Be Kind, Rewind is the cinematic equivalent of a letter to Santa Claus. It’s an extended, naïve fantasia; brimming over with good-natured longing but it’s also as insubstantial as that North Pole address.
The film is centered around a ramshackle video store in Passaic, New Jersey – ostensibly the birthplace of jazz great Fats […]

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It’s the Potter Puppet Pals, in “The Mysterious Ticking Noise.”
 
Since this is one of the most-viewed videos on YouTube, the odds are that one out of every five of you has seen this. That’s an amazing statistic for something that doesn’t involve kittens in funny hats, scatological humor, pornography, or someone getting hit in the […]

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This movie is so vanilla,
it turned Samuel L. Jackson’s hair white.

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A decade from now, if you wanted an encyclopedic list of everything wrong with television in 2008, you’ll look no further than NBC’s backdoor pilot movie Knight Rider.The original series aired on NBC from 1982-1986, and quite frankly, it hasn’t aged well. Cheap production values, unsophisticated plots, and David Hasselhoff combined to create some first-rate […]

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Just released on DVD is one of the most interesting and unsung films of 2007 – Ben Affleck’s Gone Baby Gone. Originally a novel by Dennis Lehane – the author behind Clint Eastwood’s unreasonably grim Mystic River – it’s standard fare pulp fiction that’s elevated by thoughtful and nuanced direction and a full complement of […]

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One picture is current Oscar nominee for Best Actor, Daniel Day-Lewis. The other is television superstar Tom Selleck playing his second signature role, Quigley Down Under.
    
Can you tell who is who?

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At first glance, There Will Be Blood feels pre-fabricated for the “masterpiece” label. It’s anchored by a showy, overly-intense performance. It has elegant cinematography, and the courage to unfold at a languid, dream-like pace. Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson won’t hurry along the story, letting his lead performers inhabit their characters at a turn of the […]

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Commissions can be an interesting process. Some people have more input in what conceptually goes into a painting, making it more collaborative, while others allow me more freedom to come up with something on my own. Back in October I was asked to do a painting based on Fight […]

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