Ava DuVernay
It's a clunky title, I know. But I didn't want to call these people the "best" directors of the decade, and certainly not the "most successful", for how do you define these things? Awards, critical praise, and box office only tell part of the story. In any case, these notable filmmakers were the most influential and most discussed and/or worshipped… read more!
Billie Eilish
What does it mean to "rule" a year? For this list, I chose people who not only met with great success in their chosen fields in 2019, but who dominated the media landscape (especially on the Internet, where I live). People whose names and likenesses you saw again and again, who were the constant subjects of praise, opinion, and fascination.… read more!
XTC, back when they were a live band
These days it's much more lucrative for a performing artist – any performing artist, young or old, famous or unknown – to tour than to sell albums. Many established acts (Billy Joel, Fleetwood Mac) still play relentlessly, even though they haven't recorded any new material in years. So we have to go back a ways to find successful performers who… read more!
Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter
The world has been rife with fan films – amateur riffs on Batman and so forth – even before the advent of YouTube. The following nine features take this idea to the next level. They are not spoofs, documentaries, or "making of" dramatizations (e.g., The Disaster Artist, Hitchcock). They are, for want of a better word, tribute films: each is… read more!
Scream
Folks, I'm here to save you a lot of time. The following nine films, in my opinion, must be watched – however, they need not be watched past the first scene, because it's all downhill from there. Obviously this is a subjective list: some of these films are considered classics. Others, not so much. In any event, if you're curious,… read more!
Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger
It's an old showbiz tradition: make a name for yourself in your home country, do noteworthy work in a movie that scores US distribution, and Hollywood will soon come calling. It does say something about the American film industry that it has always been relatively open to immigrant talent. But those big breaks don't always pan out for the stars,… read more!
Mark (second from right) at the Seattle International Film Festival, 2016
I'm currently in the thick of submitting Words to Live by to American film festivals near and far. (I'm not pursuing foreign festivals this time, for reasons stated below.) A lot of websites offer dos and don'ts for the festival-bound filmmaker, but these are mine, based on my own experiences and observations. Before you start submitting your film – hell,… read more!
Peter O’Toole as Henry II
Some actors are born to play certain roles. So much so that they'll be cast as the same person in two entirely different movies – and I'm not talking about sequels, spinoffs, remakes, or cameos in which they spoof themselves. Read this list and you'll see what I mean. IAN HART as John Lennon. Mainstream moviegoers know Hart as the… read more!
Musso’s neon signage
My wife and I have been semi-regulars at Hollywood's Musso & Frank Grill for a decade now. 2019 has been a banner year for the restaurant: the oldest in Hollywood, Musso's turns 100 this year, and it also serves as a key location in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. On a sadder note, Musso's most famous bartender… read more!
Bacon-wrapped hot dogs
Most people don't talk about how a city smells, because most cities smell the same: like diesel, dog crap, and garbage. You'd probably add that LA also smells like "smog", but I don't know what smog smells like – maybe I've been here so long that I've become desensitized to it. In any event, I actually find Los Angeles and… read more!
Eddy Grant’s song, cut from the film
I had hoped to preface this list with a trivia nugget about the first song ever written for a film. Alas, my research has proven inconclusive, though it might have been "Sonny Boy", from the 1928 Al Jolson musical The Singing Fool. (It was almost certainly the first hit song written for a film.) Anyway, lots of well-known songs came from… read more!
Dicks Street
It's time once again for Pride Weekend in West Hollywood. And as I occasionally do around this time of year, I thought I'd write another cheeky list saluting my friends and neighbors here in this, the queerest of American cities. The following streets are all real, and they were all christened long before West Hollywood became a gay mecca. But… read more!
Art Howe has outlived Philip Seymour Hoffman
In the old days, a biographical motion picture – biopic, for short – would cover its subject's life from cradle to grave, emphasis on grave. Yet there have also been countless biopics made while their subjects were very much alive: W., The Queen, What's Love Got to Do with It, I, Tonya, and so forth. In rare, awkward instances, the… read more!
So many Captain America questions
Now that half the universe has seen Avengers: Endgame, I feel comfortable in talking about it without fear of spoiling it. Still, if you haven't yet seen the film, and you still intend to, then leave this page immediately. In any event, while one must suspend tons of disbelief when watching a superhero movie, Endgame did leave me with some… read more!
Winchester
San Francisco has starred in scores of films, and nearby Oakland has recently had some time in the spotlight thanks to Fruitvale Station, Sorry to Bother You, etc. But what of lowly San Jose and its environs? Silicon Valley is driving the world's culture right now, but motion pictures shot in Santa Clara County – or with stories set in… read more!
Dianne Feinstein
Lots of famous people were born and/or raised in San Francisco: Joe DiMaggio, O.J. Simpson, Danny Glover, Courtney Love, Margaret Cho, and so on. But you won't find any notable names when you Google the phrase "lifelong San Franciscan". In true California spirit, the people most associated with the City by the Bay either came from elsewhere to make their fortune,… read more!
Ferry Cross the Mersey
When you think of the British Invasion – the musical one, in the mid 1960s – you think of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, and maybe the Kinks. The Beatles, of course, also became movie stars that decade, beginning with A Hard Day's Night. The other three bands, alas, never got their own teenybopper films. (Gimme Shelter, Tommy, and Return to… read more!
Breakin’
The moment a fad achieves widespread popularity, someone in Hollywood says, "Let's make a movie about it! We'll rake in millions!" That someone is nearly always wrong. The thing is, it takes so much time to write, shoot, and edit a film – even a cheapie riding the coattails of a national craze – that by its release date, audiences… read more!
Lufthansa’s downstairs lavatories
I'm lucky in that I have the time and means to travel by air for pleasure. Not lucky enough, alas, to fly first class. So this list won't cover those genuinely awesome amenities, like showers and lounges, which you will find on A380s flown by Etihad, Emirates, etc. But for this hapless traveler cramped in economy, these little innovations have… read more!
The Current War
Movies can take a long time to make – and even longer when they're stuck in development hell, post production hell, or distribution hell. Here are nine high-profile films that were supposed to come out a while ago, but for various reasons haven't yet been released to the American public. Wendy. A Collider article from August 6, 2015 announced, "New… read more!