Category Archives: Site News

Thoughts on the Thin Man – The Book!

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Hey, if you enjoy these posts in website form, you will also enjoy if one pops up in book form, along with a bunch of other essays by other bloggers from around the interwebs! What I mean is an essay by yours truly appears in the book Thoughts On The Thin Man: Essays on the Delightful Detective Work of Nick and Nora Charles, which was organized and edited by Danny at Pre-Code.com! The book is available in both ebook and printed format, and if you buy the paperback, you also get the Kindle version for free. All proceeds from the book go to the ASPCA. You like animals, right? Prove it by buying a copy of the book!

I’m a huge fan of the Thin Man series, it’s one of the first series I tracked down all the entries in when I started becoming heavy into film, and has become a nostalgia-fueled trip every time I return to watch some of them. Not only is there an essay by me in the book, but I’ll also have reviews of all six Thin Man features popping up on TarsTarkas.NET in the very quick future. But more on the book:

Undoubtedly some of the most witty and urbane films of Hollywood’s Golden Age, the six movies that composed MGM’s Thin Man series showcased a pair of wealthy, inebriated detectives who solve murders in their down time. Through the series’ run from 1934 to 1947, William Powell and Myrna Loy turned Nick and Nora Charles into a cinematic institution, showcasing a marriage that was sexy, funny, and exciting, whether there was a gun pointed at them at any given moment or not.

Thoughts On The Thin Man reflects on these famous films, looking back at Dashiell Hammett’s original inspiration, the genesis of the films, and the men and women who made them possible. This collection of essays covers all six movies, including detailed plot breakdowns, quotes, trivia, discussion of motifs, looks at the many spin-offs of the series, a couple of nostalgic odes, and even drinking games, including a custom cocktail devoted to the duo. Would you expect any less?

Thoughts on the Thin Man

I’m helpfully listed via the pen name Tars Tarkas, and here is a full list of contributors and links to their sites and all that fancy jazz:

More on Thoughts on the Thin Man at Pre-Code.com.

Once again, the link to buy the book is here, and this is the Kindle link. Buy buy buy!!!

(All Amazon links in this post are referrals)

TarsTarkas.NET turns 10!

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Cookie Monster Birthday
Has it been so long? Yes! Ten years ago, TarsTarkas.NET published it’s first review on terrible hand coded html, a review written so badly my random scribbles when taking notes on films are more coherent. Since then, the site has grown and grown and grown, encompassing reviews, news, essays, Mambo, wordpress, political stuff, rare movie information, podcasts, videos, lawsuit threats, friends, enemies, and electoral shenanigans. And I like to think that’s just the beginning…

Our traffic has gone up and down over the years, but our commitment to our readers has never been stronger. If it wasn’t for YOU, there would be a lot less incentive to do this. I probably still would, because I like writing, I like writing about movies, and I like seeing my writing improve, but it wouldn’t be anywhere near as fun. So thanks for sticking around! Maybe soon I’ll even write something worth reading…

A big thanks to all the former TarsTarkas.NET contributors over the years! Our first co-author was Iain Norman who ran the late and lamented FantasyFilmscapes.com. Our collabs are housed under the Slaying the Dragon tag. And let’s not forget our science corespondent, good ol’ Dr. Mobusu, who is totally not me writing under a different name. Once the articles making fun of racist rightwing morons proved popular, skiplogic soon joined in on the fun, becoming our most prolific writer, even joining us at the now on hiatus Politisink. skiplogic‘s abilities to drive rightwingers crazy surpassed even my own! dm was another contributor who joined up from the same forums (that would be the SomethingAwful forums), and also joined in at Politisink. dm is very informed on military privatization, private contractors who abuse their power, and all those suspicious links in between the military and government figures. I even managed to get POTUShead to write one article, amazing considering how little free time she had. POTUShead also helped break open the whole Rosanna Pulido fiasco.

Back to the movie world, some CineD goons headed the call to write as well! Sheldrake has contributed the most posts, he writes the amazingly awesome Pre-Code.com site that you need to check out immediately! Donald Hallene is a Disney expert who knows more about theme park rides than any human I know, you can see more of him on WagTheMovie.net. And let’s not forget Ian Maddison‘s awesome essay on Prometheus! Ian is a regular contributor to the Current Releases crew on Something Awful.

Speaking of collaborators, I can’t leave out Todd Stadtman from Die, Danger, Die, Die, Kill!, who is probably the movie blog guy from the internet I interact with most, including doing things that aren’t related to internet movie sites at all! But most importantly, we cohost the Infernal Brains Podcast when we’re not both crunched for time due to our demandingly popular social lives!

Other amazing people I’ve met in the past decade (and I apologize if I missed anyone!) include: duriandave from SoftFilm, an amazing resource on old Hong Kong/Chinese/Taiwanese films and a great guy. Karl from the xsmarkthespot blog, all the members of MOSS, Keith at Teleport-City, Beth from Beth Loves Bollywood, Miguel from Monster Island Resort Podcast, Carol from The Cultural Gutter, Karl from Fist of B-List, Ninja Dixon, David at Permission to Kill, Denis at The Horror!?, Kevin at Exploder Button, Emily at The Deadly Doll’s House of Horror Nonsense, and Memsaab at Memsaab’s Story. And Markus at Green People Soup, Sir Phobos from Knights of Mars Roundtable, Michael at Film Guinea Pig, Kozo at LoveHKFilm , Blueprint: Review, Matt at DTVConnoisseur, Barry at Cinematic Catharsis, all the goons at CineD, Ryan at TrashFilmGuru, all the crazy cats I follow on Twitter, especially the AICN Talkback refugees who don’t take no crap, Jeremy at DVDtalk, and everyone else!

