HOLY SHIT! I've been trying to get info on that guy for years. But I don't know about any sentient victrola—couldn't you have asked about 'Villa Allegre' or 'Chico the Rainmaker' instead?

Get off yer ass, Eastwood, and make something of yourself
I know the story is that Eastwood is always ahead of schedule—and maybe that has something to do with his own frugality with time and money, and maybe that has to do with his desire to clock out at the end of the day, or maybe it has to do with what Morgan…

Ask The A.V. Club!
Bring it back—Maybe now somebody can answer my question abotu that guy with the mustache and the pastels who used to illustrate young adult novels on PBS! I remember especially 'The Outsiders', 'Ghosts I Have Been', 'The Witch of Blackbird Pond' and 'A Wrinkle in Time' but it seems that every book…

'State of Play'
I saw that not too long ago—the American film version—I had seen the British miniseries long anough ago that I can't efficiently compare the two anymore. Alls I know is that packing any British miniseries into a movie has to leave a lot out—and yet I liked it better than I expected to. Some of that has…

'Couples Retreat' works if you read it as a newspaper headline. Actually, so does 'Two Weeks Notice' but then you're left wondering Two Weeks Notice What?

Wait—there was something coherent at the heart of the 'Naked Lunch' movie?

It was Woolworths.

Ah…Maria del Rosario Pilar Martinez Molina Gutierrez de los Perales Santa Ana Romanguera y de la Hinojosa Rasten…AKA "Charo". The name is its own punchline (and I say that fully aware that she's a genius classical guitarist).

And here I thought this was going to be the thread on ill-conceived 70's sex scenes. May I submit for your consideration, The pasty, gawky Donald Sutherland gratuitously mashing Julie Christie in 'Don't Look Now'. Yick.

George Kennedy is a national traesure. They don't make second fiddles like him anymore.

OH MY GOD! Iand 1—I was approached by a woman at club Heaven in Adams Morgan with that exact shtick (the line, the look, the card) but I blew it off. It would have been circa '98 and I know they filmed in and around that neighborhood (because, as I posted elsewhere, they used my building). Now I wonder what I may have…

I liked it and I followed it but I knew from the start that 'Rubicon' was doomed. If you intend to build an audience for a long unfolding conspiracy arc you've got to give them some self-contained episodes along the way as hooks. Call it following the 'X-Files' Monster of the Week plan, and sure it would have eroded…

It's not the best PR for the labor movement at a time when labor needs all the help it can get, but 'Blue Collar' is nevertheless a great film. What's not to like? Harvey Keitel? Richard Pryor in the dramatic role that proved what he was capable of and how misused by Hollywood he was? The Jewish Crown Prince of…

So did the success of 'Inception' pave the way for the current crop of Sci Fi / Conspiracy / FX movies like 'The Adjustment Bureau' and 'Limitless'?— Because I think I hate that trend. I'm all for films that lift the veil on the nature of reality, but I get restless when the underlying fabric is just as preposterous.…

What I like about 'Blow Out' is all the minutiae about film sound, and how the color pallette sticks to a strict and conspicuous red white and blue throughout. But I forget—does DePalma do that split screen nonsense in it? I never know whether to like that signature technique or not (like Spike Lee and his tracking…

The 'Watchmen' film was a victim of the unreasonable expectations everybody had for it (see also, Obama). It was a better, more faithful film than fans of the comic had any right to expect, but it was never going to match the one in our minds. Given a number of years, and some distance from initial impressions, it…

The dustheap of history.

I'm probably parroting Ebert here, but 'Conspiracy Theory' could have been a good movie if it hadn't tried to shoehorn a preposterous love story and big budget effects into what could have been a small but taught little Thriller. The idea that the paranoid happens into a real conspiracy is a good one, and provides a…

Conspiracies always collapse under their own weight. I'm just paranoid and cynical enough to believe that most people's intentions are selfish and lack foresight—but that conspiracies by definition require planning and cooperation—not to mention competence. Consider every major conspiracy we have knowledge of. Almost…

'Enemy of the State'
My apartment building in Addams Morgan neighborhood of DC was one of the exteriors shot from a helicopter in that movie. I remember because it involved the helicopter hovering above the building across the alley and repeatedly lunging in toward the corner of my building (and incidentally my…