about it, today’s kids seem to have an ever narrowing window of “innocence;” a time when imagination is more important than cable TV, when friendship means something more than cliques and popularity, where all the trials and tragedies of life seem so far away you can almost believe they’ll never happen at all. Bridge to Terabithia deals with all these subjects in a very sensitive and uncynical way, telling the story of two misfit pre-teens who invent their own imaginary kingdom and spark a powerful friendship. Based on the book by Katherine Paterson, Terabithia has been marketed as an effects-laden spectacular along the lines of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. But the truth is, other than about 10-minutes of trolls, monster squirrels and warrior bugs, the story is an old school “after-school special.” Hence my conflicted feelings about a movie that has honorable of intentions but will likely dash the expectations of ADD kids looking fo...

THE FLICK: “You got your monster-movie in my human-rights film! “No, you got your human-rights film in my monster-movie!” I’m not sure if it’s worth arguing about, but Primeval definitely has itself an identity crisis. We don’t get many big budget creature features any more (the Sci-Fi Channel seems to scoop them up, cut their budgets down to a percentage, and cast Dean Cain in the lead), so there must have been some pressure to make the film about more than just a giant crocodile on the loose eating up Africans and a traveling trio of journalists. Primeval tries to turn it’s croc into a metaphor – something about “making our own monsters” – but loses momentum by shifting the focus away from the chomping and gulping to score points for humanity. Inspired by the true story of Gustave, a legendary predator that stalked African waterways and was responsible for untold deaths, Primeval sends its three fictional journalists (Dominic Purcell of Prison Break, Orlando Jones from the 7UP ads, a...

THE FLICK: The name Emmanuelle has become synonymous with “sex.” And just like Kleenex or Frisbee, there’s a lot of value in defending that brand recognition. So a movie written and directed by the “real” Emmanuelle was an understandable hot property on the heels of the Sylvia Kristel adaptation in 1974. Of course what the public didn’t know was the “real” Emmanuelle didn’t exist. Emmanuelle Arsan was a Thai actress, featured briefly in Steve McQueen’s The Sand Pepples. Her husband, Louis Jacques, was the actual author behind the novel, writing under his wife’s name to protect his politically sensitive career. However, when the opportunity arose to write and direct Laure, his own erotic odyssey co-starring his wife, Jacques and Hollywood jumped at the chance. It’s easy to claim the goal the erotica film genre is to string together one titillating sequence after another with as little filler between nude scenes as possible. That’s certainly what producer Ovidio G Assonistis had in mind....

THE FLICK: Watching an actor as iconic as John Wayne finish out his career can be a painful thing. We’re not talking about some bit player from Omaha. This is John Wayne; a man who played essentially the same character in nearly 200 films over 5 decades and cemented himself into the national identity. When that identity changed during the Vietnam era – from unquestioning patriotism to cynical mistrust – Wayne became a figure of right-wing politics gone wrong. And very few members of the new generation were able – or willing - to separate the actor from the man. Hence The Cowboys, probably Wayne’s best performance in the modern era (he would only make six more films) has slipped into a pile of half-forgotten Westerns the actor crammed into his fading career.

THE FLICK: Plenty of films have been crowned the “Greatest Western of All-Time!” At any given point in history you’ll find The Searchers, Stagecoach, or High Noon at the top of the list. Meanwhile, Howard Hawk’s Rio Bravo, which also has it’s avid supporters (director John Carpenter, whose films have all been a variation on Hawksian themes, even contributes a commentary on this DVD), always seems to linger in that second tier of classic cowboy adventures. Perhaps because Hawks’ own Red River (1948), which gave star John Wayne his most ambitious role to date, ranks so highly that any other Western suffers by comparison. Whatever your preference, Rio Bravo still is a landmark film for a number of reason. As with Red River, it provided a career resurgence for Wayne, marking his transition from rough ‘n tumble action-hero to a middle-age movie star whose stare spoke a thousand words. The script established a template for innumerable action pics to come, trapping its heroes in an isolated s...

