It wasn't Kubrick but Nabokov himself who rearranged Lolita chronologically to place Humbert's confrontation with Quilty at the beginning, with the rest as a flashback. See Nabokov's Lolita: A Screenplay (McGraw-Hill, 1973). Little else of Nabokov's screenplay was used intact, but he still got the on-screen credit.

God, that was awful. I was aware of it when it came out - the posters showed a hitchhiking Uma Thurman with normal thumbs! - but never saw it until after 2000 or so. Soured me on Robbins too, in part because he participated (as narrator). Should have been made in the 1970s or not at all. The k. d. lang soundtrack was…

It made me ill that for many years, whenever the original Back to the Future was shown in a TV cut (the version in which Marty is heard to say "Holy jeez!"), they stuck a "TO BE CONTINUED" card at the very end, just before the credits. This may have been true for home video releases during this period as well,…

Joni Mitchell… what great songwriting and what excellent albums, right on up through Court and Spark, and then - the twin disappointments of the Miles of Aisles live album (which included self-accompanied tracks that added nothing to the original studio versions, tracks with Tom Scott's band that took all the charm…

I saw this in the theater in 1980 and remember enjoying it, but just now I viewed a long clip on YouTube (the "evolution" scene and what follows), and in retrospect it seems that Brickman was not a very experienced director and/or the editing rhythms were all wrong. Nonetheless I consider Arkin a national treasure…

The Robert Heinlein novel The Puppet Masters (on which the 1993 movie is based) came out five years earlier than Jack Finney's The Body Snatchers, which was the basis of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers movies (1956 and 1978) as well as two less successful, more recent movies. So it's not correct to say that The…

The last time I went to a Broadway play (in 1990, unfortunately), I saw Harrelson outside afterward wearing a hat but clearly recognizable; evidently he'd been in the audience. I like his work as an actor and always have, but in real life the guy is WAY too short to be a police officer.

This is the first I've heard that the new Munsters would be an hour-long drama… jeez. I saw part of an episode of The Bradys in 1990 or whenever it ran, and it was absolutely horrific. Of course part of the reason was that nearly all the original cast participated.

Can't believe I'm the first to name her, but:

David Kelley's not too busy lately, is he? I mean, his current NBC series Harry's Law couldn't cause him to work more than 2 hours a week, given how derivative it is of his other recent series.

First saw Gazzara (and Anthony Hopkins) in the ABC miniseries QB VII, based on the Leon Uris novel. It was one of the first miniseries (1973, I think), running 6 hours over 3 nights.

Robert Klein on the oil companies' version of the Law of Supply and Demand, from his 1974 album Mind over Matter:

With respect, Songs of Love and Hate is NOT hit-and-miss. It's the only Cohen album I own (or need to), first on 8-track and now on CD.

What!? I cherish his first two LPs, Child of the '50s and Mind Over Matter. His long run of HBO specials exists for a reason, sir. He also wrote a fine memoir, The Amorous Busboy of Decatur Avenue, and he is not only a decent film and TV actor (since the late 1960s), he held his own in both a straight play and a…

To get one of the unaltered films, all you have to do is own a working (stereo) VHS player and buy a copy of the pre-1997 versions at a store that sells used tapes; I got my copy of Star Wars at a library store for $1, and it's certainly the unaltered version (except for that pesky "Episode IV: A New Hope" at the…

Empathy is right - it's also much in evidence in Klugman's small part in Days of Wine and Roses (also black-and-white, which helps somehow).

Also, his Night Gallery episode "They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar" was nominated for the Emmy in a category that doesn't exist anymore: Outstanding Single Program - Drama or Comedy. (An adaptation of the play The Andersonville Trial won.)

Yet another reason to do a Random Roles with Dan Roebuck.

'Fraid so. Freedom HS, many years before ol' Dwayne was there for grades 11 and 12 according to Wikipedia. My dad who still lives there was Jonathan Frakes' orthodontist, sometime in the mid-1960s.

Since someone else here mentioned a story arc (Rocky & Bullwinkle), I would choose the Mel and Susan Profitt arc from the first season of Wiseguy. Memorable as heck. The first great audacious Kevin Spacey performance we got to see. "The toes knows."