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Alameda Writers Group: Everything About Screenwriting
If you left the May meeting of the Alameda Writers Group (AWG) with unanswered questions about screenwriting, it was your own fault. The featured speaker at the AWG General Membership meeting was...
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The Last Critic
For the first 21 years of my life, I never knew life without my dog. She came along the same time as my brother. And picking her out amongst a sea of golden retriever puppies is one of my earliest...
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Movie Reboots Getting Awfully Redundant
I know some people like movies that shake things up. The current films Man of Steel and The Lone Ranger come to mind as perfect examples. In the former, whether you may want to kindly call it a...
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Movie Review: ‘Ways to Live Forever’
Ways To Live Forever, released Friday July 19 in select AMC theaters, is based on a novel by Sally Nicholls. This is a coming of age film for two best friends facing the reality of death at a very...
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Memories of Karen Black
It was with a heavy heart that I heard of the passing of the ultra-idiosyncratic, independent-minded actor, singer and playwright Karen Black this week. From counterculture emblem to ’70s TV star and...
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We Laugh to Keep From Crying: The Top Five Black-Comedy Films
Mark Twain wrote in his travelogue Following the Equator that the “secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in Heaven.” In his view, the compulsion to laugh is borne out...
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Christopher Nolan and The Power of Myth – The ‘Dark Knight’ Trilogy
With the release of The Dark Knight Trilogy: The Ultimate Collector’s Edition, I did something I have never done before. I watched all three films on Blu-ray in one sitting. Even without the extras, it...
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Movie Review: ‘Let Me Out’
There are two ways that films illuminate difficult truths about growing up: painfully, as in The Spectacular Now, and charmingly, as is done in Let Me Out. Let Me Out, promotes itself as a “zombie...
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Why a Hollywood Adaption of ‘The Atom’ Would Be Smashing
Listen up, Pop Culture Planet, superheroes in modern Hollywood are big business. A billion dollar business. There’s no doubt, they generate more money than Bruce Wayne, Stark Enterprises and LexCorp...
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21st Hamptons International Film Festival: Winners to Watch for in the Coming...
2013 Hamptons International Film Festival Guild Hall where the winners were announced The Hamptons International Film Festival offered its Golden Starfish Awards to honor emerging directors from around...
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The Zombie Apocalypse: Tales for our Troubled Times
The planet has been overrun with zombies. No, it isn’t the zombie apocalypse, and no, it isn’t some bizarre rage disease descending upon us. It’s just that over the past few years, zombies seem to have...
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‘Johnny Eager’: Robert Taylor’s Filmic Redemption
Johnny Eager (played by Robert Taylor) earns his living as a cab driver by day but, on a closer look, he’s a gangster by night who talks to everyone (mostly dames) with a vaguely disdainful chivalry,...
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Robert Taylor: The Man with the Perfect Charm
“There was a style of living and making motion pictures which no longer exists. It has been coldly modernized into something very factual … For some of us who were fortunate enough to have been a part...
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The Most Underrated Movies of 2013
Critics shunned them, moviegoers ignored them, and award shows laughed at them. Still, despite all the negative press, some of the “worst” films of 2013 may actually be worth your time. Here’s a short...
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Athena Film Festival 2014: A Celebration of Women and Leadership
The 2014 Athena Film Festival at Barnard College, February 6-9th. The fourth year of the Athena Film Festival, held at Barnard College February 6-9th, was an incredible experience for women and men....
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Interview: Filmmaker Patrick Creadon on His Latest Project
Director Patrick Creadon Documentary filmmaker Patrick Creadon spends a year in Bertie County, North Carolina, one of the poorest counties in the state, as he follows a group of students in a new...
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CinemaCon 2014 – Its a Wrap!
I know you all expected at least one epic meltdown from me. But nope, this year, I had the magical pass that got me into every event without jumping through hoops. So I had a very easy time. One thing...
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Gordon Willis: Master Cinematographer
Marlon Brando as ‘The Godfather’ Some of the most memorable films of the ’70s and ’80s have a dramatic, distinctive look, giving them an immediacy that resonates for viewers even today. And when you...
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Interview With Nicholas Wrathall, Director of ‘Gore Vidal: The US of Amnesia’
Nicholas Wrathall, director of ‘Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia.’ Photo by Vittorio Zunino (Celatto/Getty Images Europe) Gore Vidal was a political and social critic, intellectual, avid...
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Film Distribution Workshop with Gravitas
Putting their motto — “Don’t just make a film, get people to see it” — to work, Ted and Courtney Balaker of Free Minds Distribution held a workshop at Reason-TV Studio on creating a distribution plan...
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