As the article points out, Kelly's dramatic writing suffers also.  His shows don't know how to build character arcs over seasons based on what was established in the earlier episodes.  His gimmick plotting also exposes a stereotypical understanding of the issues and people involved in the dilemmas under discussion. …

If the Snopes Trilogy is too daunting, GO DOWN MOSES might do.  I've always felt that the short stories in that collection played out like a miniseries.

Last Weekend TCM ran one of my favorite examples, THE LAST VOYAGE, where Robert Stack runs around a rapidly submerging ocean liner.  Documentary footage of the sinking Isle de France played the boat.

Most of Scorsese's recent movies are overstuffed with ideas and skimpy in form.  While there is a high degree of energy, I feel that their momentum suffers in the end.  I hope this breaks the trend but I have my doubts.

MUNCHAUSEN taught me nver to trust the weekly boxoffice reports.  To wit:  I saw it on a Saturday afternoon, first showing matinee in Puente Hills, CA, which is not a hipster magnet by any means, thus not what may be considered a Gilliam fan zone.  The 200 seat auditorium sold out, with numerous families in…

MUNCHAUSEN

Good point.  One didn't find as many family films in the marketplace in the mid seventies, partly because multiplexes that could use such fare were just coming into vogue.  The "one week only" ad tag was probably a hold over when movies of this type were distributed by territory than mass marketed throughout the…

All Hitler all the time—-

I remember seeing it in theaters when I was in third grade, before it was put into syndication.  I believe it was relased by Sun Pictures, a roadshow based distribution company run, if memory serves, out of Utah.  They carried G rated films mostly, but heavily saturated the newpapaers and local T.V. stations with ads…

Perhaps the reason why this movie is forgotten has to do with the way we view the development of film vs. other media.  MONDO CANE's influence on media culture in its wake is today best reflected in cable television, both in its episodic structure and sensational content.  Documentary film reviewers have embraced a…

LIBRA is terrific, detailing how random events and artifacts become woven into the web of the characters' paranoid narratives, that in themselves become historical realities.  It's probably the only contemporary novel that James Ellroy acknowledges as an influence.

Back in the 70s in L.A. TCM fare was on all of the local channels, albeit cut and interrupted with commercials.  It's where I started my film education.

What helped make this so memorable was that, by the mid 80s, no American films were attempting anything like this.  Even better, with the revival of neo-noir post Tarantino, and the post modern resurgence of melodrama, it still feels relevent

I'm with Scott on this one, but for slightly different reasons.  SP is ceaselessly clever and inventive, but the movie's overall game plan never worked in getting me over the sense detachment the audience was supposed to feel for the characters at the beginning, and the CGI one-upsmanship only contributed to my…

I saw J. EDGAR this weekend with mixed expectations, but left the theater mostly satisfied.  The movie might have been more convincing in its recreation of the 60s had other actors been cast in the key roles than the ones playing Hoover and Tolson in the 30s, as the make-up, and the oldster mannerisms in the…

It was more of an implied attack on Sarris and the proponants of the auteur theory than Welles per se.  In insisting that credit for the triumph of KANE was collaborative she was definitely correct, but anyone researching the production of the film already knew that.

Doesn't sound like its ever going to happen.  Hanks and Glazer, who own the rights to American Tabloid are developing a "Oswald acted alone" project for HBO based on Bugliosi's tome. They'll probably squat on the property in order to protect the value of what will probably be a more reverent look at the Camelot years.

Why is reductionism a problem in biopics and not in other genres? From the review it strikes me that this movie fits into a wide swath of Eastwood studies of fame (or at least notoriety) and the protagonists struggle balancing between a public persona and private personality engendred in the cult of celebrity that…

I can't remember the name of that book, but I do intend on reading it, as well as this biography, which is long overdue.

That is true, but Kael didn't always make that distinction.  She made a career out of stereotyping "highbrow" tastes and proclivities and knocking them down so as to seem more of a champion of the "average" viewer than she actually was.  As a reviewer, trying to convey the immediate experience of seeing films without…