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"Dark Matter" Just Might Flip Your Synapses

"Dark Matter" Just Might Flip Your Synapses

Okay, I had to look it up too. A synapse is in simplest terms a neurotransmitter important in activating key brain functions. I first heard the word used casually from Jack Nicholson in an interview when I told him my wife and I were expecting a baby around mid-2002. Was

"Hit Man" Is Not To Be Skipped

"Hit Man" Is Not To Be Skipped

I really didn’t want to buy into Hollywood making a new male movie star–that old wheeze they’ve sold us on forever. Not to sound too Yoda, but I’ve watched it all happen before. In rough sequence, I remember watching: Tom Cruise nearly knocking himself out tackling

Apple Music's 100 Greatest--the Scruffs and Muffs

Apple Music's 100 Greatest--the Scruffs and Muffs

The incomparable Tom Petty is just one of the artists Apple Music's `100 Greatest' left in the wings Was it about a decade ago that producers of written and curated content began to live by the tyrannical premise that a numbered list will quicken the pulse of

"They Tried to Sell Me Like A Prize Hog"

"They Tried to Sell Me Like A Prize Hog"

"I've never had a good man," Ava Gardner told Rex Reed in 1967 Look at her, Ava Gardner. If you’ve seen this picture even once, it likely hangs on in your memory. It’s from 1945, the year of her marriage to Artie Shaw, who

Never Stop "Stop Making Sense"

Never Stop "Stop Making Sense"

We'll always miss Jonathan Demme, but his great concert film lives on “No rock moves or poses,” wrote David Byrne of the founding principles of Talking Heads when the band set out in 1975, “no pomp or drama, no rock hair, no rock lights, no rehearsed stage patter.

Reasons To Be Cheerful:

Reasons To Be Cheerful:

Revisiting “The Beach”, with friends Well--what do you lot think you’re up to? Actually, about an hour from the moment this shot was taken, we were going to have a scare. Nothing too deadly. But nerve-wracking enough. Call it a learning experience. The picture was taken mid-summer of 1986,

Alex Garland's Cinema of Entrapment and Escape

Alex Garland's Cinema of Entrapment and Escape

The British director has shown Americans in circumstances that make scenes of horror personal; herewith, a look at his strategies. Recently in this space I discussed (“Civil War" Is here—and we’re living it”) Alex Garland’s recent film about an America wrenched into anarchy and discord. It’