THE FLICK: As Hollywood digs further in the pantheon of comic-book heroes mining for cinematic success, Hellboy seem the most unlikely of choices. Not for lack of creativity, mind you. The eccentrically inventive story combines Nazis, demons, secret government agencies and doomed love triangles to great effect. But it’s precisely this hodge-podge of ingredients that should have made any adaptation of Mike Mignola’s witty sardonic hero nigh impossible. Should have. But I don’t think anyone was counting on director Guillermo Del Toro’s masterful balancing act of humor, horror, action and actual character development...especially when your character is a 9-foot tall red-skinned devil-child with sawed off horns and a pointed tail. When all is said and done, Hellboy makes for an invigorating experience – unpredictable, unusual and all the more exceptional because none of this cult comic book BS should work on the big screen...but it does. Kicking off during WWII with a raid on demon-conjuri...

During their hey-day in the 60’s, spaghetti westerns got no respect. And that might still be the case today if it weren’t for one director: Sergio Leone. The most obvious reason for the success of his “Man With No Name” trilogy is the presence of Clint Eastwood. But it was Leone’s work behind the camera that made Eastwood a star...not the other way around. The stylized violence and copious close-ups of squinting eyes established the formula quite well in Fistful of Dollars, but it’s also Leone’s weakest entry. For A Few Dollars More is a much more enjoyable film, adding Lee Van Cleef as a worthy adversary for Eastwood’s wandering anti-hero. And with The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Leone stretched the genre to fit more grandiose ideas than anyone ever thought possible. Ego may have been the motivating factor (Leone always saw himself as a David Lean-type director whose skills went unrecognized), but the result is irrefutably one of the best westerns ever made. The final film in the set,...

THE FLICK: It’s finally become fashionable to bash the French. And why not? Their opinion of Americans seems to be colored almost exclusively by celebrity coverage on E! and the glut of Hollywood movies invading their county. So if turnabout is fair play, then I should be able to use District B13 as some sort of social barometer for French culture, right? Consider the challenge met, my froggy friends. Luc Besson is the Gallic equivalent of Jerry Bruckheimer, pumping out middle-to-high-class action films with a regularity matched only by a senior citizen on Metamucil. The glory days of his directing career (La Femme Nikita and The Professional) seem to be behind him, but his stylistic influence is an overwhelming presence in every film he produces. District B13 mixes the hyperkinetic look of Besson’s previously successful Transporter franchise with the latest fad in fighting styles: free running or parkour. Defined by Wikipedia as “the ability to quickly access areas that would otherwis...

THE FLICK: It’s always exciting to bear witness to that unique Hollywood phenomenon of directorial carte blanche; when a filmmaker has earned enough street cred or box-office mojo to do whatever they hell they want with no studio interference. More often than not the project emerges impossibly flawed (any of M. Knight Shyamalan’s films post-Sixth Sense, for example), embarrassingly self-indulgent (Tarantino’s Death Proof segment of Grindhouse, to a tee) or off-the-mark anti-climactic (Bryan Singer’s recent Superman redux). But there’s something about all those films that is still eminently “watchable.” They’re the product of filmmakers freed of the usual fiscal responsibilities; no fear of script notes, no test audience peer pressure. So even if they crash and burn, they’re putting something up on the screen that a studio pawn like Brett Ratner never will: the unexpected. After earning more money than God with The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson decided to stay independent, producing...

