"Movies today stink! Few of the so-called films of 2005 can hold a candle to the great masterpieces of the last century!" If you hang around people who love old movies, you hear arguments like that all the time. It never occurs to these people that when you compare any three months' worth of movies … Continue reading Artistic Darwinism

Remember the revival theaters of the 1970's? If you don't, back then the Bay Area overflowed with venues that specialized in old and semi-old movies, many of them changing their double bill every day. (You almost always got a double bill.) The downside was repetition. These theaters thrived on the three Bs of repertory cinema: … Continue reading Reviving the Revival Theater

Let's assume, for the moment, that sound movies existed in 1601, and that the first production of Hamlet was recorded for posterity. Remember that the title role was tailored to a particular actor, Richard Burbage, just as surely as was the role of Charles Foster Kane. And if we had such a movie, we would … Continue reading Longevity

Michael Medved is right—Hollywood is out of touch with America. Sunday night, we watched the Academy pick the smart one, the one with quality, the right one. That’s not the way America votes. In all the post-Oscar talk about Chris Rock and Beyonce, there’s one interesting statistic that no one seemed to notice: For the … Continue reading Oscar Post-Moderm