The thing I remember most forcefully about 1982 isn't the Falklands Islands conflict, the crash of Air Florida Flight 90 into the Potomac, the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II, or the death of Brezhnev. It was the arrival in theaters of ...
Can there be a March blockbuster? This is a question that hangs over Hollywood, casting its shadow into every nook and cranny. Even those who don't care a whit about Watchmen as a film recognize that the implications of its success (or lack thereof...
The problem with being 13 years old and wanting to go to the movies every weekend was that transportation was an issue. With the nearest theater not within bicycling distance (my preferred means of traveling to most nearby destinations), that meant ...
Last year, The Chicago Tribune filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection. Today, Philadelphia's major papers, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News, joined the parade. The same fate has befallen many smaller papers, and more ...
Over the past 24 hours, I have given some thought as to why I find the Oscar telecast utterly unentertaining and more than a bit of a chore to sit through, and I think I have figured it out. Much as I love movies, I don't care about the trappings of...
How much of what we enjoy as adults is influenced by what we enjoyed as children? As I have been exploring the 1980s by re-visiting many of the movies of my youth, it has occurred to me that much of what I valued as a teenager doesn't seem as good ...
Predicting Oscar winners is as much a skill as an art, and it has little to do with who deserves to win. Anyone who predicts on the basis of quality is doomed to score low. The first lesson to learn when predicting Oscars (especially if you're ...
Regular readers of ReelThoughts know that, for about a year, I have struggled with the concept of somehow making ReelViews interactive. Reader opinion was split: about half of the e-mails I received encouraged me to go in this direction. The other ...
What is the truest measure of Internet traffic? Once upon a time, that was an easy question to answer: the so-called "hit." Everyone used the term without really understanding what it meant. (Remember the ubiquitous odometer-like web counters?) ...
On January 1, 1980, I was 12 years old and roughly half-way through seventh grade. It was, as Charles Dickens wrote, "the best of times… the worst of times." Junior high school was hell. In those days (and I suspect it hasn't changed much), ...
After a long slumber, I am emerging from hibernation to provide new reviews of older movies. In the past, I have always found it more rewarding to group these so-called video reviews into themes - such as when I provided essays for all of the films ...
The Internet can be a hell of a nasty place in which to interact. It's a chicken-and-egg situation. Is the unpleasant and hostile on-line an environment the result of a growing cultural incivility and impoliteness, or are we becoming more ...
One question a lot of people are asking is whether 3-D is here to stay or whether it's a fad destined to fade as people grow tired of it. The answer lies in two arenas: the ability of technology to continually improve the process and the willingness...
I wasn't planning to write a reaction to last week's Oscar nominations. The way I figure it, there's little I can add to the litany of cries (both pro and con) that are already out there. Plus, I find it boring to write about how Sally Hawkins was ...
January 26, 2009: Australia Day, Chinese New Year, ReelViews becomes a teenager.If not for a snowstorm in January 1996, there might be no ReelViews. I'm driven by inertia. I can procrastinate with the best but, once I get started on something, I ...
A good way to honor ReelViews' anniversary (January 26) is to provide a site upgrade. Hopefully, this one will be less traumatic than last June's, which caused untold anguish in some circles. This one is designed to sharpen the look of the site and...
As the economy worsens, it's legitimate to ask how this is impacting the motion picture industry, if at all. It's a time-honored tradition that, in bad times, people often turn to entertainment as a means of escape. At about ten dollars per ticket...