THE FLICK: You won’t find many people who’d debate The Road Warrior’s status amongst the best action films ever made. Words can’t describe the experience. Perhaps that’s because director George Miller uses so few of them, preferring to construct his apocalyptic sequel to Mad Max with bravura action set-pieces, culminating in a relentless 20-minute chase sequence that will likely never be topped in the history of cinema. Bold statement, I know. But The Road Warrior (or Mad Max 2 as it’s known in Australia and now presented uncut on Warner’s remastered Blu-ray DVD) is the sort of bold filmmaking that only happens every 50 years or so. It’s a film that quite literally cuts to the chase, introducing its players in broad but colorful strokes and defining their character through action rather than words. Its success launched a myriad of apocalyptic copycats, but none of the could replicate the full-throttle, vehicular mayhem Miller put on screen...not even Miller himself in the next sequel, ...

THE FLICK: Producer Jerry Bruckheimer is a pretty savvy guy. He’s currently responsible for both the #1 show on TV (CSI) and the #1 box-office winner from 2006 (Pirates of the Caribbean 2). So it’s mystifying how he completely botched the marketing for Déjà Vu, a pseudo-sci-fi entry starring Denzel Washington that was pitched to audiences with such an aire of vagueness one was expecting a Shyamalan-style supernatural mindf*** instead of an Enemy of the State-meets-Timecop thriller (writer Bill Marsili actually quotes Time After Time as an inspiration, so that works too). The advertising held everything back; an admirable plan of attack in a world where trailers give away everything except who played “Pedestrian #2. But, truth is, the movie itself is pretty up front about the “big secret” only a scant 20-minutes into the picture. So all that valuable ad time would have been better spent telling people exactly what to expect. Washington plays ATF agent Doug Carlin (yet another in the act...

“We had a pact!” You can almost hear Robert Rodriguez whining after his directorial gang-bang with pop-culture crotch-sniffer Quentin Tarantino failed to produce the collective audience orgasm they both expected. For his half of the double-feature - Planet Terror - Rodriguez delivered a frenetic, pus-filled time-waster that fit perfectly into the contemporary zombie zeitgeist. Pops, hiss, scratches and missing reels help sell the concept but it’s Rose McGowan and her machine-gun gam that gives you something to remember. At its most inspired, Grindhouse makes good on its promise of a unique recreation of the back-row, ripped-seats, shit-cinema two-fers that folks enjoyed on both coasts. QT, however, doesn’t bother to play by the Grindhouse rules, wasting a truly man-size performance by Kurt Russell and focusing on his puerile fascination with Zoe Bell (Uma Thurman’s stunt double in Kill Bill). Death Proof is a throwback, not to the exploitation hey-day, but to Tarantino’s immature, mast...

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THE FLICKS: As a movie Phantasm is almost impossibly hard to describe. Yet that didn’t stop it from entering the pantheon of must-see ‘70s horror films right alongside Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes and other drive-in ready shockers. Yet unlike his fellow filmmakers, Phantasm­’s director Don Coscarelli never turned that success into much of a career (unless you count endless repeats of his Conan knock-off The Beastmaster on TNT). And watching this new special edition from Anchor Bay it’s pretty clear why. Phantasm is a home movie at heart. Its flaws are obvious but endearing. The cast of amateur actors don’t even approach the normal level of professionalism in a B-movie. They look and dress like authentic hippies working for free beer and a bag of weed. Not to mention the script, which skips scenes and adds characters with the kind of free-form surrealism borne from budget constraints rather than artistic choice. Still...Phantasm has an unpredictable imagination. And Coscarelli bravely...

THE FLICKS: Directors like Mario Bava are the reason cult movie fans exist. Working under miniscule budgets with fly-by-night foreign producers who distributed the final product under a seemingly endless amount of alternative titles, often just tracking down the muddy lineage of Bava’s work is a genealogical case study unto itself. But it’s the thrill of the chase that fans enjoy most, sifting through the pseudonyms and cinematic dead-ends to unearth something truly special from a man who was 30 years ahead of his time. Well, Anchor Bay has done most of the work for you in the form of The Mario Bava Collection Volume 1, a 5-disc set that includes two of the director’s most notable and celebrated works (Black Sunday and Black Sabbath), an early giallo comedy (The Girl Who Knew Too Much), a Viking action-movie (Knives of the Avenger) and supernatural thriller (Kill, Baby, Kill), not to mention the heist-gone-wrong exploitation entry, Kidnapped (aka Rabid Dogs), sold as a separate release...

