This is pretty interesting.  Turns out “Star Wars” 1 and 2 were good because of the presence of Gary Kurtz, didn’t know this.  But George Lucas was taken over by the Dark Side – i.e. marketing.  I’m sure he had fantasies about Ewoks becoming the new teddy bear, but that never panned out, so they [...]

I couldn’t get through the Time Traveler’s Wife because the sentimentality bugged me, but these works of art by the author Audrey Niffenegger make me want to give it a second look. I get the same kind of vibe from Time Traveler’s Wife that I get from Eat, Pray, Love, which I haven’t read or [...]

Another aliens are terrorists movie.  Though the image of thousands of people being sucked up in a cloud of dust is effective. Synopsis: A group of young, mildly douchey friends are spending the weekend partying at a swanky hotel on the outskirts of Los Angeles. After a night of revelry, they are awakened at 4:27 [...]

As a departure from some of the topics on this blog, I just want to point out that the Louis CK show is the best thing on TV, maybe the best comedy ever. Matches Woody Allen at his peak, and makes something like “Deconstructing Harry” look like, I don’t know, “Seinfeld.” As a bitter, recently [...]

(Note: this may include spoilers) “Inception” was fucking incredible, but not entirely what I was hoping for. I was hoping for more of a “Matrix”-style exploration of “What is reality?” – if dreams are as tactile as reality, then maybe reality is no different than a dream. The movie does that somewhat, but the rules [...]

I haven’t seen “Inception” yet.  It’s basically the only movie I want to see in the theatre this summer.  My novel’s also about dreams – blurring the line between dreams and reality – so it no doubt interests me.  Maybe, just maybe, the movie will spark more interest in my novel.  Plot: writer starts dreaming/writing [...]

I wrote a book, North of Sunset, about a movie star who’s driven insane by celebrity – starts believing he’s above the moral code of regular people.  I wrote another book, The American Book of the Dead, about a fundamentalist Christian president who starts believing he’s the Messiah.  These two plots are related.  It would [...]

Netflix describes this movie as: Radical left-wing bookstore owner Tom Flynn (Adam Nee) finds himself in the fight of his life when his suspicions surrounding the events of Sept. 11 land him on the radar of a group of nefarious conspirators. When he crosses paths with a mysterious woman who claims to be in possession [...]

Kids movies often have strange and borderline-inappropriate imagery.  In “Madagascar 2,” the movie begins by going back in time.  In order to show that this is years earlier, we see a view of the Manhattan skyline, including the twin towers.  For some reason, the filmmakers thought it was a good idea to evoke the memory [...]