This summer, there has been considerable talk about an Oscar nomination, or even a victory, for Heath Ledger. Such discussion, while premature (the main "Oscar bait" films have not yet been released), is understandable. Ledger's interpretation of ...
Is Adam Sandler slowly losing his appeal? While the actor still has a vocal and loyal following, the passion and magnitude of that group has been on the wane in recent years. There was a time when the opening of an Adam Sandler movie was something ...
October 1982. My seventeenth birthday was nearly two years in the future and, unlike many of my contemporaries, I looked younger than my age. On that fateful afternoon, I was standing in the lobby of a single mega-theater (2000 seats), awaiting my ...
When an actor nears the end of his (or her) career, a decision looms: to continue or retire? There are essentially three choices: accept increasingly irrelevant and/or demeaning parts to continue performing on a regular basis, appear before the ...
With Paul Newman's death, they're almost all gone. By "they," I am referring to the movie stars - the legends of the silver screen whose images lit up the darkness for decades in movie palaces, drive-ins, and multiplexes across the country and around...
As many of my regular readers are aware, I have been analyzing the revenue potential of this site during the last year, attempting to see whether I can make enough via a bigger, better ReelViews to pay the bills. My conclusion can be summed up in ...
If this was a normal year, multiplexes would be awash in potential Oscar contenders and pundits would be speculating about which of these prestige motion pictures would make the cut.2008 is not a normal year.Thus far, the slate is largely bare of ...
A number of years ago, I asked myself the question of why Top 10 list are made only at the end of the year. Why not make one at the mid-point? The idea behind this is not to create yet another list (anyone who reads enough of the stuff I write ...
About ten years ago, I arrived at a plan whereby I intended to attend three film festivals per year. My annual vacation allotment of 22 days allowed this, and there were no financial impediments. There was only one year when I achieved the goal: ...
Some reviewers hand out four-star ratings like candy. Such is their right. It's their rating and their system. I have always felt that, for a four-star citation to mean anything, it must be handed out on only the rarest of occasions to the most ...
It's Friday the 13th, and Jason isn't in sight. That's not to say Hollywood has given up on one of America's most venerable and bloody cinematic serial killers but, at least for this year, he won't be slashing his way through a crowd of nubile ...
It's becoming increasingly difficult to defend George Lucas. It's hard to reconcile the greedy corporate fat cat at the top of Lucasfilm's empire with the hungry filmmaker who transformed cinema and enthralled millions in 1977. Fans who once ...
We interrupt my year-end look back at 2008 for a story I stumbled upon in today's Philadelphia Inquirer. The direct link is here, but I'll copy and paste the relevant details:"A South Philadelphia man enraged because a family was talking during a ...
The rumors of this death, sadly, have not been exaggerated...I can remember as a child seeing my father sitting at the kitchen table in the morning, drinking a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper. I have similar memories of my grandfather when I...
What do Charlotte Ross and Billie Piper have in common (aside from both being attractive blond actresses)? Both have shown their butts on TV. But oh how different the reactions have been...Piper, the teen pop starlet-turned-Dr. Who companion-turned...
Today is baseball's Opening Day. For those of us who follow the sport, this Rite of Spring represents hope and renewal. That sense of rebirth may only last as long as it takes for a team to start its first losing streak, but it's there. The slow ...
It's widely expected - and accepted - that Christopher Nolan will make a third Batman film. And why not? The Dark Knight was critically successful, hugely popular, and made multiplex box office cash registers happy. The film accomplished what any ...