Renaissance 2.0
Jean Arthur (1900-1991) is one of my favorite actresses of all-time. She was beautiful and talented and starred in several of my favorite films. Three of them were directed by my favorite director ever, Frank Capra. They were: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) You Can’t Take it with You (1938) Mr. Smith Goes to…
“Midnight Express” impacted me a major way as a young man. It was a powerful film written by Oliver Stone before he became an Oscar winning director that told the true story of Billy Hayes who was arrested for trying to smuggle drugs out of Turkey. His nightmare experience in Turkish prison was a gripping…
Ernest Borgnine passed away today at the age of 95. He won the Oscar for Best Actor for his portrayal of MARTY in 1955 which won Best Picture. It is one of my favorite movies of all-time with a beautiful script by the legendary Paddy Cheyesky who also won an Oscar. I loved the realistic…
Which movies do you think portrays certain cultures better than others? For example… My Big Fat Greek Wedding does a good job for Greek families Bend it Like Beckham does well for Indian culture (especially in England) Goodfellas depicts the Italian experience well…ok a particular element of course…same with the Godfather series. For the family culture I would pickMoonstruck The…
There was a lot of hype over the movie DRIVE starring Ryan Gosling and Albert Brooks so I was looking forward to seeing it. I have to say that I was very pleasantly surprised over the fact that it was even better than I thought it would be. The music and the mood and the…
Here’s a gift for all my fellow movie lovers out there. I created a checklist for all Best Picture Oscar winners that you can download and use. It includes the formula for figuring out what percentage you’ve seen thus far of the 83 winners. (I’ve only seen 42 of them). There will be a new…
Reckless is one of my favorite underrated movies. Starred a young Daryl Hannah and Aidan Quinn just before they both made it big the next year in 1985: he broke through with Desperately Seeking Susan and she made a big SPLASH with Tom Hanks. He was like a James Dean in this role… Written by…
Frank Capra is my favorite movie director of all-time which makes Robert Riskin one of my favorite screenwriters of all-time because he penned most of Capra’s best work for the screen. The best of their films together included: It Happened One Night (1934) Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) Lost Horizon (1937) You Can’t Take It with You (1938)…
Breaking Glass (1980) is a favorite film starring Hazel O’Connor who wrote and performed all of the original songs. This was like the punk version of Bette Midler’s The Rose which came out around the same time. Both stories were similar in that they followed the rise to fame of a female music artist and…
SILENT RUNNING is a wonderful science fiction film that was released 40 years in 1972. It was directed by Douglas Trumbull who was the special visual effects master for 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek:The Movie, and other sci-fi classics. This story has Bruce Dern and some others tending…