Emotions still work! Keep that up, because emotions are good and needed. Last night I enjoyed, and occasionally even teared up at, the new version of Godzilla; then a little later I enjoyed, and often laughed at (in a good way), Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The Academy Theater in Montavilla is, it turns out, reasonably convenient to me in ( Read more... )

The Joss Whedon version of Much Ado About Nothing did exactly what it meant to do: make me smile a lot ( Read more... )

Greetings, programs! Wait, that's Aaron "Geek in the City" Duran's line. (And that line from Tron, originally, but I digress. Helps when burying the lede.)

Want to hear me sound off on 1984's unhinged, funny and pretty damn scary horror-comedy Gremlins? Now you can, because my friend Mat of Sequelcast has posted the episode. It's about an hour. ( Read more... )

Me being me, of course I still have the issues of my high school's paper, the Hawk Talk (of James Madison High, home of the Warhawks -- political reference! But I digress). My senior year (1991-1992), I edited its Entertainment section (and wrote for almost every single other section, except Opinion; I think the guys who edited that didn't like me ( Read more... )

Peek behind the curtain to Siskel and Ebert and the Movies circa 1987! Thanks to this outtake collection, we see Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel get on each other's nerves, insult each other, swear, crack each other up, and more:

Click to view

"Try [to be] a little excited, Gene." "Sounds less excited, Roger ( Read more... )

John Carter is a good kind of PACKED.

Not surprisingly, it's a big, messy, blood-pumping*, world-sprawling spectacle in the spirit of its source, Edgar Rice Burroughs's muscular John Carter of Mars novels (the first of which I've read, and preferred significantly to Burroughs's Tarzan). Perhaps surprisingly, this film has more of a sense of humor ( Read more... )

I went into Red Tails -- the George Lucas-produced World War II film about the Tuskegee Airmen, pioneering African-American pilots, and when they finally started to see air combat -- with carefully-ratcheted expectations, based on the reviews. I can handle old-fashioned and corny, and knew this film had that in spades, as well as "rah rah war can ( Read more... )

There's plenty in E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial I didn't remember, or only remembered very selectively. It took me years to register that Elliott's family was dealing with a separation: even now, divorce has rarely hit me closely. My folks have been married since 1968. In 1982, my 8-year-old mind probably just thought They're in Southern California ( Read more... )

Seeing and liking the film The Blind Side (written and directed by John Lee Hancock) led to me soon reading Michael Lewis’s The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game (written in 2006, after Michael Oher had been adopted by Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, before he got drafted by the Baltimore Ravens). Made it clearer what I found the strengths and weaknesses ( Read more... )

(Warning: This will have spoilers for the movie Baby Mama. If you care.)

Several months ago I finally popped in a free DVD I'd gotten at an event. It had been one of two free DVDs, the other one being Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which I'd enjoyed thoroughly multiple times and ways (that sounds dirty. Heh. I approve) and then passed along to friends ( Read more... )