Movies entertain us like no other art form. The silver screen continues to captivate us today just like it did back in the early 20th century. These stories on film also have given us many memorable quotes and I plan on using some of those quotes to inspire you to move forward with your New…
It was a very good year at the movies. Mad Max: Fury Road. The third sequel to the post-apocalyptic classic Mad Max is the best action film since The Matrix: jaw-dropping, bold, ambitious and thrilling. Max (now played by Tom Hardy) is again a loner on the run in the barren wasteland left by a…
It is now taken for granted that the Catholic Church’s priests sexually abused thousands, if not tens of thousands, of children over the last 50 years and that the Church hierarchy covered it up, quietly settling lawsuits, moving abusers from parish to parish, and doing very little to stop the abuse from happening or occurring…
Best of Enemies, impeccably crafted by Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon, tells the story of the televised debates between Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr. during the 1968 Republican and Democratic National Conventions. In order to create excitement for their coverage of the conventions, ABC decided to pit the two most entertaining political wits…
Every so often a woman escapes from the clutches of a mad kidnapper who has held her, and often other women, and often the children born in captivity, in a dank basement, a locked attic or a backyard shed. I always think it can be hard to turn these kinds of stories into serious art;…
As I’ve written before, no one should ever expect historical accuracy from a feature film that is “based on a true story.” I can’t fault the total fantasy of Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay for Steve Jobs, the new biopic about the co-founder of Apple who is constantly referred to as a genius, a visionary and an…
Lily Tomlin is having a very good year. That’s not saying too much. The 76-year-old actress and comedian has been considered one of the funniest people in America for more than 50 years, and she’s had some great years. She became a regular on Laugh In in 1970, was nominated for an Oscar for being…
In decades past, political pundits referred to the final few weeks leading to the presidential election as the “silly season” of politics. Nowadays, the silly season is more or less the three years leading up to the election, and if you haven’t noticed it, the three-ring circus that is the Donald Trump-led Republican nomination contest…
When I figured out that other people were figuring out I was gay, or maybe gay, or maybe just weird, say around the age of 14, I became hyper-vigilant about how I might be perceived by, well, everyone who was close enough to perceive me. Most of it was in my clothes (carefully disheveled instead…
This time it’s different. Since Christine Jorgensen became an international celebrity in 1952 as the supposed, but not actual, first recipient of a sex change operation, the media has been fascinated, titillated and afraid of transgender people, and the images the media produced expressed these emotions. The broadcast news and film have long dominated the…
