Category Archives: biography

Spartacus

Posted on March 30, 2008

This 1960 movie is one of those classics I’m willing to bet most people under the age of 60 have never watched but still feel they know all about. I admit I was one of them until the other day. … Continue reading →

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The Last King of Scotland

Posted on February 10, 2008

This was a highly regarded movie that I should have been eager to see once it hit cable but due to the subject matter, the brutally insane Ethiopian dictator Idi Amin, I was reluctant. Despite giving The Last King of … Continue reading →

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Huo Yuan Jia (Jet Li's Fearless)

Posted on August 6, 2007

One cannot deny that I’m a big Jet Li fan. Oddly, and mistakenly, I was reluctant to watch Huo Yuan Jia since I had the impression he’d made an adoration to a man who was his own hero, who’d founded … Continue reading →

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Capote

Posted on May 6, 2007

I think Truman Capote would have been reasonably happy with this movie about the most significant period in his life. While he was already a rising literary star for the novel Breakfast at Tiffany’s and as a regular writer for … Continue reading →

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New York Doll

Posted on January 24, 2007

While the band was incredibly influential after blasting onto the rock stage in the early ’70s, the New York Dolls came along about two or three years too soon for me to really have gotten into them and by the … Continue reading →

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Domino

Posted on December 21, 2006

I can understand why Keira Knightley, Mickey Rourke and even Delroy Lindo wanted to make this movie and I can see where it could have been great. Sadly, director Tony Scott and writer Richard Kelly did not deliver on the … Continue reading →

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Walk the Line

Posted on October 4, 2006

I’ve been of two minds about seeing yet another biopic of a musician caught up in the demands of stardom and ego so it got past me in the theatrical run but with a little free time today and HBO … Continue reading →

Also posted in drama, family, movies, musicals, Recommended, Reviews | 2 Comments

Grace of My Heart

Posted on September 4, 2006

I always thought that this sweet, musical movie deserved a better reception than it got but I guess in 1996 people were more interested in Kurt Cobain’s still fresh suicide than a look 40 years back. There must be something … Continue reading →

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Syriana

Posted on August 26, 2006

This collaboration between George Clooney and writer/director Stephen Gaghan is a close cousin of Fernando Meilles’ Constant Gardener with focus shifted from pharmaceuticals to the more obvious petroleum. Cementing the relationship is that neither fits the Hollywood mold (which, despite … Continue reading →

Also posted in drama, movies, Recommended, Reviews, thriller | 1 Comment

The Krays

Posted on June 6, 2006

I’d heard good things over the years and am glad to have finally seen this 1990 dramatization of the lives of twin London gangsters, coldblooded killers who were twisted just a bit in the wrong way by their Mum. The … Continue reading →

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