The Corner Penthouse

Ladies and Gentlemen, children of all ages, welcome to the Greatest Show on Earth!

Okay, okay, maybe that's overstating things just a little bit. In any case, welcome to The Corner Penthouse, my new site/blog where I will post articles and insights on topics that are NOT Ghostbusters-related. Since August 1996, I've run the Ghostbusters fansite Spook Central. Occasionally, I've snuck some non-Ghostbusters items on there, but the plans I have would be TOO non-Ghostbusters to use there. I've become quite interested in identifying filming locations in TV shows and movies I watch, so the majority of stuff I have for this second site/blog will be stuff like that. I've identified WAY too many sites to use on Spook Central, and it's not a suitable project for The Corner Penthouse Facebook page, so I had to create a new site just to have a place for it.

You may notice that, even though this is a welcome post, it's not the first post here. I have decided to move all of the reviews and articles I've written on other sites over the past 15 years. I want to have all of my work in one place.

I'm opening this site on Halloween not with a filming location article, but with a rare Beetlejuice promo booklet eBook download. Back when I was in grade school in the 1980s, I acquired the "Beetlejuice: Beginner's Guide To Seeing Ghosts" theatrical promo booklet. I'm quite positive that this was given out to moviegoers at the first public screenings of Beetlejuice back in 1988. Before I sold it, I scanned it in so I could retain a digital copy, and archive it for future generations (something I do with vintage out-of-print Ghostbusters book as part of Spook Central's arm of the Ghostbusters PDF eBook Preservation Project). So, without further ado, click on the cover image to download the 2.8 Mb file. Thanks to Matthew Jordan (Spook Central and Ghostbusters Wiki staff member) for cleaning up the images.


By the way, the PDF has a Spook Central credits page because I'm too lazy to create a new one for this site.

When WWE finally released the Hulk Hogan/Tiny Lister flick "No Holds Barred" on DVD in 2012, I was overjoyed. Not because it's a good movie - far from it - but because it has special sentimental childhood value to me, so it was a film I wanted to have as part of my current video library (I had previously owned it on VHS and laserdisc). When that disc came out, two things I wondered about were (1) Why was there no simultaneous Blu-ray release?, and (2) Why does the DVD not include the tie-in wrestling matches and other promotional materials that WWE has in their massive tape library? The only extra on the DVD is a photo gallery. I put off buying the DVD for over a year because it wasn't worth the price being charged for so little content.

Read more »

It is with great sadness that I report that my dear friend, Doreen Mulman, passed away today at the young age of 52. I spoke with her roommate and our mutual friend, Nora Salisbury, who told me that she died of an apparent heart attack sometime after 9:00 am. [4/14/2014 UPDATE - I e-mailed Nora to inquire about the official cause of death and she told me that "on the death certificate it says primary cause was arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease and secondary cause was congestive heart failure". So, essentially it was a heart attack that took our beloved Doreen :-( ]

For those of you who weren't around in the early days of the Ghostbusters online community, Doreen was a co-creator and co-webmistress of The Ghostbusters Fan Forum, which was the ultimate resource for fan artwork, writings, and other fan contributions (before these things were commonplace thanks to social networking sites). An Extreme Ghosthead since the 1980s, I was honored when Doreen accepted my request to be an admin on the Spook Central Facebook page. (Her last post was on February 28, 2014, which was a link to an article about the minor league baseball team, the Toledo Mud Hens, wearing Ghostbusters-inspired uniforms for a May 30th game in honor of the film's 30th anniversary and Harold Ramis' recent death.)

Read more »

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* Page 1 - Introduction
* Page 2 - The Funeral
* Page 3 - A Life In Pictures
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It is with a heavy heart and a great deal of loss that I'm writing this message to inform all of my dear friends and online associates of the passing of my father, Joel Richard Rudoff, at the age of 69.

This was certainly NOT the first post of 2014 that I intended to write. I was actually hoping that post would be to happily report that I bought a new computer; a purchase that may happen at a much later date, or not at all at this point.

Read more »

Pages: 1· 2· 3

Disney's Stitch: Experiment 626 (re-released in Disney Classics packaging) is a 3D platformer based on characters from the 2002 animated Disney film "Lilo & Stitch", and is billed on the back of the case as a prequel to that film. As such, do not expect to see Lilo, Nani, or Pleakley in the game - though Stitch, Dr. Jumba Jookiba, Captain Gantu, and Dr. Habbitrale are all here.

Read more »

Although this review is about the Stripes Extended Cut Blu-ray, I'm specifically writing it for all of those unfortunate souls who purchased the Stripes "Extended Cut" DVD. Chances are, if you own that DVD, you are royally annoyed by some of the poor choices Sony made in authoring that disc. Those of you who don't own that disc, let me give you a little insight into the problems with it...

Read more »

Most people who review the PlayStation 3 (320GB Uncharted 3 Bundle) will probably focus on the games. I'm going to focus on everything else, especially some of the little details that most reviewers won't mention. Hopefully I'll mention a specific detail that is important to you so my ramblings and notes won't be in vain :-)

Read more »

I really don't understand why any company would author a DVD like TNA did with their The Best of the Asylum Years, Vol. 1 DVD. The majority of the footage on this DVD was shot in 2002-2004 in a 4:3 aspect ratio. However, NONE of the footage is presented in the proper aspect ratio on the DVD. It is either stretched into a 16:9 aspect ratio, or the top and bottom is cropped off to put it into a 16:9 aspect ratio.

Read more »

Normally when Warner Bros., which owns New Line (the studio that made these movies), puts out a Double/Triple/Quadruple Feature of previously-released material, they simply use the disc images from those previously-released DVDs to make new dual-sided DVDs. For an example of this, look at any of their "Four Film Favorites" titles, or even the 2009 single-disc re-release of Miss Congeniality 1 & 2. I figured that would be the case with the Mr. Nanny/Suburban Commando Family Double Feature, but I was wrong.

Read more »

The Fat Albert's Easter Special DVD by UrbanWorks Entertainment contains just one episode, "The Fat Albert Easter Special", which aired on 4/3/1982 on CBS (according to the insert card), and has an exact runtime of 23:12. This so-called Easter Special really has very little to do with Easter. For a minute or two at the very beginning the kids are painting Easter eggs, and for a minute at the end they're eating hard-boiled Easter eggs, and that's all there is in the main story that's Easter-related. There's a Brown Hornet short (which the insert card says is entitled "Casnac") randomly inserted a few minutes into the episode as a way to eat up some of the special's short runtime, which is the most Easter-related part of the entire special, and it's a trippy adventure in outer space on a planet inhabited by Easter bunnies!

Read more »