Something Old, Nothing New

James Lileks , in the process of generously giving my hit-rate a boost, reminds me that I haven't really explained who I am or why I...

I watched the new DVD of Out of the Past last night (also available in the five-disc Film Noir Collection . The last time I saw it was whe...

The best current reviewer of classical music recordings isn't in the print media and doesn't, as far as I know, have a website. He...

I promise not to let this turn into a DVD announcements blog, but with so many older movies coming out on DVD it's hard to find a time w...

You say you want all the Marx Brothers movies on DVD (not counting LOVE HAPPY)? You like the recent WB release of their MGM/RKO pictures bu...

I wrote: The industry itself tended to assume that great aspirations equalled great art, which explains how movies like HAMLET and GENTLEMA...

I have an ambiguous attitude toward the films of Howard Hawks. In part, it comes from embarrassment over having overrated him before. I m...

The official "Peanuts" website is running strips from 1970, and they're currently running one of my favorite of Schulz's ...

There's a new book on Bob Dylan, Dylan's Visions of Sin , that analyzes his work the way a professor with too much time on his hands...

...My score on Terry Teachout's Cultural Concordance Index is about 45% (out of the questions I answered; my opinions on painting can ...

I saw Trading Places the other day, a movie I'd seen before, but mostly in bits and pieces (it's on TV constantly, so if you're...

The always-vigilant TV Shows on DVD has the official press releases for two new Warner Brothers box sets of cartoons, covering the work of H...

In my post on Strauss's Emperor Waltz I mentioned an article on this piece by David Hamilton. I finally found the article, "The S...

Comics.com is now running one of the most famous Li'l Abner stories of all time: the 1952 story where Li'l Abner is told that his d...

I still haven't been able to find or rewrite my last piece on the Warner Bros. TV cartoons of the '90s, so until I do, my short hist...

High Society is one of those movies that has every reason to be good, and isn't. It's got a Cole Porter score. It's got three...

The discussion of Marlon Brando's bad accents leads me to the question: what criteria do we use to determine the worst movie accents of ...

My favorite Marlon Brando credit is his appearance in the play "I Remember Mama" as Nels, the brother. I really don't know w...

There have been a lot of articles recently on the success of television shows on DVD. The basic story is familiar by now: No one in the ind...

I seem to have misplaced my Pinky and the Brain post, so instead I present another in my almost-nonexistent series on Warner Bros. TV carto...