My bad. I forgot Grease was originally a musical. Because the cultural timing of the movie was so perfect (simultaneously popularity of Happy Days, the Bee Gees and John Travolta), I always consider it an original project. Thanks for the reminder.

Re-reading your comment, I’m not sure what you mean by Grease pre-dating Graffiti. Grease was released in 1978, while Graffiti was released in 1972.

Harrison Ford’s performance in American Graffiti also gave us a test run of his Han Solo persona. He appears around 50 seconds into the clip below.

“...criticisms leveled at George Lucas’ screenwriting and direction make him seem to many like a hack who had one good idea.” Well, THX 1138 is pretty compelling dystopian sci-fi, and while American Graffiti took place in 1962 it essentially invented ‘50s nostalgia. Graffiti also invented soundtrack albums that…

I can’t recommend this book enough to fans of 2001, Kubrick, cinematic lore and the filmmaking process. Definitive:

“... when Bowman murders HAL, because it is a murder...” - Martin Scorsese on the Charlie Rose show, 1999.

“It’s telling that almost none of the actors in this massively successful and influential film ever did a single other thing of any note.”

I used to defend “American Beauty,” saying I appreciated that a major studio was trying to make an independent film within a traditional framework. I have since admitted to myself I was jumping on the critical bandwagon for a film that I knew was deeply contrived. Ultimately, “AB” sacrifices nuance and insight to make…

Based on these comments, I’m not sure if 1999 was such a great year for film if there’s so little agreement on any of the offerings discussed. Maybe it was the greatest year for anticipated films that ultimately disappointed.

Is the brand of spaghetti I buy if De Cecco is sold out.

But I don’t know if you can say Phantom Menace is argued-over. I think the great majority agree the movie was one of cinema’s great disappointments. As for Eyes Wide Shut there is still a debate among Kubrick fans over the film’s merits and where it belongs in the director’s canon.

While the practice of using a “strong moral lesson” to justify nudity in the arts seems quintessentially Victorian, I’m sure this double standard goes back to cave-painting days. Here’s a more recent example from the end of a late-’60s film starring Marianne Faithful who plays a brazen, and busty, libertine.

That Ebert quote made me sad. Such an insightful and skilled writer. 

I just like to think his last words were "Give me more life, fucker!"

Rituals, nudity and bloodletting aside, I'll always remember Luz as Rock Hudson's sister in Giant.

That’s a big reason I love the drop-and-roll scene in The Big Lebowski; another CCR-Vietnam standard “Run Through The Jungle” soundtracks what is essentially a moment of pointless-yet-self-important idiocy.

That is worth the full price of your ticket. Thanks for sharing that moment.

In 1995 I went to my local theater to see a movie with Christopher Walken and Eric Stoltz called The Prophecy. I didn’t pay for my ticket; I used a movie pass awarded by my work. And yet I was horrified to find I had lost something. If not my soul, then time and valuable grey cells. Seeing Stoltz in demonically…

Bingo. Those two performances are the only ones with dimemsion and some sense of an inner life. Maybe Yvonne DeCarlo as well. Everyone else is chewing scenery.

No, and if you watched “The Other Side of the Wind” on Netflix you’d also see Houston was the only credible proxy for Orson Welles.