LIMBECK LIMBECK Doghouse (www.doghouse.com) A pop-rock pick-me-up Contrary to the title of the best track on Limbeck’s self-titled album, Big Drag, frontman Robb Maclean is anything but a downer. “I don’t have a lot of tragedy in my life at the moment,” he says. No kidding. A random sample of lyrics might convince you the guy has never had a bad day in his whole SoCal life. And on their fourth CD, Limbeck, whose near constant state of touring makes them the alt-country equivalent of Kenyan marathon runners, continue to find nearly all their inspiration in the day-to-day monotony of life on the road...or life waiting to get back on it. It’s a knock Maclean has been keen to avoid, but the label still sticks. And even though close inspection of the lyrics is like a high dive into a kiddie pool, he shouldn’t be so eager to grow up. Not when Limbeck pulls together the most refreshing sing-song melodies you’re likely to hear this year. Channeling their emo influences for good not evil, the b...

THE FLICK: The British always seem to end the world with a whimper rather than a bang. Compare the dystopian apocalypse of Children of Men to the likes of Independence Day and you’ll see what I mean. Adapted from the work of mystery novelist P.D. James, it is the year 2027 and the world is dying a slow death after 18 years of infertility. Britain has closed its borders and actively rounds up illegals for deportation. The global atmosphere is one of gloom, doom and decay. From this prophecy of pessimisms emerges a miracle, a ‘fugee named Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey), inexplicably pregnant and in the care of anti-government activists. Through a series of clandestine plots and double-crosses, Kee winds up on the run with Theo (Clive Owen) on a near suicidal journey to reach the sea and a tenuous rescue by The Human Project. Despite the sci-fi element, Children of Men is a particularly human story that takes on much more cultural meaning by virtue of director Alfonso Cuaron’s (Harry Potter an...

THE FLICK: A young warrior’s tribe is viciously slaughtered by the marauding hordes of a fiendish king, prompting a quest for revenge that sprawls across a great wasteland and beyond. Sound like any barbarians you know? Sure, Hundra may have purchased all the leftover props and costumes from Dino De Laurentiis’ Conan and shot on the very same locations, but that’s where the similarities end claims director Matt Cimber. After all, Hundra’s a woman (played by wrestling legend Laurene Landon) charged with finding a suitable mate to provide “seed” to carry on her race of Amazonian warriors. And like any 20-something virgin, Hundra’s pretty picky. One of the most amusing commentary track moments on DVD this year comes when moderator and Subversive Cinema founder Norm Hill asks the director if Conan was an influence on his film. Allow me to paraphrase: Hill: “The opening of the film is very similar to Conan, isn’t it?” Cimber: “I don’t think so. There’s no raid in the beginning of Conan.” Hi...

THE FLICK: Black Christmas is the best straight-up slasher film of the new millennium. You might call that a poorly disguised attempt to get my name quoted on a DVD cover, but I’ll still defend the statement. And what’s more amazing, this is yet another re-make of a ‘70s cult milestone (a la Texas Chainsaw, Hills Have Eyes, etc) heralded as ushering in the genre of creepy POV shots and stalk-n-slash thrills. But where those other “re-imaginings” forced the issue with more gore, more intensity and less actual scares, writer/director Glen Morgan’s film nimbly jumps from slasher satire to twisted fairy tale and back again while ditching most of the tiresome clichés that have hung around since the original film was new. For a guy like Morgan - one half of the writing team behind Final Destination, Willard, and some of the most memorable X-Files episodes - the ambiguous origins of “Billy” had to be like an all-you-can-eat buffet. Bob Clark’s 1974 original wasn’t interested in starting a fra...

