Blog Archives

Wait a minute. Sequels aren’t supposed to get better. They sputter and stutter and run out of gas long before the studio stops spending money on them. But darned if this Harry Potter franchise isn’t sharpening, expanding, growing into itself … Continue reading →

Deadline.com is reporting that Josh Brolin has the lead in the October release “Sin City” sequel titled, “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.” Robert Rodriguez is co-directing with Frank Miller, the comic book author no doubt chastened by the … Continue reading →

The writer-director of “In Bruges,” the playwright turned filmmaker Martin McDonagh, sells out and makes his first Hollywood film,” Seven Psychopaths” a commentary on selling out. Well, that and Hollywood’s obsession with psychopaths. And his own. True to title, it’s … Continue reading →

There’s something about the frozen Northern Plains, filled with folksy, trusting and righteous Dakotans, Minnesotans and Wisconsinites, that screams “insurance fraud” to screenwriters. The notion that there’s nowhere in America quite so honest adds appeal to giving that phrase, “You … Continue reading →

In 2002, an underdog American-born Irish racehorse jockeyed by a rider grieving for the death of a close relative won Australia’s Melbourne Cup, “the world’s richest handicap race.” And if you think, on first blush, that would make for an … Continue reading →

Memoirs as they are practiced today are can feel like self-serving, self-pitying exercises in self-help. But watching “Being Flynn,” it’s hard to begrudge playwright/poet and memoirist Nick Flynn his musings, mostly about his homeless, alcoholic and delusional writer-father, Jonathan. The … Continue reading →

Movies about the mentally ill tend to render them in cute, charming strokes — with only the occasional blast of ugly to remind us, “Oh yeah, this gorgeous, lovelorn soul is still CRAZY.” And “Silver Linings Playbook” has a hint … Continue reading →

You can’t simply warn them. They can’t see it. They won’t. They’re young. They’re immortal. Those “alcohol problems” are for older people. Those times they wake up and they don’t know where they are, how they got there? Accidents. They … Continue reading →