10 years is just the beginning. There will be more news, more reviews, more weird stuff, more fun, more obscure foreign films, more podcasts. Even the puppet video reviews which will return eventually once I’m happy with a script. The ride will not be stopped! Not by bad movies and not by terrible movies. Not by lack of subtitles nor by lack of camera focusing. Not by webhosting problems, not by Russian hackers, not by scriptkiddie spammers, not by angry actresses mad that I said they were in a movie they were in and not by angry actors upset that I easily deduced their non-softcore acting name (both actual lawsuit threats!)

Now if you excuse me, I have to go buy a cake. And also study programming. And then write some movie posts! HOORAY, movie stuff!

Bounty Killer DVD giveaway! (Ended)

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EDIT: The contest has ended. Congrats to the winner and thanks to all the entrants, more than I expected! There will be more contests soon!

Who wants free stuff? Sure, we all do. And you can win a free DVD of Bounty Killer by just following the simple rules laid out below. We’ve been given this opportunity to give away a DVD provided by PartnersHub in exchange for posting the Bounty Killer blog app you see above. Bounty Hunter is on VOD and limited theatrical release now, and the DVD comes out in October.

It’s been 20 years since the corporations took over the world’s governments. Their thirst for power and profits led to the corporate wars, a fierce global battle that laid waste to society as we know it. Born from the ash, the Council of Nine rose as a new law and order for this dark age. To avenge the corporations’ reckless destruction, the Council issues death warrants for all white collar criminals. Their hunter’s – the BOUNTY KILLER. From amateur savage to graceful assassin, the BOUNTY KILLER’S now compete for body count, fame and a fat stack of cash. They’re ending the plague of corporate greed by exterminating the self serving CEO and providing the survivors of the apocalypse with retribution. These are the new heroes. This is the age of the BOUNTY KILLER.

That sounds pretty trippy. Like a reality show wild west mad max revenge of the 99% film. Or a comic book. I have not seen the film so I can’t attest to if it is any good or not.

To win the DVD, all you have to do is email me ( tarstarkas [at] tarstarkas.net ) with your name and address by the end of September 15th, 2013. I’ll pick a winner at random (via random.org) and send that info in and a DVD should arrive by magic. Or the mail service (USPS or FedEx) Confirmed from the company that US and Candada entrants only please, and they don’t accept PO Boxes. I will not use any of the names/addresses I get beyond picking a random winner (I can’t promise what PartnersHub will do with the winner) Any other questions feel free to ask below or via email. This is the first time I’ve worked with PartnersHub, but hopefully this can be a semiregular thing when the films are of-interest to the readership here. The Bounty Killer DVD is supplied by PartnersHub/Bounty Killer, at no cost to TarsTarkas.NET.

TarsTarkas.NET is 9 Years Old!

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Pink Cake

Yes this cake has pink icing. Because that rules.


Hey-hey! During our brief break where I got writer’s blocked the fuck up, TarsTarkas.NET crossed the magic milestone into 9 years online! So better late than never, especially when I have an excuse to buy a cake. A cake that was ON SALE! With PINK ICING! And mistakenly labeled marble cake when it was just vanilla (actually, BOO! to that point!)

Nine years is a long time, but we’ve only just begun. Plans are afoot to add some new features, and to bring back a few older ones that have fallen by the wayside. But I don’t want to jinx anything by giving away too much. So until then, it’s time to eat some cake!!!

Is Rise of the Dinosaurs SyFy's last Saturday Creature Flick for a long time?

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Haters gonna hate Decepticons
[adrotate banner=”1″]Because SyFy’s moving their movies to Thursday premieres for the summer! If you haven’t noticed, SyFy has gone loco and suddenly started to produce a bunch of actual science fiction shows and is attempting to become an actual network that follows its name and not just a place for edited movie reruns and wrestling. I, for one, support this endeavor, and whole-heartedly approve of SyFy’s attempt to bring a bunch of science fiction dramas to television. But, as fallout from this, one of the nights SyFy is setting up programming blocks will be Saturday. Thus, the movie premieres are getting moved to Thursdays! Long time watchers of SyFy (back when it was SciFi Channel!) might remember that Thursday was once the day these new movies premiered (and even became a day they would randomly premiere one anyway after the move to Saturday!) so this isn’t so out of line. It’s just been a good long while.

But before that happens, there will be a few more films popping up. First up is Stonados on April 27. It features tornadoes with rocks in them. May 11th features the premiere of Rise of the Dinosaurs, and there are no more movie premieres scheduled for the rest of May. The real mystery is Rise of the Dinosaurs. Because I can’t find a thing about it. Which means it’s probably something else renamed. But what? Asylum’s Age of the Dinosaurs? That doesn’t seem finished enough to be it. Jurassic Attack? It’s out in Europe, so maybe. A bootleg Ice Age sequel? Or it could be something else entirely. No one who knows is saying nothing! Those jerks!

EDIT: Just got confirmation from the TuningIntoSciFiTV guys that Rise of the Dinosaurs IS Jurassic Attack! Also Stonados has been delayed due to the events in Boston (it is set in Boston)