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!
“Ted 2”: Let’s Put Ted In A Wood Chipper
Big adolescent Seth MacFarlane has come out with Ted 2 (2015), a sequel to Ted. Just because the jokes in a comedic flick are sometimes politically incorrect doesn't mean the flick is a good one. The concept of a talking teddy bear (who's a stoner) is pretty puny,...
Paul Newman As Henry McCarty (That Is, Billy The Kid) In “The Left Handed Gun”
1958's The Left Handed Gun is a Billy the Kid movie---Paul Newman enacts the Kid---directed by Arthur Penn, who holds his own among other Hollywood directors of Westerns. In fact he proves he can be a bit daring. Billy and his two buddies engage in a lot of mischief...
“Funny Girl”: And I Don’t Mean Barbra Streisand – A Book Review
Author of High Fidelity and Juliet, Naked, Nick Hornby has said he believes reading novels ought not to be hard work any more than watching television is. Certainly he has made good on this view with his latest novel, Funny Girl (2015), but has also, for good...
Cora’s Story In “Dial A Prayer”
The ugly past of 27-year-old Cora (Brittany Snow) consists of helping set a church on fire and badly hurting a female employee therein. Either part or the whole of her sentence is doing community service at a Christian dial-a-prayer site, and Cora, though remorseful,...
Again With “The Americans” TV Series
The last episode of the FX series, The Americans (Season 2), was melancholy. An important question the season raised was, what kind of burden do undercover "crusaders" place on their unsuspecting children? Also, the last episode was very artfully made, ending with a...
“The Westerner” In His Western (1940)
Not a very rich or meaty tale, William Wyler's The Westerner (1940) is nevertheless well-directed and beguilingly seriocomic. It moves slowly enough that we really take in the personalities of saddle tramp Cole (Gary Cooper) and the unjust "Judge" Roy Bean (Walter...
Russians Among “The Americans” (The FX Show)
The "Americans" in the TV series, The Americans, are in reality Soviet spies masquerading as an American husband (Matthew Rhys) and wife (Keri Russell), who keep their identities---and subversive activities---a secret even from their two U.S.-born children. They go...
Bang Bang, I’m Alive: Muriel Spark’s “The Portobello Road” & “Bang-Bang You’re Dead”
Four friends in a photograph, described in Muriel Spark's short story "The Portobello Road," reflect "the glory of the world, as if it would never pass." Ah, but the glory of the world does pass, a truth made utterly clear by Spark---British writer and Catholic...
In 1951, It Was The New Howard Hughes “Racket”
The Howard Hughes-produced The Racket (1951) is a remake of a 1928 film, which I haven't seen, and it's nicely convincing about the workings of a city dominated by a crime syndicate. Probably the best thing about it is the cast. Among others, Robert Ryan co-stars as...
