I remember being really astonished to learn that Harry Nilsson wrote "One," "Coconut," the soundtrack to The Point, the songs for Popeye, including the sublime "He Needs Me," and sang "Everybody's Talking," among a ton of others. His body of work always reminds me of Homer Simpson's response when he was told that…

I think tonal weirdness is a Korean thing—at least for those Korean directors whose movies get released overseas. I noticed it in "Oldboy" and "Nowhere to Hide," too.

I recently reread "Pet Sematary" for the first time in years, and while I was freshly blown away by most of it, I had mixed feelings about the ending. On the one hand, the last section strikes me as a failure of nerve: after hundreds of pages of incredible atmosphere and dread, it climaxes with the most obvious sort…

"Ponyo" was my favorite movie from last year. So "The Secret of Kells" had better be awesome. (I actually hear that it is.) But still…

I just wish there were more story, that's all. Amazing atmosphere and art direction, some of the best set pieces of the decade…but the connective tissue of the screenplay is a little thin. But I'm not really complaining.

Cautiously optimistic
On the other hand, Cuaron has been linked to a lot of projects over the past few years, including the adaptation of "The History of Love" and something called "A Boy and His Shoe," which IMDb still lists for a 2012 release date. I just wish he'd get his act together and give us something to…

It's real. And there's more:

It's hard to believe that there was a vast critical conspiracy to hype a movie that made only $101,215 domestic.

Magnetic Fields, anyone?

From Hell's heart I shat at thee.

"Alternative" is my favorite writing music. I'll often cue it up when I'm revising a story, mostly because it played nonstop throughout much of my teens. The songs that have stuck in my head over the years are "It Must Be Obvious," "A Man Could Get Arrested," "Was That What It Was," "A New Life," and "Some…

It's funny how the physical object of a horror novel itself can become weirdly terrifying. I still can't see the paperback cover of "Pet Sematary" without shivering.

Nothing wrong with calling "The Collector" or "The Magus" a thriller—which they are. "The Collector," in particular, is one of the great page-turners of all time.

I saw "Cape Fear" again recently on Netflix on Demand. I loved it—full of ideas, subtext, craziness, iconic images, but without a center. If any other director had made it, though, we'd still think of it as a masterpiece.

"Koko" is one of those books that seems to turn up in every thrift store book collection, along with "The French Lieutenant's Woman" and Gail Sheehy's "Passages."

"Black House" is okay, but it ends up feeling much more like a part of King's Dark Tower mythos than a true sequel to "The Talisman." I haven't read much of the Dark Tower stuff, so I can't really comment on how it works in relation to those books, but it wasn't really the return to the Territories that I was hoping…

Mixed feelings
I've always been a little mixed on Straub. I've read a lot of his books ("Ghost Story, "Koko," "Mystery," "The Throat," the King collaborations), and while I give him a lot of credit for ambition and stylistic complexity, the overall effect is never quite what it should be. "Koko" is probably his best…

Anton Walbrook
He's terrific in this. Also sublime in "The Red Shoes" and "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp." And "La Ronde." Died mostly forgotten. It's a shame. One of the greats.

I read those video guides to pieces when I was growing up. (Literally: the cover of the 1987 edition, which I had for years, fell off at some point and disappeared.) And I agree about how he could influence your thinking about just about everything. Movies are really a lens through which you can view the world and…

The Susan Anway period is highly underrated. "The Wayward Bus" may be Merritt's strongest single-disc album.