Meet the Gods

Wade Major believes that 70mm is a metaphor for life, that all of life’s lessons can be gleaned from watching Lawrence of Arabia and Gilligan’s Island, and that cinema matters. Not just movies, but cinema — the experience of leaving your comfort zone and sitting down in a dark room with strangers, eating stale candy and sharing an emotional experience which, in the best of circumstances, will enable you to see yourself through someone else’s eyes. If he could, he would raise statues to David Lean, Stanley Kubrick, Zhang Yimou, Krzysztof Kieslowski and Satyajit Ray, build a temple to Billy Wilder and sacrifice a ram to John Badham because he’d totally appreciate the gesture. Jerry Lewis is his spirit animal. 

MARK KEIZER is a longtime film critic whose has written for Boxoffice Magazine, Entertainment Today, L.A. Citybeat and other outlets no one has heard of. He also co-authored the book Ultimate DVD: The Essential Guide to Building Your DVD Collection, published by Berkley Publishing Group. Mark is an Emmy-nominated producer with experience in short form online content as well as late-night comedy, daytime talk, reality shows, game shows, variety shows, live news and hidden camera. Most recently, Mark was Executive Producer of New Media at E! Entertainment Television. Previously, he was Co-Executive Producer of Seasons 5 and 6 of Comedy Central’s The Man Show. Keizer’s daytime duties include Supervising Producer of the syndicated talkfest The Roseanne Show. Other talk show producing credits include The Late, Late Show with Tom Snyder. Over the years, he’s produced shows starring Howard Stern, Greg Kinnear, Alan Thicke and many others. And yet, he’d still rather take a sick day and watch Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan for the 40,000th time.

TIM COGSHELL started writing about movies nearly 30 years ago as a black film critic for Entertainment Today Magazine. Later he became a film critic who was black, and wrote for Boxoffice Magazine, Los Angeles’ CityBeat and ValleyBeat, ABC News Online and other pillars in the fourth (and definitely not fifth) estate. In recent years Tim has returned to his original status as a black film critic, penning essays for Alt-Film Guide, commentating on black stuff for KNBC and FOX news in Los Angeles, and talking about black stuff in the movies for NPR’s Code Switch team. Tim also talks about Not-Black-Stuff in movies on FilmWeek, for NPR affiliate KPCC, and on his own CinemaInMind podcast — where he does actually talk about a lot of … black stuff. 

RAY GREENE is a bitter old curmudgeon who wants you to get off his lawn. He has mowed grass for such outlets as Salon.com, the Los Angeles Times, The Wrap, and too many others to name. He created Boxoffice.com, the first comprehensive film website on the internets way back in 1993, so it’s all his fault. He thinks bitter old white guys like himself should go off to an elephant’s graveyard somewhere, curl up into a ball and die. Then fresh young voices will have a chance to review the movies from the MARVEL/STAR WARS/ESPN/MOUSKETEER crossover universe that you just KNOW will come. One day. If we’re all very good.

After contributing to most of the major L.A. papers, LUKE Y. THOMPSON  was the first writer of note to cover Comic-Con in depth, panel by panel, for a major entertainment trade, under Nikki Finke at Deadline. He was also one of the first print critics to regularly review fast food, for OC Weekly. He always figured those would stay his niches rather than becoming the dominant paradigm, and would like to apologize for all that. (He’d like to, but he probably won’t.) Contrary to popular stereotypes, he loves every kind of cinema, from Nudist Colony of the Dead to Bicycle Thieves, and all points around and in-between, and would love it if his current affinity for analyzing any and all movies in-depth and in text would catch on with the crowds. He also reviews and photographs toys, because Toy Twitter is much nicer and more knowledgeable than Film Twitter. His wife is an actress. Cast her.