IT'S NOT TOO LATE TO TURN BACK!

But if you really, really want to know more about the particularly handsome inmates running this asylum...

BILL CHAMBERS e-mail Born 4200 miles from Munich, Germany, Bill Chambers started FILM FREAK CENTRAL while still in film school in 1997 as a web archive for his print reviews, which were published in a newspaper called, yes, The NewS. The site outlived the gig to become the behemoth archive of critiques, interviews, and essays you see today with more than a little help from his talented friends. While maintaining FILM FREAK CENTRAL is a full-time job, Bill hopes to make it as a screenwriter and director and accepts that for now he is only a twentieth-century clichee--but hey, he has an IMdb bio thanks to his one finished short, Ursa Major. Bill has also taught film history and starting in September, 2002 can be seen in the pages of Canada's Marquee Magazine. He is a Capricorn. Movie He Tells Everyone To See: Jude (1996) Movie He's Seen More Times Than Any Other: Miller's Crossing (1990; 48 times as of 08/03/02) First Movie He Saw In A Theatre: The Muppet Movie (1979) Selected Bill Chambers reviews: Two Family House & Panic, Ghost World

WALTER CHAW e-mail The child of immigrant parents, Walter erupted fully formed, a collection of baggage and unexamined shadow projections untended by therapy and uncurbed by medication. Incalculable student loans, innumerable misplaced aggressions, and untold frustrated ambitions later, Walter finds himself here at the end of his third decade armed only with a press pass and a pen. A paladin for the medium, Walter is a freelance writer with stints on local (Rocky Mountain region) radio seasoned by the occasional gig as emcee/discussion moderator for festival-style events (Denver Public Library, Vail Mountain Film, Landmark Director's Series, Starz Director's Series). He is amazed every day that such a job as film criticism exists and that he's doing it in one of the most beautiful states in the union. Lovely, brilliant, and indulgent wife at Walter's side, faithful, neurotic, and fuzzy dog at his hip, our friendly neighborhood critic has seen the top of the mountain--if only in a Cineplex. And it is good. First Movie That He Saw in a Theatre: Star Wars (1977) Movie He Claims to Have Influenced Him the Most: The Conversation (1974) Movie That Actually Influenced Him the Most: Dragonslayer (1981) Selected Walter Chaw reviews: Mulholland Drive, Apocalypse Now Redux, Austin Powers in Goldmember

TRAVIS HOOVER e-mail Forged in the steely cauldron of Hamilton, Ontario, Travis has displayed a monomaniacal cinematic bent ever since he saw Star Wars at the age of four--a fact he's been living down ever since. As a child and adolescent he wandered the majestic theatres of his hometown, head addled with visions of aliens and explosions; in between he acted in more student theatre than any human being really ought to. At the age of 16 he graduated from fanboy status after a life-altering screening of Do the Right Thing (and numerous foreign films at the late lamented Broadway rep house), sending him on a mission to bring the hard stuff to the masses. A disastrous stint in at York University's film production program sent him packing into theory, which is just as well, considering where he ended up. He started his own site, DAYS OF THUNDER, at the suggestion of his fellow York survivor Bill Chambers. Dividing his time between screenings, two websites (his own and this one), and screenplay research, he is unwavering in his belief that somehow, someday, movies will change the world. Or give him a good laugh while somebody does. His Favourite Three Movies: Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988); In a Year of Thirteen Moons (1978); anything by Shohei Imamura from the sixties Favourite Three Guilty Pleasures: Oliver Stone; Ken Russell; King Solomon's Mines (1985) Favourite Quote from a Film Production Student at York: "I came here to make movies--not watch them!" Selected Travis Hoover reviews: Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy, All the Pretty Horses, Chuck & Buck

Other semi-regular contributors to this site include Christopher Heard, Vincent Suarez, Jarrod Chambers, and Stephen Reese.