Nowadays a movie instantly gets points with me if it has opening credits.  I’ve never liked the trend, more popular now than ever, in which new movies deny us any credits until the end, usually starting off with the title and nothing else.  Somehow it has come to pass that some movies are too “serious” [...]

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Usually when I do these 100th birthday tributes, the star or director in question has been dead for a few decades.  Not this time.  British director Ronald Neame would have turned 100 this April 23, but he left us only ten months ago, passing away at 99 last June.  This was nearly a case of [...]

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Sidney Lumet, the epitome of the New York film director, died at 86 on April 9th.  He had a remarkable career, hitting it big with 12 Angry Men (1957), his first feature film, and ending his directorial career on a damn good note with Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007), exactly fifty years later!  Not [...]

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Considering how much I’ve loved Julie Andrews my whole life, I’m baffled as to why it took me three years to get around to reading her 2008 memoir Home.  Finally, on my 30-hour train ride home from the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival in New Orleans, I read the whole book.  It is now one of [...]

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