KILL BABY KILL: It’s been awhile since director Mario Bava earned himself a special edition. The birth of the DVD format saw several of the director’s films get some spit and polish, but since then most of the remastered titles have been bestowed upon Bava’s imitators rather than the master himself. So it’s nice to see Dark Sky Films release Kill Baby Kill, arguably his most inspired work, in the kind of condition fans have only dreamt of as they squinted through grainy, bleached-out, bargain-bin VHS tapes. A psychological ghost-story along the lines of Henry James or Shirley Jackson, a cast of recognizable Italian faces are besieged by the malicious spirit of a murdered young girl who wreaks her vengeance on the superstitious populace of a crumbling backwater community. Preceded by a bouncing ball and an innocent giggle, Bava turns this blond-tressed figure of supernatural evil into one of the most iconic images of his career. The fact that it was actually an 8-year-old boy performing...

THE FLICK: The irony of giving Pierce Brosnan the boot as James Bond is that financially it was a pretty poor decision. The “Remington Steele” era tallied up unprecedented box-office receipts worldwide and tied-in perfectly with an array of videogame adaptations that gave 007 his highest profile in decades. Creatively, however, the series has been nothing more than a bloated corpse for some time, shocked back into a jerky semblance of life every two years out of some moribund British tradition rather than any artistic need. So it’s to the producer’s credit that they took a chance on Daniel Craig; a stumpy, blonde pug-ugly version of Bond better suited as a secondary villain than as the suave super-spy to which audience’s had become accustomed. Not only that, but they ditched all they “Q” gadgets (laser watches, exploding lapel pins, etc.) that had been on the verge of overwhelming the franchise. In Casino Royale, Bond rolls into town in a Ford Focus. If that doesn’t scream working-clas...

THE FLICK: The creators of Re-Animator are spot-on when they attribute their film’s success to the video boom of the ‘80s – that magical era when underage kids across the country could walk into a “mom n’ pop” rental store and ogle shelf after shelf of temptingly lurid cover art, all of it promising the sort of illicit sex and gore only the new unrated video market could offer. How do I know this? Because (dramatic pause)... I WAS THAT UNDERAGE KID! Bet you didn’t see that coming. Well, neither did all the pimply-faced teenagers who took home a copy of Stuart Gordon’s debut feature, a wildly loose adaptation of a series of H.P. Lovecraft stories that combined dead-pan humor with outlandish amounts of blood. Anchored by a star-making performance from Jeffery Combs (that unjustly never turned him into a star), Re-Animator was one of the few films that lived up to the advertising on its box, pushing the limits of bad taste to the point of no return. After an over-the-top intro that expert...

THE FLICK: As a director, Jess Franco doesn’t just cut corners, he massacres them! It’s one of his most identifying traits as a Euro-trash auteur. Over the course of his career – which must span nearly 200 films under various aliases – Franco never seemed to have a budget larger than your average 8-year-old with a Handy Cam. So circumstances demanded severe compromises. Of course, these are the sort of challenges all filmmakers face. But Franco’s “quantity over quality” approach set the standard for exploitation cinema, excusing any number of onscreen gaffes and goofs as long as there were enough boobs and blood to provide a distraction. A lesser director might have hung his head in shame, but Franco simply continued to shoot, pumping out movie after movie and often turning a tidy profit for his producers. The DVD format has been particularly kind to Franco, polishing a numbers of turds into shiny special editions that almost convince you the guy had some talent. He doesn’t, just to ma...

THE FLICK: You would think magic and magicians would be a much more common subject for Hollywood, with all its inherent showmanship and mystery. However filmmaking itself is a sort of cinematic slight of hand, whether it comes in the form of editing, acting or special effects; it creates an illusion of reality in much the same way a good performer pulls off his master trick. This “double-negative” cancels out the thrill one might have watching a master magician at his craft on the screen, since any filmmaker worth his weight could perform the same feats of skill with a push of a button. The Prestige actually proves my point, after a fashion. At one point in this story of dueling magicians who physically and mentally mutilate one another in the course of their professional competition, much is made of the use of a “double” to pull off a particular trick. For Hugh Jackman’s character, a bitter showman with a flair for the stage, this is an unacceptable compromise. He wants to perform “re...

