Have Mandolin Will Travel

A look at the zany but extremely fun comic "Justice League vs Godzilla vs Kong" which is exactly what it sounds like.

A look at Opera Orlando's 2026 production of the Pulitzer Prize winning "Silent Night," a 2011 opera about the Christmas Truce of 1914.

A deep dive into the fantastic Iranian vampire fairy tale Western film "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night," written and directed by Iranian-American filmmaker Ana Lily Amirpour.

You should watch this movie.

A look at the 2011 film adaptation of Shakepeare's "Coriolanus," directed by and starring Ralph Fiennes. It's staged with a late 90s Balkan War aesthetic and is pretty awesome, both as a film and as an adaptation.

"Coriolanus" is relatively obscure for a Shakespearean tragedy and is rarely performed. (A quick straw poll of my friends revealed most of them had never heard of it.) I *really* like the play and I'm very happy to have a good film adaptation of it, especially since my chances of seeing it on stage are pretty low.

A deep dive into the obscure 1983 horror film "The Keep," directed by Michael Mann and the slightly less obscure 1981 F. Paul Wilson novel it's based on. The premise is great: German soldiers occupying a keep in Romania during World War 2 get slaughtered by a supernatural force.

While the book is enjoyable and interesting (though it doesn't stick the landing). the film is a wreck, plagued with production problems and savaged in the final edit. This was a really fun one to think about from an adaptation perspective.

A deep dive into the classic 1971 blaxploitation film "Shaft" and the 1970 novel it is based on.

The film is good and very important to both film and pop-culture. The book is *really* good and it's interesting to see how different it is than the movie despite the events being largely the same.

Inspired by Opera Orlando's production of the tragic opera "Lucia di Lammermoor." I read the book it was adapted from: Sir Walter Scott's novel "The Bride of Lammermoor."

The book is pretty good and, weirdly, often quite funny which is *very* different than the opera. It was an interesting read, especially after having seen the opera.

A look at Opera Orlando's 2024 production of "Lucia di Lammermoor," an 1835 opera by Gaetano Donizetti. The opera is based on Sir Walter's Scott's 1819 novel "The Bride of Lammermoor."

This production was put in a Game of Thrones setting and was really good. I also read the book, which I will look at in the next episode.

Part 2 of my series on "The White Buffalo." This one both takes an even deeper dive into the novel which, spoilers, is actually pretty good, and revisits the film adaptation with some enlightenment after having read the source. (I recant some of my theories from the previous episode on why the film is the way it is.)

It makes me sad that this book is out of print. Again: it's pretty good.

A deep dive into the 1974 Western "The White Buffalo," a film adaptation of Richard Sale's 1975 pulp novel of the same name starring Charles Bronson. This film is kind of a train wreck, but a really interesting one to do an autopsy on.

This ended up being the first entry in a two part series about "The White Buffalo". I was so fascinated by this film that my friend James bought me a copy of the out of print novel as a joke. It's *way* better than the film, as in "actually pretty good" and it inspired me to write part 2. (See the next episode)

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