A couple of weeks ago I had a strong wish to see a donkey and a howler monkey. This didn’t come out of nowhere. I was in the middle of reading Beatrice & Virgil, Yann Martel’s strange and compelling short novel in which the title characters are, respectively, a donkey and a howler monkey. The [...]
Possibly the finest hour onscreen for Mickey Mouse was “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” the segment of 1940’s Fantasia in which he played the title role. The episode is a wordless pantomime, which helps a lot for those of us who find the voice of Disney’s signature rodent grating, to the 1897 orchestral program piece by Paul [...]
Several times in the course of Knight and Day, hero Tom Cruise drugs heroine Cameron Diaz or otherwise causes her to lose consciousness. This happens when the two of them are in a crisis, with the bad guys closing in and the chances of escape unpromising. Then Cameron will black out, and wake to find [...]
Andy Garcia has been around movies since the mid-‘80s, playing gangsters, cops and other steely tough guys. My wife has always had a strong aversion to his work, and while I liked some of his early roles, in The Untouchables, for instance, he’s never been a special favorite of mine, either. There’s something generic and [...]
Out on DVD this week is Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, a sequel to 2006’s Night at the Museum. In the earlier film, which I missed, Ben Stiller played a new night watchman in the American Museum of Natural History in New York who learns that every night, after closing time, a [...]
There are countless well-loved Christmas movies, but Thanksgiving movies are a rarity. I’m not a much of a fan of 1995’s Home for the Holidays, but I often steer people toward What’s Cooking?, Gurinder Chadha’s delightful, too-little-known 2000 multi-cultural Turkey Day comedy. In case you’ve already seen it, though, here are a few more Thanksgiving [...]
Betty Crocker was fictitious, but Chef Boyardee, Marie Callendar and Dr. Pepper were real people. The esteemed microbrew Dave’s Electric Beer, however, has something that these other namesake products don’t: It has two real Daves behind its name. There’s the Dave who created it, and now there’s the Dave who’s keeping the line going. Dave [...]
In order to discuss the new comedy The Goods: Live Hard. Sell Hard, I find I have to first spend a little time discussing the HBO comedy series Entourage. Ever seen it? If anyone had told me the premise of the show before I saw it, I would have held my nose. A rich, young [...]
A startling outbreak has been observed recently at Chandler Regional Medical Center. More than 20 members of the staff in one department have developed into full-blown cases, and at least nine more staffers are showing early symptoms. Fortunately, the department in question-Maternal Child Health-is especially well-equipped to deal with this particular epidemic: it’s a hot [...]
Going to the movies with the family is a part of childhood, and of parenting, that many people take for granted. But for families with autistic children, it isn’t easy. Kids with the disability may behave in ways that disturb other audience members, and they may also suffer from sensitivities to light or noise that [...]