Some quibbles with Tribbles
Fandoms are a dime a dozen these days; but if you don’t count the late-19th-century mass obsession with Sherlock Holmes, it was Star Trek that originally put fandom on the pop-culture map. Even…
Robert Downey, Jr. and intelligent screenplay endow Iron Man 3 with heart
Regular readers of this column must be growing weary of my rants against Hollywood’s increasing reliance on movies based on comic books to deliver the blockbuster bucks. I thought that The Avengers was…
Obnoxious young reporter pursues harmless old hippies in The Company You Keep
According to Hollywood lore, Robert Redford nursed a dream for decades to make a movie about renegade ‘60s-era activists on the run from the law, their counterculture idealism having devolved into an acceptance…
42 is old-fashioned, inspiring Hollywood moviemaking
If, like this correspondent, you’re not a baseball fan, the number 42 is first and foremost the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything, according to The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide…
Serendipity in Schenectady
Though best-known for his Oscar-nominated role as a Mafia don in Prizzi’s Honor, the late comic actor William Hickey made something of a specialty of playing characters created by Kurt Vonnegut. He originated…
Lore offers a difficult, complex view of the fall of the Third Reich
Recent remarks by the head of the National Rifle Association in response to the Sandy Hook massacre, claiming that the only answer to “bad guys with guns” is an increased presence of “good…
Those fab 14 British 7-year-olds return to the screen in 56 Up
If you’ve ever been in a classroom situation where the teacher needed to define the term “longitudinal study,” it’s a fair bet that he or she used the so-called Up Series of documentaries…
When Neanderthal girl meets Cro-Magnon boy
It’s Easter break for schoolchildren, and that means that it’s time for Hollywood to serve up some good excuses to take kids wired on jellybeans and chocolate bunnies to the local megaplex. Both…
How marketing savvy helped topple a dictator
The tenth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq seems like as good an excuse as any to remind ourselves of another historic low point in American intervention in foreign affairs, whose 40th…
If it only had a heart
Sam Raimi’s Oz the Great and Powerful may be raking in a whole lot more cash than Jack the Giant Slayer – at least in its first week of release, before word-of-mouth starts…
