Blog
These stories have been around a long time. Some of them I have updated. Many of them I haven’t. This started out when blogs were like, new!
Good Nukes In “Pandora’s Promise”
We learn, I think, valuable things about nuclear power from Robert Stone's documentary, Pandora's Promise (2013), which dutifully reveals people of science and environmentalist activism who have come to favor nuclear power as an energy source. We are told, for...
Antics: “What’s Up, Doc?”
With his famous nostalgia for (truly) old movies, Peter Bogdanovich was right to make in the early '70s a screwball comedy---What's Up, Doc? ('72)---for he directed with a fine sense of pacing and a flair for sight gags. The flick is mere entertainment, but it stays...
Racy Swift?
A new song by Taylor Swift is supposed to feature the line, "I only bought this dress so you could take it off." That's rich. NO woman buys a dress for that reason. I think I'll be better off avoiding a racy Taylor.
Early Commie: “Reds”
The Warren Beatty movie, Reds (1981), is a grabber about the American pro-Communist journalist John Reed (Beatty) and his wife Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton). Often fascinating, it is also, alas, extremely faulty, and its biggest problem is the use of real-life elderly...
The Movie, “Love is News”: The News Is Good
Love is News (1937), directed by Tay Garnett, is another old Hollywood comedy about newspaper reporters, shown here to be a shabby lot. They lie. Tyrone Power, as a reporter, intends to lie about a well-known heiress he interviews enacted by Loretta Young; but Young...
Delivered Into Action: “Deliverance”
I have read James Dickey's novel, Deliverance, but I don't much remember it. I remember enjoying it, though, and I also enjoy the John Boorman film version of it (1972), whose screenplay Dickey wrote.* Four middle-aged men head to the forest and take a canoe ride on...
“That Night,” That Book: A Review Of Alice McDermott’s Novel
Rick, an adolescent, is determined to see his girlfriend Sheryl, whose mother is vigorously keeping the two apart. This is because, unbeknown to Rick, Sheryl is pregnant and was sent out of state. The boyfriend and his unruly buddies drive to the girl's house and,...
“Present Laughter” Was Present On PBS
The 2017 Broadway production of the Noel Coward play, Present Laughter, has been filmed and was presented last Friday on the the PBS program, Great Performances. A flavorous item, it stars Kevin Kline as a hopelessly vain theater actor and womanizer who gets his...
Young New Yawkers In “Little Fugitive”
The Morris Engle-Ruth Orkin picture, Little Fugitive (1953), probably influenced European cinema of the late Fifties and early Sixties, but I could never claim it has much to say. What I do claim is that it is a dandy representation of boyhood in America, and is...
