March 3rd is the day that AUSTRALIA premieres on DVD.  This just gives the movie, one of 2008′s worst, an opportunity to be panned all over again.  Here goes!  Baz Luhrmann’s work has always been love-it or hate-it and I have always been defiantly in the hate-it camp.  But even Baz sunk to new lows with [...]

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Though I still feel that SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE is a wildly overrated movie, I can’t say I was surprised by its big wins last night.  Even so, eight Oscars seems excessive even for a popular favorite, certainly for a film as small in many ways as SLUMDOG.  But I was so pleased by just about everything else that [...]

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When I was in my teens in the 1970s, Oscar always seemed to pick the best movies and the best performances.  Well, one of us has changed.  Since 2000, only two Best Picture winners (CHICAGO and THE DEPARTED) were films I would have had on a year-end Ten-Best list.  I’m expecting Sunday to be an evening of [...]

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February 18th is the publication date for a new book in the entertaining and valuable CITY SECRETS series.  You may have one of the travel books in the series, perhaps ROME or NEW YORK.  The latest entry is MOVIES and I’m pleased to report that I contributed an essay to this project.  Since the focus [...]

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Hot on the heels (and I do mean heels) of Carmen Miranda’s centenary on February 9th, comes the 100th anniversary of the birth of the great writer-director-producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909-1993) on February 11th.  Mankiewicz will forever be remembered as the man who made ALL ABOUT EVE (1950), his masterpiece, and he unfortunately will probably [...]

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