One question I am asked often enough that it should probably be entered into my FAQ goes something like this: Do you ever change a rating after going back and seeing a movie for a second time? The answer is "yes," but only rarely. The truth is that...
Reminiscences about old monster movies and how I first saw them - the infamous (and now defunct) Saturday afternoon TV show, "Creature Double Feature."
Note: This should not be misconstrued as a plea for help. I'm far too anal to cede control of any part of my main website to someone else. These are merely reflections about how much more is involved in the management side of running the site than ...
A certain degree of eccentricity is expected from celebrities. After all, considering their offbeat career choices (they spend their time pretending to be someone else) and stratospheric salaries, it's unreasonable to think they'll be "just like ...
For those involved in the motion picture industry, the process of editing commercial DVDs for content then offering them for sale in that edited format is anathema. There are a number of companies that offer this "service": CleanFilms, CleanFlicks, ...
A couple of times each month, I receive an e-mail from an irate reader complaining that a recent review contained an unmarked spoiler. My response is always the same: when I believe that a review includes a significant spoiler, I place a warning on ...
As a critic, perhaps I shouldn't be so cynical about movies I haven't yet seen. So let me state up front that my comments below have nothing to do with a movie's quality or lack thereof. I haven't seen these pictures. For all I know, this could be...
The lives and deaths, rises and falls, of the two longest-lived TV science fiction series: "Star Trek" and "Doctor Who".
Note: Someone sent me an e-mail last week encouraging me to write more frequent ReelThoughts. His rationale was that it would be "good for business," which is hard to deny. More Reelthoughts = more pageviews = more opportunities for readers to ...
There are essentially four types of film critics, and there's not a lot of love lost between members of the different groups. That doesn't mean we can't get along, but it's like putting Democrats and Republicans in the same room. As long as you don...
My enthusiasm for various aspects of pop culture is wearing thin. I don't think it's that I have grown too picky. Instead, it's that the people producing it have gotten lazy, lost their inspiration, succumbed to greed, or some combination of the ...
Now that the WGA strike is over, I feel remiss that I haven't even hummed a few bars of the "Hallelujah" chorus. The fact is, though, that the writers could have stayed on strike for another six months and it wouldn't have bothered me. In fact, I ...
Once upon a time, I too bristled with indignation when a film or performance I believed to be deserving was snubbed by those blind bastards who select the Oscar nominations. How dare they ignore the great and worthy performance of William Shatner in ...
Beginning this week, I have decided to re-structure the "Video Views" weekly column so it no longer represents a prose catalog of new releases but instead concentrates on one or two hot topics or something interesting associated with a new release. ...
I briefly considered writing a "formal" review of Peter Biskind's Down and Dirty Pictures, but decided that I didn't want to officially branch out into book criticism. I'd rather be able to read things without thinking about how I'm going to present...
Direct-to-DVD. Those words are not so much a label as they are a Scarlet Letter. If the industry wants to move forward with its stated goal of expanding the video market, the negative connotations associated with this term have to be removed. As long...
Recently, circumstances caused me to muse how much the advances in technology have impacted every aspect of my life over the course of the last three decades. When you think about it, it's amazing how things have changed, and all in the most subtle ...