5. My Bodyguard (1980); directed by Tony Bill; coming of age drama. A portrayal of boyhood and friendship that manages to be realistic and poignant without wading into sexual pranks and gross-outs. Normally sardonic character actor Martin Mull interacts effortlessly with the two unknown leads, Adam Baldwin and Chris Makepeace, both outcast, in a spin […]
Most of us have known a kid like that. A kid who didn’t bathe every night. (Or–even–every other night.) One who didn’t have clean clothes and never wore socks…A kid with a constant fever who ate a lot of cereal. A kid like Christopher Moltisanti was. See, that’s what’s wrong with Christopher now. He’s […]
He may have left Poland because of persecution. It was tough to be Jewish in the latter part of the 19th Century, especially in Eastern Europe and its bordering areas of Central Europe. There were lots of tensions. To boil things down to the skeletal remains, a burgeoning movement of the moment was catching […]
I know I said I wasn’t going to do this anymore but c’est la vie. Along came a beautiful film and I just had to write about it. There are so few beautiful films these days. Or, perhaps it’s just me. Perhaps if I was, say, ten years younger I would write something like, […]
A little over a year ago a few comments from the blog Twenty Four Frames, showed up in my email. I was intrigued. The writing was solid and the subject matter–film critique– was right up my alley. I posted some comments and the blog’s author, John Greco, graciously responded. At the time, I was shopping […]
Aspiring American movie producer Irwin Yablans was very impressed with John Carpenter’s sophomore full length feature thriller. Made on a minuscule budget of $100,000 Assault on Precinct 13 was daringly original with its distinctive color pallet, gritty realism, eerie soundtrack and solid acting. In fact Yablans was so impressed–and inspired–that on a flight back to […]
In The Killers, if not for a catalytic stint as a messenger boy, presumably, searching the same streets for the same address as two hit men, Ernest Hemingway treats reoccurring character Nick Adams with incidental indifference. He achieves this by writing from a particularly sterile third person multiple character point of view. This cavalier treatment […]
In the male prison subculture there is a stark difference between the convicts and the inmates. Convicts are criminals, not by happenstance but by design. Crime is their career. Hence they occupy the upper tiers of the prison yard pyramid. They are the mob connected conspirators, bank robbers, drug dealers, counterfeiters and contract killers. At […]
The year was 1989, my husband and I were new to Nashville and President George H.W. Bush was scheduled for an appearance here. My mother–a proud resident of Odessa, the sister city of Midland, Texas, the former home of our 41st and 43rd presidents–asked me during a phone call if I was planing to go […]
All Things Thriller 