The purpose of a cliché is to make creative thought unnecessary. Television and Hollywood are cliché driven. How could scripts be cranked out without clichés? When I worked at Doubleday, we used to post (in those days, “posting” meant putting… Read More ›
Movies
Run for your life!
Unless you live on another planet, you have watched your share of crime and cop shows. In first run, rerun, and who knows which run. Cops and crime are the ubiquitous backbone of prime time television and the fast-flowing mainstream of Hollywood. We… Read More ›
Where is the pellet with the poison?
This must be one of the funniest sequences ever put on film. From “The Court Jester,” where’s the pellet with the poison and which is the brew that is true? I challenge you to remember which is which. I’ve been watching… Read More ›
It’s a Wonderful Life
Originally posted on Head In A Vice:
An angel helps a compassionate but despairingly frustrated businessman by showing what life would have been like if he never existed. My good friend Austin from The Bishop Review is currently running a project…
Party!
I have spent this day multi-tasking in the best way. Listening to the audiobook version of “A MEMORY OF LIGHT” for which it feels as if I have been waiting forever while simultaneously running the pictures from last night’s party… Read More ›
My Empty Bucket
WordPress suggested we write about the 11th item on our bucket list. The subject alarmed me. I don’t have a bucket list. I’ve never had a bucket list. Until the movie of the same name came out in 2007, I’d never… Read More ›
Heroes
Life has been singularly bereft of heroes lately. Perhaps I’m just getting older and life is making me more cynical but I think it’s the world that’s getting more cynical. It seems to me there has been a continuing trend… Read More ›
A Christmas Story
Right after “It’s a Wonderful Life,” it’s time for us to watch “A Christmas Story.” It’s part of the ritual of Christmas and one of my favorite traditions. Just the narration, spoken by its author, the inimitable Jean Shepherd, is… Read More ›
It’s a Wonderful Life … All Over the Universe!
We were going to visit friends right after Christmas. We haven’t seen them in a while and we have really been looking forward to it. So were they. Except she’s sick. Pneumonia, some kind of resistant intestinal virus and now… Read More ›
About those dinosaurs … It all started with “Fantasia”
This conversation started because my husband, unlike me, is not fascinated by dinosaurs. He seemed a bit baffled as to why I’d include a big story about dinosaurs when I didn’t write it or take any of the photographs. Note:… Read More ›
Don’t forget to include a plot …
Last night, we watched To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) – Restored Anniversary Edition on Blu-ray. I bought it a while ago and we’ve been planning to watch it, but we just hadn’t gotten around to it. Last night, we settled in and remembered… Read More ›
“Lincoln” is amazing on so many levels.
It’s exactly what you hope for in a historical movie … and so very rarely get. Spielberg not only made this wonderful movie well, he made it smart. Instead of trying to cover the entire Lincoln saga or perhaps myth,… Read More ›
How Come They Don’t Simply Open the Windows? A Film Maven’s Dialogue
Earlier today, my husband the movie maven wrote me and a few of his old TV pals. He had a question, perhaps one that has long needed answering. Given the cost and scarcity of panes of glass in Ye Olde… Read More ›
Carlton Theatre in Jamaica, NY – Cinema Treasures
See on Scoop.it – Movie From Mavens This theatre had several names, starting as the Capitol Theatre during construction in 1926-27 by a real estate developer that hoped to make it a m… See on cinematreasures.org
Fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding …
Fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding … and we are feeding it well. From “Inherit the Wind” 1960, Directed by Stanley Kramer, based on actual transcripts of the 1925 Scopes’ “Monkey Trial” in Tennessee, where the teaching of evolution… Read More ›
SERENDIPITY: SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 