Guidelines for the Movie-Trailer Illiterate Hereafter Referred to as “Joe”
Mine was the first family on our street to own a VCR. I’d walk the neighborhood kids in and show them the buttons on the player the size of an industrial microwave oven. “We can record stuff on T.V.,”...
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If the Shoe Fits …
Captain Kirk, yellow shirt, crouched in thinking-man pose on the original captain’s chair, maintained a dominant place on our Christmas tree until Kirk shimmied down the branch last year and made a...
View ArticlePlease Give Bares All
As The Roches’ quirky “No Shoes” plays in the opening sequence of Please Give, writer/director Nicole Holofcener leads viewers through a three-minute, close-up montage of breasts being flopped onto a...
View ArticlePlug the Damn Hole, James Cameron!
My all-time favorite quote comes from Steve Martin’s character in the film Grand Canyon: “You know what your problem is. It’s that you haven’t seen enough movies. All of life’s riddles are answered in...
View ArticleIt’s All in the Perspective: An Interview with Ernessa T. Carter
You can always find Sixteen Candles playing in its perpetual cable rotation –- except when you need to. And because I need to as I write up my interview with Ernessa T. Carter, I have to resort to a...
View ArticleSo You Want to Write a Screenplay for a Children’s Movie
For starters, someone must be dead. That’s the golden rule to remember here. And if that someone is mom, you’ve got a hit on your hands. Nanny McPhee. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs....
View ArticleThe Movie Formerly Known as Avatar
Hannah, age nine, sits on the sofa with her folded legs drawn in, the remnants of a sandwich assembled on a bright melamine plate on the table behind her, rings of condensation off her water bottle...
View ArticleEven Drunk Hulk Says So
So here’s the thing. I’m pretty sure Cynthia Hawkins is a nice person. In Cynthia’s piece “The Movie Formerly Known as Avatar,” I can really appreciate her reporting from the Avatar: The Last...
View ArticleBody Language
Ralph Fiennes as Francis Dollarhyde, aka the Red Dragon, hastens, naked and tattooed, down a flight of stairs, his johnson wagging in every direction as if sketching an imaginary landscape. It’s like...
View ArticleAdmit One
The Northpark Mall Theater. The Color of Money. 1986. I was getting ready to move again. Just thirty miles north this time, and mom and dad had arranged for a couple of kids from the new school to...
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Watch This, Not That
Take note. We are one month away from my birthday (Aaron Dietz directed my attention to a Tauntaun sleeping bag, if you’d like to start up a collection), and every year on my birthday I go see a...
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Can We Still Talk About Inception?
If you imagine in a dream some sort of bank vault, your subconscious will instinctively shove all your secrets in there, typed single-spaced on resume paper with “confidential” stamped across the top...
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Lackluster Script, Meet Robert Duvall. Problem Solved.
If Robert Duvall were some kind of cult leader we’d all be in trouble. The man is a marvel. With the tiniest of adjustments in facial expression alone he conjures such a surge of adoration that I...
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When You’re Doing What You’re Doing
Okay. I am not an orderly, neat-freak sort of person. Though I have an inexplicable, longstanding repulsion of bathtub drains, as in if I accidentally touch one I will spend at least ten minutes...
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Lights, Camera, Action: The Expendables Edition
Cynthia Hawkins: Hi Simon Smithson! Here we are again like an ’80s action sequel striving to be bigger and badder than last time. I’d just like to note that for the occasion I’m wearing mirrored...
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Halloween Lite: Same Great Taste, Less Eye Rolling
Kindergarten. Snack-time. Children quietly convey Chex mix softly rattling across paper plates to their desks. And the one with a wooden chair on her head, a cup half-filled with orange juice balanced...
View ArticleIt’s the End of the World! Margarita Anyone?
Two-dozen little shoe soles squeaked and squelched across the linoleum of the hallway. The teacher at our church school, leading the way, walked backwards for a few steps, winding the cord of her...
View ArticleTales from the Indiscriminate Record Collection
Note: In case you’d like to watch the three-minute film version of this instead, I’m including it after the text. 45s I’ve kept wrapped in newspaper in the attic. These are all mine. Some doubling up...
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Legacy, Lightcycles, and Lady Gaga
Gloria Harrison: My summary of Tron: Legacy is this: it was a visually beautiful, highly entertaining Lady Gaga video. Cynthia Hawkins: I like that summary. I think anyone who thinks Tron: Legacy is...
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Not Your Father’s Westerns … Okay, Maybe One of Them Is
Although I like the way Joel and Ethan Coen try to circumvent the scandal of standing toe to toe with John Wayne’s ghost (might as well be Jesus) by emphasizing that their True Grit isn’t a remake but...
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