I know, I have promised something about naked Oscar winners, but I instead have delivered a DVD rant... Please be patient. Or take a cold shower. Or both.I started buying DVDs in 1997. Over nine years, my collection has grown from a few dozen to ...
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 ...
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 ...
With those three words, placed on screen 70 minutes into the 90-minute season finale of TV's Battlestar Galactica, everything changed. A schism developed amidst the series' fan base: those who loved what the show's producers did and those who hated ...
Since I'm a film critic, I'm duty bound to write something about the Oscar nominations. I'm not going to go through them one-by-one as if I'm working my way down a shopping list. As long-time readers are aware, few things bore me more than the ...
This is the fourth in an open-ended series looking back at film-related subjects from 20-30 years ago. It is the mission of nearly every adolescent boy in life to seek out and locate images of naked women. I'm sure there's a biological imperative ...
This is the first in an open-ended series looking back at film-related subjects from 20-30 years ago. Keep in mind, of course, that nostalgia is an age-related subject. I can't wax nostaglic about things I wasn't born for, and the 1990s feel too ...
This is the second in an open-ended series looking back at film-related subjects from 20-30 years ago. It was the evening of Friday, May 23, 1980. The Memorial Day weekend was officially underway, and I was on my way to see The Empire Strikes Back ...
This is the third in an open-ended series looking back at film-related subjects from 20-30 years ago. These days, we have come to take it for granted that we can watch a beloved movie almost any time. If it's an older movie, it's probably available ...
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 ...
The naked Oscar nominees will have to wait a day or two, but I will get to them. First, however, it's necessary to inform everyone that I have decided to go commercial - sort of. No banner ads or pop-ups; just a couple of text links. But they are ...
When I was a child, the concept of "television" was a simple one. Certain programs were linked to certain nights, and that was it. If you liked a show, you tried to see it. If you loved a show, you made sure you were available. There were no second...
Memo to the studios and the MPAA: The way to combat piracy is not to commit highway robbery.What am I talking about? I'm referring to the new marketing strategy that has many movies being made available for broadband download on the same day/date ...
Last year, Chris Rock. This year, Jon Stewart. Next year, who knows? (I'm still hoping for John Cleese.) There's prestige in hosting the Oscars, that's for sure. But once you've done it once, what's the incentive to return? For a while, the ...
The expected pattern goes like this: after the euphoria created by the great movies of November and December, the critic must gird his/her loins for the dreary months of January through March. That's the way it usually works. 2006, however, has ...
I thought about writing something about Mel Gibson today, but what's the point? Everyone else is writing about him. He joins Tom Cruise and Lindsay Lohan in the category of self-destructive celebrities. Gibson's problem is twofold: he's an ...
After what happened after my previous column (the one about Michael Moore), I decided to write about something nice and safe... like the weather. Unfortunately, after this weekend, there's nothing nice or safe about the weather. Normally, I like ...