Remains of the Day

September 28, 2010

A few weeks ago, my satellite provider gave me a wonderful gift—three free months of the Encore channels. That means I have temporary access to many of my favorite films made during the last decade or two. Merchant/Ivory’s 1993 adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day falls into that category. In fact, I’d go so far as putting it on my list of top ten movies of all time.

Why? Because there’s not a bad scene in it.

Easy A

September 23, 2010

The list of movies I want to see right now—well, there is no list. That’s why I skipped my review last Thursday. This week, though, in a fit of desperation, I decided to try out “Easy A.” Some critics seemed to like it, and how could I resist a film that promised a humorous update on The Scarlet Letter?

My Love Affair

September 14, 2010

I lost my heart in 1980. The object of my affection, a dumb terminal, lived in a small room around the corner from my office in Ross Hall, the building that housed the English Department at Iowa State. The university gave each of us faculty members $100 worth of free computer time to do with what we would.

How could I resist?

The American

September 9, 2010

We’re definitely in the doldrums movie-wise if “The American” is number one at the box office this week. I saw the film one ninety-five-degree afternoon, not because I had high hopes, but because I was desperate for some relief from the heat.

Cooling my heels was not nearly a good enough reason to waste eight dollars and 103 minutes of my time.

Gone Fishing

September 6, 2010

My motivation to write has nosedived, especially after I spent most of last week in Cleveland. Granted, it’s only a two-hour drive from Columbus, and there’s no time change. So that can’t be the reason why I’m suddenly besieged by an attack of the lazies.

The weather is cool, and that’s supposed to be energizing, right?

Devil in A Blue Dress

September 2, 2010




This is the slow season for movie lovers like me who prefer small and smart over big and loud, subtle and unexpected over broad and formulaic. Not that these categories don’t bleed into one another. They do. Just not often enough.

I guess that’s why DVRs were invented—to make dry patches like this one bearable. Last week, I recorded and saw again the terrific 1995 adaptation of Walter Moseley’s first Easy Rollins mystery “Devil in a Blue Dress.”