I’m not going to mention the name of the movie we saw last weekend. It was on DVD and the title was intriguing and the picture on the case was an eye-puller. But this thing sucked. It sucked so hard I it pulled off one of my shoes. You have probably seen it. If not, [...]
We have seen the combinations for years. A new movie debuts and in an effort to wedge it firmly between our attention span and our wallet, the marketing people try to toss out two past blockbusters to describe their film in a catchy sound bite blurb.
Those words were not so much spoken as burped into a crude microphone at the most inopportune moment during a snarled line by John Wayne or a critical piece of dialog by Paul Newman affecting an accent that we all knew wasn’t really Southern, especially juxtaposed right up next to the real Southern accent of [...]
I have always been leery of guys with three names. Presidents and serial killers come to mind. Into my doubting field of vision has wandered one more – Michael Gates Gill, and his book “How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else.”
The sky is filled with coral and amber blushing against torn clouds edged in a metallic glow. The horizon slices the landscape in half, carving the bottom into a harsh, beautiful surface to be appreciated if not traversed. Through this old, familiar rectangle on the wall walks Brad Pitt as Jesse James. A while later, [...]
My daughter made me watch “The Notebook.” My wife made me watch “Pretty Woman.” They both made me watch “Sweet Home Alabama” and “How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days.” I am pretty sure if Josh Lucas or Matthew McConaughey is in the movie, they will make me watch it.
While not exactly an expert on such double-featured institutions, I have spent a little time inside the fence blinds of Deep South drive-in movie theaters, enough time to debate whether they are actually theaters at all, or just big, plywood edifices hoisted up some creosote poles in a terraced, speaker-poled field.
I couldn’t sleep Saturday night, so I had an idea. I’d just read a Nielsen report explaining that DVRs (digital video recorders) are not causing people to zap commercials like the experts initially assumed. Seems that three-fourths of the DVR-Tivo-ing consumers (15 million) don’t zap the commercials at all – they watch them. Looks like [...]
They’re back – Michelangelo, Raphael, Donatello, Leonardo. April is back and so is Casey Jones. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (http://www.tmnt.com) are chopping and kicking and flipping on the big screen after a long vacation from public view – long enough for some people who were huge fans when they were children to have small [...]
If my graying friends are listening to a band from New Jersey, Springsteen’s probably hunched front and center, screaming the everyday lyrics of a tortured life. Some may even admit to an affection for Bon Jovi. So why am I listening to Jersey’s other band that is crushing the music world right now, My Chemical [...]
Checking out of a hotel in North Carolina, I see a man standing at the counter with a business associate of his. This is the conversation:
“What is this?” says the man in the dark suit, looking over his friend’s shoulder.
“I watched a movie,” says the light-suited associate who is checking out.
We have been DaVinci-ized – cryptographed at every turn. Troublesome puzzles gouge at our brains here, difficult translations bore through our thoughts there, long-lost religious icons drip under the sink, deep meanings hide in old paintings. My mother found a paint-by-numbers picture I did when I was 6 years old of a beagle and swears [...]
I spend a lot of this space writing about growing up in Alabama, a rich source of material for anyone looking to tell a story. Recently , I found a small commentary in my hometown newspaper about Truman Capote and Harper Lee.
The big movies of the summer? Superman. Again. Mission Impossible. Again. Pirates of the Caribbean. Again. Miami Vice. Again. X-Men. Again. Poseidon. Again. As usual, a season of agains all over again. And then there’s this: Snakes on a Plane.
Let’s dispense with the artistic, clever titles and lay it on the line. Snakes on a [...]
Several years ago, I was pretty torked when Forrest Gump came out. OK, I am not quite as slow of a yapper as ol’ Forrest, but I am from Alabama and I share a heck of a lot of that same history.