"Programming" Announcement: Starting next weekend, I will periodically have a Saturday or Sunday ReelThoughts feature called "Short Cuts" that will deal with various brief subjects raised in e-mails that are worth airing in broader forum. It will ...
Today, ReelViews turns twelve. Next year, it will be a teenager. Looking back at my own life, I turned twelve in September 1979. Not a remarkable month as I can remember. Carter was President and the economy stunk, but at my age, I didn't care ...
Seven days after the most robust weekend of the new year, the box office takes a step back for the final round of January debuts. Undoubtedly, Cloverfield and 27 Dresses will continue to make money. While it would be surprising to see either of ...
Since Heath Ledger's tragic death on Tuesday evening, I have received numerous e-mail queries about whether I am planning to write something about him. The short answer is "no." There's a simple reason for that: anything I might have to contribute ...
First, my thoughts about the Oscar nominations: yawn. Has there ever been a more predictable roster? With only a couple of mild surprises, everything was as expected. My (unpublished) predictions scored 25 out of 30 in the main six categories, ...
Is anyone still watching television? I suppose people are - ratings are down but not out. In my view, watching television is more of a habit than a form of entertainment. We watch bad shows not because we think they're worthwhile but because they'...
Call it the week of Cloverfield. Whatever else the movie may be (and it has sharply divided critics across-the-board), the is the first "must see" film of the year for males ages 11 through 40. If you're a member of that demographic and you don't ...
Every year, I get at least a dozen e-mails asking if I'll be attending Sundance. Some are from people hoping to meet me; others are from readers wondering if I'll be posting updates. It has been seven years since I have been to Park City and I don'...
I normally don't write ReelThoughts columns on Wednesday, but I performed an "unintentional experiment" last night and I wanted to report on the results because they could be seen as contradicting a recommendation I made on Monday. Read on if you're...
This is another slow week for new movies on DVD. There are really only four worth mentioning, and none are very good. (I wouldn't even waste a rental on any of these. It's not the loss of money so much as the loss of time.) Good Luck Chuck is ...
Like an improperly balanced see-saw, the high def industry is tilting toward Blu-Ray. It's happening in slow motion, but it is happening, and it's hard to imagine that any force can stop something possessing the momentum of inevitability. Paramount ...
"Special" Sunday entry this week because this one covers a lot of miscellaneous topics, none of which deserves its own column...The Golden GlobesFor some reason, there's an expectation that I should have an opinion about the impact of the WGA strike ...
This is the last of the dead Fridays for theatrical releases. There are only two wide releases this week and one limited title expanding to everywhere. There are still a lot of movies out there from the pre-Christmas period that viewers have not ...
Cloverfield has become the latest motion picture to try to build excitement and word-of-mouth via the Internet. An informal poll of movie-goers has indicated that anyone who spends more than an hour per day surfing the web is more aware of ...
The big news this week is more about what's happening in the high definition market that what's available on standard DVD. (In answer to the question of when I will start "publishing" new Blu-Ray titles on the VideoViews page in addition to standard...
First, the obvious statement: it appears that the high def format war has been decided. However, like Japan in early 1945, it's unclear whether Toshiba realizes it. With Warner Brothers deciding to terminate HD-DVD support (starting in the late ...
It's a sad week for movies. The only new release is One Missed Call. Not only is the film pretty bad, but it's generating almost no buzz. Will anyone other than the ten people who joined me this afternoon see it? I can't recommend it even to die-...