Jason Fry's Blog

This Tumblr will no longer be maintained – BUT it’s been recreated as a Substack, also called Jason Fry’s Dorkery.

I don’t have any plans for subscriptions etc. right now, but I’m hoping the change of scenery will inspire more frequent posting about my various geeky endeavors.

Anyway, I’m now at https://jasonfry.substack.com/. I’d be honored if you joined me over there, and thanks so much for reading here over the last 10 (???!!!) years.

I’ve fallen behind on a winter’s worth of Movies Everybody’s Seen But Me and now it’s baseball season again, so some overdue capsule reviews….

Dark Victory (1939) 

A melodrama about Bette Davis as a young socialite diagnosed with brain cancer, with no hope for a cure – “prognosis negative,” as she spits in one key scene. Loses its footing at the end, with a simultaneously idyllic and faintly ridiculous switch to Vermont and Davis dying accompanied by a yowling celestial choir. Humphrey Bogart is m...

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HEY, COOL, SO I’M CRYING ABOUT OBI-WAN KENOBI AND ANAKIN SKYWALKER AGAIN.

This is such a fascinating look at their dynamic when Anakin was younger, that Anakin is clearly boiling with frustration and Obi-Wan’s reaction is to give him leeway, to understand that he’s working on it, that nobody’s perfect and nobody expects Anakin to be a perfect Jedi, but he’s getting there.  Obi-Wan praises Anakin several times in this issue alone and, when Anakin has an outburst at him, the whole...

More classic movies everyone’s seen but me!

They Live By Night (1948)

Bowie and Keechie are doomed young lovers in Nicholas Ray’s debut as a director. A lot of the tropes will be familiar to film noir fans – you know Bowie and Keechie will never achieve the normal lives they want, and the movie’s ending feels as fixed and inevitable as Shakespearean tragedy, with avenues of escape closing off one by one. But a few elements set it apart. For one thing, there’s the Depression setting, which offers s...

I joined my new Zoom besties Amy Ratcliffe and Mike Chen to discuss our From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back stories with Tim and Tom from Echo Base.

Talking with the awesome Tom Hoeler about my Wedge Antilles story in From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back. This book was such a pleasure to be a part of!

Winter rolls along! No baseball! That means catching up with more classic movies everybody’s seen but me!

The Sugarland Express (1974)

This is Steven Spielberg’s first big-screen feature (1971′s Duel was made for TV), and it’s amazing to think it arrived just a year before Jaws, which would change American movies forever.

It’s impossible to watch The Sugarland Express without analyzing it in terms of Spielberg style, which is too bad, because it can be enjoyed perfectly well if you don’t know who t...

More classic movies everybody’s seen but me!

Night of the Hunter (1955)

Just an amazingly strange film. It’s an American gothic, directed by Charles Laughton, of all people. How a veteran English actor wound up creating a singularly original piece of primal American outsider art is a fascinating puzzle, but he sure did. I watched Night of the Hunter in bemusement, not quite sure what I was watching, but know parts of it will stay with me forever. There’s Robert Mitchum’s shadow falling on a window...

Our A Met for All Seasons series at Faith and Fear in Flushing continues with a chronicle of my quest for a decent color photo of momentary Met Al Schmelz. (Hint: This isn’t it.)

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I’m halfway through The Clone Wars: Stories of Light and Dark and it’s about what I expected, it’s mostly just straightforward retellings of the episodes.  I had hoped for a bit more thoughts being woven into the perspectives, though I wouldn’t say any one of the stories I’ve read yet is worthless, either.  It’s perfectly serviceable so far, is generally my feeling.  (Mild, mostly general feelings spoilers so far, but feel free to block the “#solad spoilers” tag if you want to remain comple...