In the northern hemisphere, the calendar has turned from spring to summer, bringing on thoughts of hot afternoons under a blazing sun and lazy, sultry evenings with thunder rumbling in the distance. For me, summer is nature's refund for winter. I ...
Since I posted my review of The Terminal, I have received numerous e-mails taking exception to the following comment: "The premise - that a man could live months of his life in an airport terminal - holds a certain fascination (especially for those ...
Though the weather may still be warming, summer always comes early to movie theaters. This weekend in fact, with the opening of a couple of high-profile pictures: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (about which I am guardedly optimistic) and XXX: ...
As temperatures are finally starting to warm up in the Northeastern United States and Eastern Canada, the domestic box office is cooling down. After a record-setting spring, multiplexes saw attendance take a dip - and not into the pool - during the ...
The art of acting is a complex and difficult discipline. Distilled to its essence, it requires that the actor perform a not-to-simple feat: convince an audience that something artificial is real, that he/she is someone other than who he/she really ...
Three years ago, New Line Cinema was the toast of Hollywood. They were an unstoppable force, destroying the competition at the box office and rolling to an Oscar blitz. 2003 was, of course, the year when the climax of Peter Jackson's The Lord of ...
Every once in a while, I get an e-mail from someone asking me to write a "real" blog entry rather than a themed commentary. I usually demur, feeling that such "journal entries" can be egotistical and boring. (Unless you're Anne Frank, who wants to ...
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 ...
The site doesn't quite look the same as it did yesterday. I have been threatening for a while to do some kind of upgrade; I didn't expect it to come so soon. Sometimes I do things impulsively, and this is one of them. The new design is not ...
Sorry if some of this sounds redudant, but it's on my mind today...Two days after I wrote a piece on illegal downloads, the story got life in the mainstream media when it was revealed that a work copy of Revenge of the Sith appeared on-line for ...
NOTE: This will be the last "ReelThoughts" entry for a little while. After today, I will turn my attention to daily coverage of the Toronto Film Festival. Barring computer or travel snafus, the festival "blog" will have daily entries from September...
Roger Ebert once commented that he believes a movie good enough to warrant a recommendation for home viewing is good enough to see in a theater. A recommendation considers only the movie, not the situation in which it is viewed. If only it was that ...
It fascinates me how interested some readers are in ReelViews traffic statistics. Not a week goes by when I don't get at least one friendly inquiry asking about the site's number of hits. Hopefully, this column with satisfy all with such curiosity...
Sizing up the ratings game and what it all means.
Seven years ago, I wrote a piece for a now-defunct web magazine about five young female starlets who I thought had the potential to become major Hollywood stars. The only requirement placed on the article by the editor was that my choices had to be ...
I have always found there to be something mournful about August. Temperature-wise, it's my second favorite month of the year (behind July), but it always feels more like an ending than a beginning. Perhaps it's the shortening of daylight hours. ...
For those who have written expressing weariness about my "endless" reminiscences about Star Wars, you'll be glad to hear that this isn't another one. (Thanks to the one person who enjoyed all the Star Wars stuff as "a break from [my] usual cynical ...