arts

I've been laid up the past few days and while surfing for something to watch came across The Andromeda Strain, a slightly ironic film given my condition. I loved the book with its pastiche of science fact and fiction (akin to my favorite sci-fi author Isaac Asimov). The movie does

Feels great to talk about a Star Wars movie without having to deal with family legacy, the qualities of The Force, or the great arc of the universe. Solo -- or in full, Solo: A Star Wars Story -- is just a fun film that does decent enough justice to

Chirstopher's Nolan's Dunkirk is a masterpiece, best of the year. Two main points: Dun-ceptionTurn's out that Nolan's Inception wasn't just a movie, but re-introduced a new way to frame story-telling, not with flash-backs, but with multi-track, multi-timescale story lines. That's sounds bizarre but it enables three different stories, with three

Out with the gang a couple nights ago, rambling on about good movies, I mentioned Body Heat as a must see and got blank stares from the rest of the table. One asked sarcastically if it was in black and white. SMH as they say. At that point I was

Zarqawi is dead; Rove is innocent; Alberto never became a hurricane....and all the Ann Arbor crowd can do is change the subject and come out *in favor* of cork. They're even selling T-shirts with their extremist conservative message. Why not do it right and go back to the Roman

The Cruise-produced Mission Impossible:III works well as mindless fun, but maybe someday someone will actually put together a movie based on the old TV show. This version is solely concerned with three (or so) distinct action scenes which could of course be in any order and still make sense.

A few months ago, we purchased tickets to a New York Philharmonic concert of John Williams music expecting some fun entertainment. Upon arrival at the show, we discovered we were in the front row and that, not only was John Williams conducting, but Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg would be

A bit late for first-run movie houses, but if you're looking for something on cable.... 16 Blocks is a crackling, tightly written cop movie. Director Richard Donner has had fun movies in the past but seemed to be running out of steam - this film shows he can still make

Went to New Jersey for Easter and stopped by Kristen's parents. Turns out, Tony Soprano's house is right between her mom's and her dad's house. The address isn't  easily available on the net, but some sleuthing with Google Earth found it. (Looks like the folks have added a west-wing guest-house.

Simon Winchester's A Crack In The Edge Of The World is the most fascinating and simultaneously frustrating book I've ever read. Chock full of scientific info and trivia concerning the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, the book is also written in the most annoying self-agrandizing fashion imaginable and rambles on