THE FLICK: Lucio Fulci’s reputation comes with a whole lot of baggage; namely a suitcase full of gore that the director lugged around beginning in the early 80’s until his death in 1996. His films were the very embodiment of “Fangoria”-friendly splatter-fests, full of body-obsessed, gross-out sequences that existed almost entirely outside the narrative. For Fulci, story was a distant second, but that didn’t stop Zombie, The Beyond and House by the Cemetery from becoming legendary in select horror film circles. All of which makes Perversion Story (aka One On Top Of The Other) stand out as an anomaly in the director’s oeuvre. Heavy on plot, if light on originality, Fulci proves that he could deliver a coherent, intriguing mystery if given the right material. Not quite a giallo by definition (Fulci’s Lizard in a Woman’s Skin is a better fit), the story involves a flashy San Francisco doctor (Jean Sorel) whose wife (the outstanding Maris Mell) dies under mysterious circumstances, leaving a...

THE FLICK: Let’s talk about what The Departed “isn’t” before we decide what it “is.” It isn’t the best film of the year, no matter what the buzz says. I know everyone wants to give Marty an Oscar, but, let’s be honest; anything he earns this year will be the equivalent of a Lifetime Achievement Award. And it isn’t Scorsese’s best effort since Goodfellas; hell, Casino and even The Aviator had more creative pizzazz. But it “is” the most commercially successful film of his career, fitting in snuggly into a categorical genre (or the closest the director has come since Cape Fear) and reinforcing the familiar themes and off-color details that have defined his work since Mean Streets in 1973, his first studio effort. Scorsese’s self-described “European sensibility” has always kept his work from reaching the masses like his childhood inspirations, Hollywood mainstream efforts of the ‘50s and ‘60s. The director’s own films emerged through a filter of Catholic guilt and street-level brutality. H...

THE FLICK: Anyone who still believes that Sarah Michelle Gellar was the reason behind the first film’s success, please raise your hand. Good, now that we’ve kicked all the Buffy fans out of the room we can get down to the facts. People enjoy these movies for two reasons: to laugh at them or to be scared s***less by them. In the case of Takashi Shimizu’s remake of the sequel to his original film’s sequel (it’s all very confusing), you’ve got a little of both. The story is straight-ahead stupid, juggling three stories across two continents with a moderately successful twist at the end. “God-girl” Amber Tamblyn takes over for Gellar, whose death is a highlight of the first act...and sweet retribution for anyone who sat through those Scooby-Doo movies. But the curse lives on, attaching itself to a trio of Tokyo schoolgirls (someone been surfing for internet porn!) who begin to see that creepy kabuki kid and his contortionist mom everywhere. That clever choreography is Shimizu’s one true ac...

THE FLICKS: The appeal surrounding “atom age” films of the ‘50s is difficult to explain. Loaded with ridiculous special effects, hammy “C”-list actors, and copious amounts of stock footage, quite often the sensationalistic advertising used on the poster was the best thing about the film. It’s obvious these movies weren’t meant to be studied (although they have been...extensively), they’re movies to be enjoyed with the same sense of Saturday matinee fun in which they were made. But I don’t think anyone would have expected them to attract the attention of the folks at Criterion, who’ve added The Atomic Submarine and First Man into Space, along with two superior Boris Karloff films, as part of the Criterion Collection 4-disc box set Monsters and Madmen. The original advertising for The Atomic Submarine seriously downplayed the sci-fi plot element, but there’s no mistaking the one-eyed alien from outer space taking shots at America’s submarine fleet. The U.S.S. Tiger Shark is sent in to de...