The first time I saw him was on television. It was a Sunday night in the autumn of 1977. The ABC Sunday Night Movie. Live and Let Die. Probably not the network TV premiere; that was likely a year or two earlier. (In the '70s, movies typically reached...
"It's not too hard to figure out, you see it everyday. And those that were the farthest out have gone the other way... But don't you try to fight it; 'An idea whose time has come.'" - Huey Lewis and the News, "Hip to Be Square"My first encounter with...
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 I'm not going to publicize the location since much of the information in it is hopelessly outdated.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...
Don't worry - NO SPOILERS!!![The following was originally written for intended publication by CNN on July 20, 2012. Following the movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colorado at a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises, CNN understandably elected ...
"Having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true. " - Spock, "Amok Time"When I was a kid, my favorite day of the year was December 24. Not Christmas Day, but the day before. For me, that was the ...
When did I start compiling "half-year" Top 10 lists? Looking through my records, this looks like the ninth consecutive year I have engaged in this exercise. I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this, but it's not as prevalent an activity as the one...
"Dear Mr. B, Pardon me if it sounds like I should be writing to a Lonely Hearts Advisor, but I have a question I thought you could answer. This Friday, I'm going out on a first date with a girl I have had a crush on since junior high. We both just ...
When I was a kid, I knew a middle-aged man who owned a cabin in the woods by a lake. Based on the way he described it, it hadn't been upgraded since it was built in the mid-1800s. It didn't have a telephone, electricity, or running water. The ...
When it arrived in theaters the weekend before Christmas in 1997, no one knew what to expect from James Cameron's mammoth Titanic. The media was prepared to liken the movie - the most expensive ever to-date - to the ship. The iceberg, some thought, ...
John Carter is going to lose $200 million for Disney. The Hunger Games may have the biggest all-time March opening. The Dark Knight Rises/ may pose a threat to Avatar's position as the all-time domestic box office king, if Titanic hasn't re-taken the...
There was a time when I used this space for occasional rants against the MPAA. It was all repetitive venting, of course, since what I wrote carried no more weight than the angry words of anyone not directly associated with the secretive group of men ...
This year, I tried to remain upbeat about the Oscars, abandoning at least some of my natural cynicism. Many of my contentions have not changed, however. The Oscar-cast remains too long. My attention span for an awards show of this nature is about 2 1...
There's a dual purpose to this post: to provide my Oscar picks and to introduce a contest that will allow someone to win a fabulous prize for doing a better job than me. I don't consider myself an expert Oscar prognosticator; I average around 67% ...
Once upon a time, I too bristled with indignation when a film or performance I believed to be deserving was snubbed by those blind bastards who select the Oscar nominations. How dare they ignore the great and worthy performance of William Shatner in ...
Here's a link to Part One, in which I discussed two of the three most common complaints about George Lucas. Part Two picks up with some comments about the third "sore spot."Finally, there's the whole merchandising situation. In some circles, Lucas ...
Note: This was originally designed to be a single post but, by the time I finished writing it, I realized it was too long to be reasonably read in one sitting. So I'm splitting it into two pieces. Part two will be posted in about one week.By now, I...
For many years, I have read the writings of Philadelphia Daily News baseball columnist Bill Conlin. For as long as I have followed the Phillies, Conlin has been there, first as a beat writer then as a featured columnist. He wrote about sports in ...