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 ...
This column is written for the small but loyal group of readers who have forged their way through the recently serialized The Price of the Terror. Those who haven't read it or don't know what it is are welcome to continue reading, but I'm not sure ...
Piracy is one of those topics I return to frequently. Although I believe it is a serious problem on some levels, I also believe the MPAA and its cronies have turned this into a witch-hunt, seeking to punish fanboys and movie-lovers with the same ...
It has always fascinated me how one person's work of comic genius can be another's bat guano. What impulses are there that tell our brains something is worth laughing at, and why are there dramatic differences in what intelligent people find funny? ...
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, ...
Is it too much to ask that children be allowed to empty their trick-or-treat bags and inventory the contents before getting ready for Christmas? Apparently, it is, at least as far as Hollywood is concerned. So, ready or not, Disney is foisting The ...
Writer's block has never been a problem for me. When there are long lags between ReelThoughts entries it's usually one of three things: I'm taking a break, I'm busy doing other things, or I have some sort of temporary infirmity that is limiting my ...
Of the many things that have become clear as Sony and Toshiba fire the opening salvos in what is sure to be a long, ugly format war, one stands out above all others: there will be no winners. Victory would provide redemption, but there's not likely ...
Not surprisingly, this is the time of the year when horror movies are the most popular. It would be an understatement to say today's crop aren't what they used to be. Without being overly judgmental, let me state that 2000-era horror isn't as ...
Every once in a while, someone writes to ask how I choose which older DVDs I review. After all, there doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason to it. At the moment, as I engage in an alphabetically themed stretch, there are two rules: (1) The movie ...
Censor: to examine (as a publication or film) in order to suppress or delete any contents considered objectionable. [Miriam-Webster; emphasis mine]Death of a President is opening in the United States next week... sort of. I am already on record as ...
Somewhere under all the hype, buried beneath the screening invitations to the President, the comments by the Anti-Defamation League, and the press releases from Kazakhstan, there is a movie. However, it's getting difficult to remember that. Borat ...
A long time in coming? Indeed.When I posted the first two installments of my fantasy trilogy last year, they were in a mostly finished form, having been written and edited in the early 1990s. The third book, The Price of Terror, was incomplete at ...
It's late at night. The date on the calendar has already switched over. I'm sitting placidly at the computer surfing as I do research on one subject or another. My cat is curled up on my lap, sleeping, and my wife is in the next room, having gone ...
2006, more than any other recent twelve-month period, has been a year when hype and controversy have sold movies. From United 93 to World Trade Center, from The Da Vinci Code to Snakes on a Plane, studios have been courting the free advertising that...
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 ...
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...