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...
As regular readers know, I avoid interviews like the plague - not because I can't do them, but because I usually find them boring. I ask the subject the same questions he or she has been asked a thousand times, and get the same rehearsed responses...
Profanity alert... The following contains language that some readers may deem inappropriate. A couple of weeks ago, I used the word "motherfucker" as a joke in association with the film Snakes on a Plane. A few prudish readers took exception to my ...
It had to happen some time. We have reached the point when the number of movies being released to DVD is in a downturn. The reason is obvious: with the majority of the studios' A-list and B-list catalog titles available, there's a scarcity of ...
I'm a planner, so the sudden, emergency need to move my website from movie-reviews.colossus.net to reelviews.net came as an unwelcome surprise, but it also galvanized me. As most of you who are reading this know, ReelViews has moved, and the ease ...
Snakes on a Plane is being widely viewed as a box office failure, although that's a qualifier for inflated and unrealistic expectations. Sure, the final theatrical gross will be around $25M (against an estimated budget of $35M and advertising costs ...