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!
We’re Game For “Game Of Thrones”
Man---such an ill-fated creature. His ill-fatedness is very much a theme in the HBO series, Game of Thrones, wherein one would expect quite a few of the major characters (not just Ned Stark and the primitive Big Boy married to Daenerys) to tragically die. It's a...
Do All Religions Pray to the Same God?
Islams, Jews, Christians. Do they all worship the same God? That's what President Bush was saying. Of course you know this is America and we do have "freedom of religion". Thank God for that! I used to be rather dogmatic in my beliefs. Often trying to convert to my...
Doffing My Hat To “Top Hat” (1935)
I'm no judge of choreography, but that involving Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in 1935's Top Hat strikes me as palatable, not silly or clumsy or pretentious. More appealing are the Irving Berlin songs, all of which have decent melodies, one of which ("Cheek to...
Is The 1941 Film, “The Blood Of Jesus,” Worth Watching?
Technically The Blood of Jesus (1941) is quite bad, and this includes the acting. An American indie film, it was directed by a black director-writer, Spencer Williams, and features an all-black cast in what is a sincerely, thoroughly Christian piece of work. Beyond...
If It Must, It Must: “Night Must Fall,” From 1937
In 1937, what I assume to be a suspenseful play by Emlyn Williams became a suspenseful motion picture. I mean Night Must Fall, superbly directed for the screen by Richard Thorpe and featuring crisp and clever acting from Robert Montgomery, Dame May Whitty and...
A Middle-Ager In “Love”: “Gloria”
The excellent Chilean film Gloria (2014), by Sebastian Lelio, concerns a woman in her (late?) 50s who desires a man, acquires one, and then suffers because of his curious behavior. Intercourse takes place right away, followed by pleasurable hanging-out, followed by...
Frank Capra’s “American Madness” Is A Gem
Tom Dickson (Walter Huston) is a bank president who nobly considers depositors his friends and is unconcerned about profit. Though serious about banking, he is the most humane of businessmen---and the hero of Frank Capra's Depression-inspired film, American...
Sympathy For The Naughty Kennedys – “The Kennedys” Miniseries
To me, one of the best "movies," if you will, of 2011 aired on TV and was eight hours long (eight episodes long). It was The Kennedys, a docudrama not entirely free of blandness but also workmanlike and discerning. Greg Kinnear is good as JFK, Tom Wilkinson terrific...
Dr. Samuel Mudd Is “The Prisoner of Shark Island” (1936)
The John Ford film, The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), is about Dr. Samuel Mudd, who treated the broken leg of John Wilkes Booth shortly after Booth murdered Lincoln and was consequently arrested for conspiracy to assassinate (!) and sent to serve a life sentence in...
