Anna Karenina (now in theaters)

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Hope you don't mind a brief discussion of the book-publishing industry. I know this a cinema blog, but in my opinion books tend to be slightly less of a disgraceful waste of time and mammoth human resources than movies. Anyway, a recent pop-fiction phenom has been an imprint called Quirk, who hit big with the Jane Austen horror "mashups" Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. Oh, and their Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter was popular enough to be turned into a 2012 movie that nobody, apparently, likes. Too bad, I actually found the book diverting, even if the undead gimmick didn't carry sufficiently to the end. Anyway, it's clear that Quirk's money-making endeavors are, at this point, aimed for what the corporate types like to call cross-media exploitation, conceived with a view to movie adaptations and action figures and probably theme parks by now, built on the launch-platform of formula mashup books. It was impossible not to notice Quirk star author Seth Grahame-Smith as one of the screenwriters of the 2012 bigscreen reboot of DARK SHADOWS (which was also widely disliked).

Hipsters (June 29th and 30th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[HIPSTERS screens Friday June 29th at 9:15 pm and Saturday June 30th at 6:50 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Ever had false-memory syndrome? I think I just did; probably the reason I'm not being called as a witness at the Jerry Sandusky child-abuse trial. Besides, as far as Jerry Sandusky goes, I say anyone named after an Ohio city is automatically guilty. Movie director Chris Columbus? Guilty as hell, whatever he did. Give him the maximum.

But I had false memory syndrome of actually having seen the 2008 Russian musical HIPSTERS a few years ago. Nothing definite, just a sense that I beheld and enjoyed the nostalgic tone and the cast and all that; it was a real crowd pleaser, and I smugly predicted it would go on to become Russia's DIRTY DANCING, and a worldwide smash. I probably told all of you to go buy those shares of stock in the studio or anything that Russian director Valery Todorovsky touched if you all wanted to get rich, like everyone else was getting in early 2008, remember?