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!
Briefly On “The Age of Adeline”
A woman (Blake Lively) who ceases to age is at the center of the serious fantasy romance, The Age of Adeline (2015), which is not without sentimentality and phony melodrama. It was made in such a way as to impress on our minds a contemporary world essentially no...
Hell, Yes?
In my review of Lila, I made mention of hell. This is where Bill Wiese says he spent 23 minutes, despite being a Christian, when God sent him there to find out what hell is like. His account of this is in a book he wrote and in many stage lectures. Okay, but Matthew...
The Wife Of A Preacher Man: “Lila” — A Book Review
Lila, in the 2014 novel Lila by Marilynne Robinson, is a destitute and abandoned child who begins to be cared for by a scrappy woman called Doll (who later dies) and ends up marrying the familiar Robinson figure, John Ames. Being a true believer in Christ, Robinson...
The Wrap-Up On “Jane the Virgin” (Report #8)
By now, can a TV episode about a baby's delivery be made interesting? In its season finale, Jane the Virgin proves it can be. Sure, the delivery itself comes close to being ho-hum, but everything swirling around it produces the bouncy richness I've enjoyed in the...
Thanks But No Thanks, Mr. Capra: “Platinum Blonde”
Frank Capra blew it in Platinum Blonde (1931), wherein society girl Anne (Jean Harlow) attempts to convert her new husband Stew (Robert Williams), a vigorous newspaper reporter, into a luxury-embracing aristocrat. For a long while it's an interesting romantic comedy...
“Oklahoma!” Was Made Into A Film — No Surprise There
If there's any Broadway musical that would benefit from being staged in the open spaces of the outdoors, it is of course Oklahoma!, and that's where 20th Century Fox put it in the early 50s. Oklahoma itself is a character, and director Fred Zinneman had a knack for...
The Final Role: Philip Roth’s “The Humbling” – A Book Review
The protagonist in Philip Roth's 140-page novel, The Humbling (2009), is a lionized stage actor who, being as self-alienated as he is, has lost the ability to act ("He'd lost his magic"). After a stint in a mental hospital, the sad man---Simon Axler by name---begins...
And The Thief Was Stalin: The 1997 Film, “The Thief”
A handsome thief dressed in a captain's uniform seduces the mother of a young son, with their liaison lasting a number of months before the thief is duly arrested. . . As anyone who has seen the Russian film The Thief (1997), by Pavel Chukhrai, can affirm, Toljan the...
Indie 2002: “Raising Victor Vargas”
Dealing with Latino teenagers, Peter Sollett's largely successful Raising Victor Vargas (2002) is a serious, casual, charitable picture with themes. The themes are the hardship of raising highly imperfect children when you, the guardian, are too demanding and a bit...
