In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking. But now, heaven knows, anything goes. (Cole Porter)For boys of a certain age (my age, that is), many experienced their first glimpse of the mature, naked female form via Hugh ...
Going forward, I'm going to use the Friday ReelThoughts to reflect on the week's new releases and make some general comments that are intended to be less "spoiler-ish" and less specific than the individual reviews. This week, however, there are only...
It happens every year. Critics see a film and praise it. Early audience response is rapturous. Adulation pours in from every corner. The director and stars are interviewed and the photogenic ones find themselves in a paparazzi-generated fishbowl...
I was originally going to write something about Motherfucking Snakes on a Plane, but that will have to wait... (Better to see it first, then write about it. Or not, as the case may be. Keep in mind that almost no one has seen it, but everyone is ...
It was the darkest day since November 22, 1963. For those who awoke on that crisp, sunny morning and went to sleep under a cloud of anxiety and uncertainty, September 11, 2001 will not soon be forgotten. The passage of five years has mercifully ...
Why did I do it? That's a question I am often asked when people learned I devoted nearly every spare moment of three years to write a 1500-page saga cataloging the exploits of a stableboy struggling with an existence...
Random thoughts that won't fill up an entire column...Contrary to what one e-mailer wrote, advertisements have not taken over my main movie page. Currently, there are four text links (two pairs of two) and one banner ad. It helps pay the bills. My...
For a writer, a proper attribution is everything. There are few things more irritating than to see something you have spent hours putting together attributed to someone else. I'm not referring to plagiarism, however. That's blatant and illegal, ...
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 ...
How much do you pay to see a movie?At one time, "the cinema" was viewed as one of the most economical forms of entertainment. My grandfather told of times when he could get into a Saturday matinee double feature for a nickel. (Okay, so a nickel was ...
While most pundits expected Speed Racer to underperform, I don't think any of them expected the kind of debacle that resulted. For a film that was once touted as one of the summer's big blockbusters to finish third during its opening weekend is ...
The DVD release of Shortbus got me thinking about the growing body of films often referred to as "art-porn." These are "legitimate" titles featuring explicit sexual activity. For the most part, art-porn films do not star recognizable actors but ...
Roger Ebert is the E.F. Hutton of the entertainment-based blogosphere: We he "talks," people listen. Some of Ebert's columns generate more notoriety than others, but his latest, published on April 16, has resulted in an unprecedented number of ...
This was ready yesterday, but I decided it was probably not a good idea to post any substantive content on April 1...Looking ahead to April's theatrical releases, I have to admit it doesn't look more promising than March, which appeared much like ...
For me, April is one of the busiest months of the year. In addition to the usual early spring rush of movies, there are the opening of baseball season (when even followers of perennial losers try to watch as many games as possible) and a local film ...
If the 1990s represented the early years of the Internet (not really its birth, but the time when the general public first became aware of it), the 2000s were when it came of age. Most of the common applications and sites we use on a regular basis ...
For me, January is a month of anniversaries. When it comes to my relationship with movies, all the major milestones except one have come in the first month of the year. It's hard to believe that it has been 21 years since I first committed thoughts ...