Video View (2008 Apr 15)

It's David Lean week at the video store. Three of his films: Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai, and A Passage to India are being re-released as two-disc Collector's Editions. This is fine - classics like this deserve to be re-packaged...

Video View (2008 Apr 22)

Since the death of HD-DVD and the end of the format war, there has been an upswing in Blu-Ray revenue, which is a good thing for Hollywood. High def DVD sales are still dwarfed by those of their standard DVD cousin but it's at least a positive sign ...

Video View (2008 Apr 29)

The biggest two movies new to DVD this week are available in both standard and Blu-Ray formats. The third film, despite getting its share of accolades, is only arriving as a standard DVD. This would appear to be the shape of things to come, at ...

Video View (2007 Dec 04)

In keeping with a schedule I recently revealed, I plan to write a short column every Tuesday remarking on some of the newest offerings on video. Each report will be divided into three sections: New Movies on DVD, TV on DVD, and Other Things of ...

Video View (2007 Dec 11)

New Movies on DVD: This week, it's pretty much all Potter and Bourne. Harry's fifth adventure, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, has arrived on DVD along with Jason Bourne's third, The Bourne Ultimatum. Since the Harry Potter films are ...

Video View (2007 Dec 18)

New Movies on DVD: This is the last chance for distributors to get their movies onto store shelves before the holidays, so there are a fair number of late-summer, high-profile titles debuting this week. After today, things get quiet for a while. ...

Vacation Notes (2005 May 24)

I'm not a "vacation person." My idea of a perfect vacation is sitting at home for a week - watching movies, lounging around my pool, and puttering around in the yard. Maybe a day trip or two to the shore. That's about it. Boring but restful. No ...

Upgrade Update (2008 May 26)

So I have nearly reached the end of what has been a longer road than I initially envisioned. To remake the site required that I add CSS, PHP, and MySQL to my arsenal of web tools (which previously contained HTML and some Java). I won't claim to be ...

Upgrade Update (2008 Apr 14)

Originally, I had hoped the site redesign, which I have unoriginally dubbed "ReelViews 2.0," would be ready by May 1, but I underestimated the amount of time necessary to add reviews to the newly created database (the underlying foundation of the ...

Upgrade Part #2 (2006 Nov 19)

Heartfelt thanks to everyone who has written.After reading tons of e-mail, some of which have extolled the virtues of the new site and some of which have condemned them, I have done quite a bit of tweaking. The version of movies.html (the main ...

Updating the Top 100 for 2014 (2014 Sep 07)

It has now been close to 13 years since I embarked upon what I called at the time my greatest challenge as a film reviewer: whittling down the nearly 6000 films I had seen (at the time) to the top 2%. I have no idea if I got it "right" or not, but ...

Updating the Top 100 (2018 Apr 28)

The latest, greatest version of my personal Top 100 list, with four new additions as of April 21, 2018.

Up Your Shaft, and Other Kind Wishes (2005 Jul 27)

Generally speaking, I am amused by hate mail. Sometimes, it's banal - along the lines of: "You suck. You wouldnt know a good movie if it bit you on the ass." (Real e-mail from a couple of days ago.) Those are boring and are punished for their lack...

Unrated DVDs (2005 Aug 31)

One of the biggest marketing scams out there is the existence of "Unrated DVDs." Oh, it's not always a ploy. There are times when a director may have to cut content to allow an NC-17 film to obtain an R rating. In these cases, the director's version ...

Unplugged (2012 May 10)

When I was a kid, I knew a middle-aged man who owned a cabin in the woods by a lake. Based on the way he described it, it hadn't been upgraded since it was built in the mid-1800s. It didn't have a telephone, electricity, or running water. The ...

Unfocused (2006 Feb 28)

This is another one of those entries in which I ramble. I'm not sure whether that's indicative of having too much or too little to write. Or whether I'm procrastinating with the Oscar picks. I can only delay for so long. Of course, if I wait ...

Ultimate Chick Flick (Theatrical Releases) (2008 May 30)

Looking at the few films opening in theaters this weekend, I can affirm that it's a good time to go to the multiplexes for horror fans and devotees of Sex and the City. Everyone else might do better staying home. Big summer movies often have the ...