Okay, I'll start by admitting that I blew the call about Best Picture. So the rumors of Crash's ascension were not overstated. (I saw Carrie Rickey of The Philadelphia Inquirer on Friday morning, and she voiced a suspicion that Crash might win. ...
How Internet pioneer Roger Ebert believed on-line communication might evolve. His "vision", which was developed during the 1990s, came close in some aspects to what happened but fell short in others.
One of the big recent movie-related news stories is the decline in box office receipts. This isn't a one-time thing; it's an ongoing situation that has been building not only for months, but for years, and it is beginning to concern both movie ...
Jet-lag is an annoyance, and my recent penchant for taking evening naps cuts into my writing time. I saw two 7:30 movies this week, and, without coffee, never would have stayed awake through either. That's the explanation for this week's slowdown ...
I'm going to push off my discussion of the R-rating and the MPAA in general (a rant that it likely to take three days because there are three aspects of the ratings system I want to cover) by another day or two because there's another subject that ...
I was recently asked if I had a theory about the enduring popularity of Star Wars. Why, some 28 years after the release of the first film, is Revenge of the Sith not only a lock to be the box office champ for its first week of release, but a ...
Most cinematic horror stories come from unsuspecting movie-lovers who stumble into a Friday night or Saturday night showing of the latest teen-friendly blockbuster only to discover that half the audience is more interested in having conversations and...
In the summer of 1977, there was only Star Wars. No "Episode IV." No "A New Hope." Just Star Wars. That talk started when the greatly anticipated sequel was released as Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. This provoked discussion in fan ...
How would Roger Ebert like to be remembered? A Pulitzer Prize winning writer? The man who, along with co-host Gene Siskel, invented TV film criticism as we now know it? The first major journalist to embrace the Internet and all it entailed? A die-...
It's time to begin hoping that The Quantum of Solace is a home run because, if it isn't, this could be a very dry holiday movie season. Over the years, the studios have done a good job of programming the November/December schedule such that there is...
There is a commonly believed myth that film critics should go into a movie screening with no expectations. After all, expectations damage objectivity. The reality, however, is that there is no such thing as an "objective review," and any critic ...
Throughout the 1900s, if there was one principal that Hollywood adhered to, it was that movie stars sold movies. Yet, it the space of less than two decades, that has gone away.
It wasn't long ago that the concept of a "sequel" was a rarity. By that I mean the exception rather than the rule. There were a few each year - the lastest James Bond, the next Star Trek, another Rocky or Friday the 13th. But you could count on one...
The concept of "fandom" is not new, but the idea of attaching it to an aspect of pop culture is. The idea of being a "fan" of something entered the public awareness via sports, and stretches back a couple of centuries. The further back in human ...
This is the first part of a three-part series about fandom and movies. Part One is a personal reminiscence.
Have I have written a FAQ? Yes. If you dig around in the site's attic, you can probably find it. I'm not going to publicize the location since much of the information in it is hopelessly outdated. FAQs used to be common ways of conveying information...
Film festivals generate two types of fatigue. The first is the kind everyone is familiar with: not enough sleep. For me, a typical day at the Toronto Film Festival begins with the alarm going off at 7:00 am (or earlier) and doesn't end until about ...