Goldeneye arrived on Home Video this week in 1996, after a November 16th, 1995 theatrical release.Right as James Bond was dying. Not in a dramatic shaken-not-stirred type cliffhanger, but more of a slow, embarrassing, nobody’s-returning-calls kind of way. Moore had turned him into a cartoon but the overcorrection for Dalton had left 007 as someone … Read more
This was a rare VHS I bought sight unseen. Blockbuster had it in their previously viewed bin after barely two weeks as a new release, and at that price, the Johnny Depp and Christopher Walken marquee value was enough to take the chance on a 5.99 purchase. I went in cold, not really registering it … Read more
Growing up Gen X meant growing up on Boomer nostalgia. American Graffiti came out in ’73 and looked back at ’62, which is to say it was already romanticizing a past that was barely eleven years old. Can you imagine a show made today that took place in 2015 for nostalgia value? Happy Days started … Read more
It’s that day again… If you close your eyes and picture “the 90s,” you’re probably picturing 1995. Ok, mileage varies, but that was the year Friends ballooned into one of the biggest shows on television, Alanis dropped Jagged Little Pill, and bands like the Gin Blossoms and Better Than Ezra that started on college radio … Read more
For a marginalised generation that grew up with just three networks and a rotary dial, the early internet felt like the fulfillment of a promise. For the first time, we were creating mass media ourselves. Websites coded by hand, bulletin boards, IRC channels, early blogs full of animated Gifs that looked terrible and said something … Read more
Casablanca. Rebel Without a Cause. Easy Rider. Saturday Night Fever. The Big Chill. Every generation has a film or two that helped define it. Few movies tried to do it with their own tagline. “The Generation X comedy,” indeed. Only a handful of people seem to remember Don’t Do It (1994) and to be honest, … Read more
Mad Love ran away to home video today in 1995, after a May 26th theatrical release. The plot? Boy meets girl. Girl’s a little unhinged. Boy gets swept up in a whirlwind of manic pixie dream girl roadtripping chaos. Hits you right in the feels. ‘Nuff Writ. Nirvana, 7 Year Bitch, Luscious Jackson, Grant Lee … Read more
Batman Forever landed on Home Video today in 1995, after a June 16th theatrical drive thru. After the exquisitely bleak ‘92 yuletidey sequel, it was decided that Tim Burton would hand over the bat-reins to seasoned filmmaker Joel Schumacher to lighten things up and bring some of that Happy Meal money back. He moved the … Read more
It’s complicated… I had a bad night sometime in ’98. The kind of bad night you can only have when you’re in your mid-20s, tragically angsty, heartbroken, tipsy… and you end up wandering into a 24 hour video store at 1 AM on a Saturday looking for something to dull the existential pain. The shelves … Read more
A g-g-g-g-g-ghooooost!!!! Yes, Casper was resuscitated on home video today in 1995, after a May 26th theatrical haunting. The family-friendly white-clamshell classic was based on the Paramount animated theatrical shorts which ran between 1945 and 1959. I was way past the target demographic for this film when it was released, but I’d spent an inordinate … Read more