Movies

Author Donna Tartt’s expert craft in word choice, phrase construction, paragraph progression, and plot architecture combined with narrator David Pittu’s deep, exact pronunciation and dramatic inflection made all 32 hours of listening to The Goldfinch (2013) audiobook—simply delicious. The novel centers around Theo Decker, a young man who lost his mother through tragedy and gained a priceless…

No spoilers) There’s little dialogue in Hannah. I was afraid this film would be one of those where at the end you say, “It’s over? What was this movie about anyway?” Well, when this film ended, I knew exactly what happened even though no one ever actually said it. That’s brilliant. Imagine a retired couple having…

There are many types of film competitions each year, but the Academy Awards provides the pinnacle of recognition for film artists and professionals. Each January, hundreds of millions of fans and critics tune in to see who the big winners are—those honorees who will go down in history. For a lot of my writing on…

Sometimes I’m disappointed with movie remakes, but that’s not the case with Fahrenheit 451. The theme of the first film, and the novel it was based on, is actually strengthened in the 2018 version. Both versions have just enough similarities and differences to make them both worth watching. I’d recommend reading the novel by Ray Bradbury…

Our local paper runs a column on history, and every morning, I like to review the notable events that happened on that date. Yesterday, I read that on April 21, 1977, Annie opened on Broadway, and its run totaled 2,377 performances. This started me on a path of Annie reminiscence, and it grew into this post. Annie in Poetry Many people…

As part of Cinemark’s 2019 Oscar Movie Week, we saw Green Book, starring Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali, and Linda Cardellini. To say it is the best movie I’ve seen in a long time seems trite, but it’s true. Some folks say that the relationship between the real-life African-American musician, Donald (Doc) Shirley, and his Italian-American driver, Tony (Lip) Vallelonga, was strictly business, but there’s…

I like movies. I like to watch them, research them, and share them. A couple of years ago I responded to a Tweet from DVD Netflix asking if I was interested in partnering with them in their new “director” program for movie fanatics. I considered the gesture an honor, and I feel fortunate to be involved in…

As a purist fan of the Broadway play, Annie, I never quite warmed up to the movie version that came out in 1982. After all, Punjab, who played a major role in the movie, wasn’t in the play and neither were some of the songs, like “Dumb Dog” and “Let’s Go to the Movies.” Now there’s…