September is a transition month all around. In the Southern hemisphere, it announces the arrival of spring and all that the season promises. In the North, it's back to school and time to get ready for the cooler weather ahead. In Hollywood, it's ...
To use a common expression, the Hollywood machine is in the process of shooting itself in the foot. Or, to put it another way, they're killing the goose that laid the golden egg.Not all that long ago, things looked so promising. DVD players were ...
By now, everyone is probably aware that an "unauthorized" copy of Michael Moore's Sicko has appeared on-line. But is this a case of brazen piracy or is it an incident of savvy marketing? If it is the latter, Moore will never admit it (nor will his ...
I don't hate turtles. When I was a kid, I can remember wandering around my backyard or in the adjacent woods looking for them. I'd catch them, put them in a topless shoebox overnight (usually with a dish of water and a few lettuce leaves), then let...
It fascinates me how interested some readers are in ReelViews traffic statistics. Not a week goes by when I don't get at least one friendly inquiry asking about the site's number of hits. Hopefully, this column with satisfy all with such curiosity...
The art of acting is a complex and difficult discipline. Distilled to its essence, it requires that the actor perform a not-to-simple feat: convince an audience that something artificial is real, that he/she is someone other than who he/she really ...
Okay, so October wasn't a great month for movies. It's not just that there weren't many worthy options out there (Gone Baby Gone and Things We Lost in the Fire were the best), but there wasn't a lot to get excited about. That's why revenue and ...
In the realm of entertainment, advertising makes the world go 'round. I have learned this through experience. The TV networks are about to be reminded of it the hard way thanks to a device commonly referred to as a Digital Video Recorder (DVR). In...
I find myself trapped between the belief that all film critics should write something about Oscar nominations and the assertion that all articles about Oscar nominations are inherently dull. I have read probably a dozen Oscar related columns during ...
Let's go back in time about 20 years... back to when the idea of renting movies on videotape was relatively new and the concept of a "home theater" was the province of wealthy videophiles. In the mid-1980s, the typical length of time between when a ...
NOTE: There are no Harry Potter spoilers in this column.For fans of the Harry Potter book series, today is THE DAY. For months, it has been red-lettered on calendars. Countdowns have been done. Anticipation has risen to a level that, at least for ...
The average life cycle of a television program is a known quantity: birth, first-run, repeats, death, syndication, DVD release. For some shows, the steps get jumbled a bit (with repeats and first-run episodes interspersed and DVD releases preceding ...
There are three definitions of "summer" in the northern hemisphere. Going purely by the calendar and the stars, summer starts two-thirds of the way through June and ends two-thirds of the way through September. Based on holidays, school, and ...
When I was a child, the two most unfriendly terms that came with Christmas morning gifts were "batteries not included" and "some assembly required." For the most part, my parents were good about having a small mountain of AA, AAA, C, and D cells ...
SPOILERS for the final episode of The Sopranos...So, for fans of the long-running HBO mob drama, the fat lady has sung, but did she hit a low note or a high one?By now, the controversy has boiled over, being discussed in front of water coolers, on ...
SPOILERS for: the third season of Battlestar Galactica, the second season of Rome, and the sixth season of 24.Now that Battlestar Galactica has shown its hand for the season finale, it's as good a time as any to look back at the past season and ...
Slightly belated, but better late than never (as they say), this year's "halftime" Top 10 will represent January through July, rather than January through June, as has been the case in the past. Historically, about the top two or three titles on ...