My Journal

Indians?
Indians?

What’s with the Indians? Aside from paintings and drawings of Indians plastered all over the book, what’s it got to do with some wise guy New Yorker who wants to “go back to where I used to live when I was a kid in New Hope and see my best friend Smedley Fagan here,...

read more
A 21st century Dean, Brando, Newman, Nicholson
A 21st century Dean, Brando, Newman, Nicholson

Who are the great movie anti-heroes? Gable? Bogart? Brando? Dean? Newman? Nicholson? AFI picked Bogart as America's favorite movie star - and his appeal was on that basis, the anti-hero - as was Gable's (the King) and all the rest of the aforementioned. Rhett, Rick,...

read more
A 21st Century Catch-22
A 21st Century Catch-22

North Korea! Front page today. Tomorrow? Or by the time you read this? Who knows? But I mention it because I served 13 months in the closest camp of significance to the DMZ where we all knew we were mere cannon fodder (or, at best, speed bumps) if they ever decided to...

read more
A 21st Century Pauline Kael
A 21st Century Pauline Kael

Godfather I & II Good Fellas The Graduate One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Amadeus On the waterfront A Streetcar Named Desire Chinatown It Happened One Night Lawrence of Arabia Casablanca Annie Hall You will note every one of those movies was directed by a...

read more
A 21st Century Brando
A 21st Century Brando

He was definitely the Godfather of all method actors. He was the one they all looked up to, tried to emulate, and viewed with such reverence that Pacino, going into The Godfather, said, "He's God!" And yet. In my opinion, it's solely based on two performances:...

read more
A 21st Century Jazz Singer
A 21st Century Jazz Singer

The problem is when some artist comes along and throws everybody for a loop because it's not what they've been conditioned to see. Movies were never questioned until someone got the strange idea of adding dialogue - spoken, no less! - not the tried and proven...

read more