Year of the Month: LIVING WITH GHOSTS
1996 was one heck of a year for American roots music. You had Johnny Cash…
Year of the Month: BART ON THE ROAD
This episode is one of those episodes that people don’t often remember, but when they…
Year of the Month: The Bittersweet Beauty of A Charlie Brown Christmas
It’s one of the moldiest old clichés in holiday movies to describe such and such…
The Tragicomic Tightrope Walk of Melvin Monster (or Even More Comics by John Stanley)
Last year, we saw some of the funnybook masterpieces John Stanley created in 1962 —…
Year of the Month: The Even More Total Inexplicability of FUN IN BALLOON LAND
Fun in Balloon Land is a strange and perplexing object. (Notice I didn’t say “movie?”…
CITIZEN KANE: T for Technique and T for Tragedy
Citizen Kane is the greatest movie ever made, but it’s not the greatest movie Orson…
Year of the Month: BLOOD AND SAND
The standard line on Old Hollywood filmmaking is that it was born out of the…
Year of the Month: The Incredible Craft of Disney Shorts
When I was just a little guy in Burgundy Jammies, I watched all the Disney…
Year of the Month: The Gonzo Garbage of Golan and Globus, Part 2
If I told you Bolero was a movie with a bullfighter who gets gored in…
Year of the Month: The Gonzo Garbage of Golan and Globus, Part 1
In 1984, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus produced John Cassavettes’ classic Love Streams for the…