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Bombast #52
NEWS ON THE MARCH! This week the venerable UK film mag Sight & Sound released its seventh “Greatest Films of All Time” survey, the results of which have been unveiled every decade since 1952. The...
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Bombast #53
“I must go home periodically to renew my sense of horror” said Carson McCullers of Columbus, Georgia—but I am afraid that I actually rather enjoy returning to Cincinnati, Ohio. I am particularly fond...
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Bombast #54
Prompted by the death of Gore Vidal, which was subject of this column two weeks prior, I finally picked up a copy of Screening History last week, the author’s sole work built around—I cannot say...
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Bombast #55
The Vincent Thomas Bridge in Los Angeles’s traditionally blue-collar South Bay connects San Pedro on the West side to Terminal Island and Long Beach on the East. The area is well-represented in motion...
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Bombast #56
It so happened that I had re-watched Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, as I am wont to do about once a year, the night before the news of the Republican National Convention’s surprise guest speaker leaked....
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Bombast #57
Once upon re-watching The Thin Man (1934), I made a point of counting the martinis that William Powell’s Nick Charles slung back during a single party scene. I can’t remember the exact total, but it...
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Bombast #59
“Yesterday had been summer in the city, the end of summer stale and jaded, with a dejection in the air that dragged like an old skirt in the gutter.” So begins one of my favorite works of fantasy...
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Bombast #60
Just now I watched the reconvened NFL referees give every last chance of victory to the “Cleveland Browns” expansion team, which nevertheless earnestly lost its fourth straight game of the still-young...
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Bombast #61
I have been working on a list of things whose presence alone can render a movie at least watchable. One of them is a character dashing a salt shaker into a mug of beer. Other examples include: *Maps...
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Bombast #62
Can you smell the cannonades? A long-fomenting revolution is underway! Movies are going to be fun again! Was the Lexington moment when Dan Kois pushed away a steaming plateful of cultural...
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Bombast #63
If you want to develop a schizophrenic attitude about the value of a dollar, I suggest dividing your adolescent listening time between finger-wagging punk/hardcore music, and licentious, make-it-rain...
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Bombast #64
Last Saturday, October 20th, I fulfilled a dream that began when I was a wee 12-year-old watching reruns of NBC-TV’s CPO Sharkey on the infant Comedy Central: I finally saw national treasure Donald...
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Bombast #65
This week, the world of film criticism was rocked by some unexpected news. I am referring, of course, to Gene Shalit’s encounter with a utility pole in Lenox, Massachusetts. I wish the best of luck to...
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Bombast #66
When I was around 5 or 6 years old, I received what I recall to have been my first albums: “Weird Al” Yankovic’s Dare to be Stupid and “Weird Al” Yankovic in 3-D, both on cassette tape, both as...
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Bombast #67
It was a minute or so into the opening credits of Robert Aldrich’s Twilight’s Last Gleaming that I wondered: “Is there going to be a single woman in this movie?” There are, but just barely. A few...
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Bombast #68
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the peculiar phenomenon of growing up parodic—that is, of having experienced the world, almost from the cradle, through the distorted lens of farce. And, lo and...
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Bombast #69
Last week, in my musings about the thin line between engaging with and becoming caught up in the self-perpetuating, self-justifying hamster wheel of pop culture, I mentioned Rihanna’s gimmick 777...
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Bombast #70
You could do worse for career advice than consulting Wizard, though Peter Boyle’s monologue does leave a few dangling questions. Some time ago I saw a documentary called Je t’aime… moi non plus:...
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Bombast #71
At the Buechenwald camp gate stood a niche for the watchdog. A chained beast barked at passers-by, and greedily buried its snout in its bowl of mush. Even though the beast never stood up on its hind...
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Bombast #72
Tom Hooper does just about everything that a director can do to render his screen adaptation of Les Misérables unwatchable—which is only to be expected. I had known that there was something very wrong...
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