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!
The 50s Were Fellini’s Decade: “Il Bidone”
Il Bidone (The Swindler) is a notable Federico Fellini film from 1955. Broderick Crawford stars as a member of a trio of crooks, cheating people out of their money in less than prosperous Italian towns. The Crawford character is forty-eight years old and has a...
Poor Burt: “Starting Over” (1979)
What might be a decent novel is, here, an unsatisfying film. The script is wobbly, and the strikingly handsome Burt Reynolds, with his star quality, is miscast as an ordinary, somewhat less-than-virile gent. Starting Over (1979) does effectively focus, though, on the...
Song Of The Soul: “The Song of Bernadette”
The central character in The Song of Bernadette (1943) is a good girl who becomes a devout and holy one. In Lourdes, France she sees a vision of a lady who eventually says "I am the Immaculate Conception" and so convinces all that she is the Blessed Virgin. The...
Monsters Comin’: Last Night’s “Gotham”
I was never drawn to regularly watching the FOX series, Gotham, but Monday's season finale was a barn burner. It was busy but not too busy, with a cliffhanger involving monsters, and everything is at stake! Also, Ben McKenzie (Jim Gordon) released his acting chops in...
A Review Of Two 2009 Stories: “Substitutes” And “The Order of Things”
The ten-page short story "Substitutes," by Viet Dinh, takes place in Vietnam after the fall of Saigon. Expectably, the Vietnamese Communists resemble Nazis and the Vietnamese people resemble Jews, with the story's setting almost entirely limited to a classroom where...
Another Tale Of Peter And M.J.: “Spider-Man 2”
The 2004 Spider-Man 2 is another Sam Raimi success. Again Tobey Maguire plays the titular superhero: not a very interesting actor here, he is nonetheless passable. Kirsten Dunst was cast in these flicks before she got good. The film asks: What does it take to...
Re The Last Episode Of “Jane the Virgin” (2016)
Monday's season finale of Jane the Virgin was sometimes silly, as in the church right after Jane got hitched, but always rich. Near the end, the lesbian policewoman (who is actually evil Rose!) shoots Michael, Jane's new husband, leaving us with the gripping...
“Unfaithfully Yours”: Other Sturges Pictures Are Faithfully Mine
Another movie written and directed by Preston Sturges, the 1948 Unfaithfully Yours stars Rex Harrison as the conductor of a symphony orchestra. After asking his foolish brother-in-law to keep an eye on his beloved wife (Linda Darnell) while the conductor is away, the...
Another French Job: “Summer Hours”
Summer Hours (2009), a film by Olivier Assayas, is gratifyingly intelligent but it bored me a bit both times I saw it. Its fiction about a French family reveals Assayas's concern with what threatens French culture: namely, global interests and global markets...
