It’s unfair to hold Woody Allen to the standard he set 35 years ago with “Annie Hall.” Allen’s romantic comedy, which beat out “Star Wars” for the Best Picture Oscar in 1977, remains an unabashed delight in its newly minted
The Oscar nominations are out, almost by surprise. There was a time when Oscar nominations were news, when people cared. Did you care? Maybe, but it’s hard to see why. There was a time when the Academy Awards were an
Yes, the Woody Allen screen persona is well-known and established, but the actor does play different characters within that persona. Sometimes it’s just a few degrees off and hardly perceptible to the naked eye, but his Isaac Davis in “Manhattan”
This week on HomeVideodrome, Hunter reviews Haywire, Shame, and Warrior, Jim has cedar fever, and we plow through a cornucopia of new releases. Head on over to The Film Thugs to check it out. Okay, so I was a little
Best Picture “The Artist” “The Descendants” “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” “Hugo” “Midnight in Paris” “The Help” “Moneyball” “War Horse” “The Tree of Life” Best Actor Demian Bichir, “A Better Life” George Clooney, “The Descendants” Jean Dujardin, “The Artist” Gary
My love for Blu-ray threatens every bit of financial security I’ve managed to build up over the years. Amazon.com is my dealer, and I am its numero uno degenerate junkie. The challenge is that most of my embarrassingly large DVD
The Golden Globes Awards “are just like the Oscars but without all that esteem,” host Ricky Gervais said during last night’s Golden Globes telecast, his third stint hosting the annual show. The ceremony–featuring awards handed out by the Hollywood Foreign
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Award show season is here, and it’s the time when I get all excited and giddy for the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild Awards, and the Academy Awards. The 69th Annual Golden
Edward Burns’s tenure as Long Island’s version of Woody Allen didn’t last long. Burns’ 1995 film “The Brothers McMullen” suggested a new, exciting voice had entered Hollywood. But Burns couldn’t replicate the sly charms of his film debut, and his
Although 2011 started out slowly at the multiplex and the summer was full of big-budget disappointments — I’m looking at you, “Transformers 3”– this year took an unexpectedly strong turn in the fall when a lot of great smaller movies
Four of the six leading Republican candidates were given lumps of electoral coal this Christmas season when they failed to gather the signatures necessary to qualify for the Virginia Republican primary held on March 6. This leaves only Governor Mitt
This week’s episode of the HomeVideodrome podcast is running behind schedule, so check The Film Thugs for updates and subscribe on iTunes! “Nostalgia is a powerful feeling, it can drown out anything.” So says director Terrence Malick, who decidedly avoided
Actress Diane Keaton’s new memoir feels like we’re sitting beside the Oscar-winning actress on a therapist’s couch. “Then Again” lets Keaton, best known for roles in “Annie Hall,” “The Godfather” and “Something’s Gotta Give,” open her soul for a most
NEW LINE CINEMA AND ICE CUBE WANT TO MAKE ANOTHER ‘FRIDAY’ FILM If this comes together we will have four “Friday” films and while I’m not advocating for a return to the well after almost a decade, I am a
The beguiling Baya Benmahmoud sees the world through fascist-covered glasses. Baya, the main character in the new French comedy ‘The Names of Love,’ is obsessed with her far-left politics. How obsessed? She uses her feminine wiles, and they are considerable,
David Koechner didn’t become a superstar from his stint on ‘Saturday Night Live’ like fellow alums Eddie Murphy, Chevy Chase and Will Ferrell. After all, Koechner only lasted one season on the sketch show and didn’t forge any indelible characters,
STREAM NETWORKS, STREAM!!! DirecTV subscribers now have to worry about losing their Fox channels. Screw that. Broadcasters and cable nets need to start streaming their channels to cut out the middle man — to put an end to this nonsense.
‘THE SUPER COPS’ FINALLY GETS DVD RELEASE As a kid I used to be sure to stay up — even on a school night — to catch this whenever it played on the Late Show. With that ritual long dead,
I took a week off from my Enter Stage Right memoir, The Haunted Heaven, and this series for Big Hollywood. Why? For time to ponder how some people are losing their jobs because of their free speech. More than one
Maybe I need to start calling this “The Early-Afternoon-On-The-West-Coast Call Sheet”. Anyone who runs any kind of blog will tell you that it takes more work to write something when there isn’t much to write about. The search for inspiration
MANY THANKS TO OUR 9/11 CONTRIBUTORS As always, Big Hollywood’s contributors came through in a big way. We can’t thank those who contributed to yesterday’s series of posts commemorating the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 atrocity enough. In fact, we
There were a few images from movies that left an indelible impression on my mind when I first saw them in childhood. One was laughing hysterically upon seeing Woody Allen getting his arm stuck in a gumball machine while running
—WOODY ALLEN FINALLY LETS DOWN HIS GUARD FOR PBS— Heaven help me, I love Woody Allen. And not just his “older, funnier” stuff. I hung in there straight through to 2003’s “Anything Else.” It wasn’t until “Melinda and Melinda” that
Good piece today by Christian Toto in the Washington Times on Woody Allen’s critical darling “Midnight in Paris.” I found the film to be quite the disappointment; as Toto notes, Allen takes a bludgeon to America and the Tea Party,
Cedar Rapids is an example of a cancer in American movies, a horrible disease that has befallen independent movies. Every year a movie pops out from Sundance that seems to be the little indie movie that could. This would be
