That's the most pointed question I can think of regarding the Oscars. My solution is to record the thing then watch it late at night, skipping over commercials, filler, and speeches that turn into lists of names. When you think about it, that's ...
Thus far, most of the talk about high-def has related to the format war. It's well known that the studios are investing a lot of hope on the success of the Blu-Ray and/or HD-DVD market. Standard DVD sales are lagging badly, primarily because nearly...
Recession or not, it appears that a fair number of Blu-Ray players will be purchased between November 1 and December 31, 2008. Most of these, I suspect, will be PS3s since those units have the advantage of combining gaming with Blu-Ray capabilities...
While out driving yesterday, I passed a building that once housed a movie theater. The theater closed in the early '80s and, since then, it has been a self-storage locale and is currently a pet supply store. I was taken by a momentary pang of ...
While most pundits expected Speed Racer to underperform, I don't think any of them expected the kind of debacle that resulted. For a film that was once touted as one of the summer's big blockbusters to finish third during its opening weekend is ...
Like an improperly balanced see-saw, the high def industry is tilting toward Blu-Ray. It's happening in slow motion, but it is happening, and it's hard to imagine that any force can stop something possessing the momentum of inevitability. Paramount ...
I normally don't write ReelThoughts columns on Wednesday, but I performed an "unintentional experiment" last night and I wanted to report on the results because they could be seen as contradicting a recommendation I made on Monday. Read on if you're...
"I don't get no respect." That's how Rodney Dangerfield put it. And that's how Internet critics sometimes feel. I occasionally write about how slow Hollywood is to recognize cultural shifts and a failure to acknowledging the growing importance of ...
I was originally going to wait a few days before discussing reactions to the site redesign but, after 150+ comments, now is probably as good a time as any. I'll defer my intended topic for today - a rumination about how a combination of reliance ...
Today, ReelViews turns twelve. Next year, it will be a teenager. Looking back at my own life, I turned twelve in September 1979. Not a remarkable month as I can remember. Carter was President and the economy stunk, but at my age, I didn't care ...
With the release of Wall-E, Blu-Ray may have finally come into its own. So far, for the most part, Blu-Ray had been touted as the "format of the future," but the future hadn't arrived. Sure, there have been some movies that have looked great in Blu-...
I had intended to wait to write this until it became relevant - something that happened as a result of Entertainment Weekly's cover story last week.(Side note: Has anyone noticed a marked decrease in the quality of EW articles over the past few years...
Since I began writing reviews in 1992, I have devoted more than 3.2 million words to film criticism and commentary. That's somewhere between 5000 and 6000 pages of a hardback book. The sheer volume of what I have written didn't occur to me until I ...
Every festival is different, but this year’s edition of the Toronto International Film Festival may prove to be much different than "usual." This is my twelfth consecutive trip to this festival. Unlike many who make this annual late summer ...
What does it mean to be #1? If that position is to be determined based on pure box office gross (unadjusted by inflation), it's Titanic. Based on tickets sold, it's Gone with the Wind. Based on critics' polls, it's Citizen Kane. And based on ...