Batteries Not Included
The Inevitable Column about Animal Crossing
In these pages in the past couple of years I’ve talked about my enjoyment of the Nintendo Switch, a gaming system that frankly I’ve loved about as much as my Sega Genesis and original Nintendo back in the day. I say that as I can’t recall when I last enjoyed playing video games as much […]
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The Grand Budapest Hotel
People tend to be split on the work of filmmaker Wes Anderson, folks either don’t care for his unique, inventive worlds, or they’re all in on them. I, am the latter, and have been ever since “Rushmore” came out in 2002, though I don’t think I fully fell in love with his work until “The […]
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Leave Her to Heaven
When you hear the term “film noir” what comes to mind? Do you envision dark streets, clouds of cigarette smoke and icy femme fatales all shot in stark black and white? What you don’t envision, I imagine, is pretty blue skies, and deep rich 1940s Technicolor imagery. Yet, that’s exactly what the 1945 noir “Leave […]
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The Great Escape
It’s been a good stretch of years since I last saw director John Sturges’s wonderful 1963 film “The Great Escape.” When the wonderful new blu-ray edition by The Criterion Collection showed up at my doorstep, I was quite surprised looking over the back of the case to see the film was almost exactly three hours […]
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Mystery of the Wax Museum
Being a passionate lover of movies, especially of the classic Hollywood era, also means championing the cause of film preservation and restoration. There’s been a recent, very exciting development in this field. Warner Archive last month released to blu-ray an incredible restoration of the once lost 1933 pre-code horror film “Mystery of the Wax Museum” […]
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One Shot Ross
Some men like to forget about their past. Start all over, grow a Sam Elliot mustache and drink in the corner of the bar while saying things like “I don’t like to talk about San Diego.” Not I, however. I, on the other hand, am always reminded of my past each time I go into […]
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One Man’s Dream
The other night at dinner, my non-existent son, Lemuel, was too preoccupied with doing that flossing dance than he was eating the fine meal my also non-existent wife, Sheila, had made. I looked at the boy and said: “Son if you eat all your broccoli, you can play a Fortnite.” The flossing stopped, the eating […]
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Magnificent Obsession
Director Douglas Sirk is best known for a string of beautiful looking Melodramas he made at Universal Studios during the mid to late 1950s, two of his films “All that Heaven Allows” and “Magnificent Obsession” both helped launch Rock Hudson to stardom, and both are available on blu-ray from The Criterion Collection, the latter of […]
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Thin Manned Smiths Named Pete
There are certain times when I speak to you about new releases from Warner Archive that I find myself particularly geeked. Which is to not say I’m not always enthusiastic when speaking about their titles, but sometimes they put out something that hits right in the target of my movie love, and or is something […]
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Rumination on Wellsville
In the weeks following the death of my father, I’ve spent a lot of time re-watching my favorite “comfort food” TV. Many of these are shows I grew up watching as a kid on Nickelodeon and Nick at Nite. I’ve been binging “The Bob Newhart Show” and thinking about how wonderfully brilliant that series is, […]
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Klute
By the early 1970s, Hollywood—and America—was changing. The production code, that set of rules placed in the 1930s that told movie studios what they could, and couldn’t, show on screen had crumbled. Audiences were ready for Hollywood to grow up, as the late 1960s faded into the early 1970s, the innocence that had existed in […]
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Tracking Notification
Do you ever get excited when you receive an email that tells you “your package has shipped?” When I was a kid, and before the existence of eBay, packages showing up at the house were few and far between. I always thought, in that way that kids look at the adult world, that a package […]
