[youtube LMsfogNky6w — click here to watch in full-screen HD] A thousand years ago in Cairo, surrounded by ancient pyramids and the ghosts of lost civilizations, the great Arab scientist Alhazen conducted a peculiar optical experiment. Building on observations made
Troopathon 2009 is shaping up to be far more than a marvelous day of thanks offered to our brightest, bravest, and best. It’s also turning into a grand culmination of sorts for the first six months of Big Hollywood’s existence.
Looking back at The Karate Kid (1984), which turned twenty-five years old this week, a thought keeps recurring. Wow. . . Avildsen made it work twice. John G. Avildsen is, in some ways, a director of little distinction when compared
Robert Avrech’s lovely paean to the patriotism of Old Hollywood reminds me, by way of contrast, of a blink-and-you-missed-it scandal from seventeen months ago. Even in a cultural arena rife with liberal outrages against military families, it marked a new
He is a man with a gun. He is a killer, a slayer. Patient and gentle as he is, he is a slayer. Self-effacing, self-forgetting, still he is a killer. . . All the other stuff, the love, the democracy,
“Wax on, wax off.” “He slimed me.” “Fortune and Glory, kid.” “I’ll be back.” “Don’t get him wet. Keep him out of bright light. And never feed him after midnight.” It’s hard to believe that a quarter century has passed
The sun is sinking in the west The cattle go down to the stream The redwing settles in her nest It’s time for a cowboy to dream…. Exquisitely crafted, but never ostentatious. Pleasantly mellow, but never lazy. Thematically rich, but
