I confess to being one of the ones surprised to find out he isn't dead:
Abe Vigoda found out he was dead in 1982. He was doing a play in Calgary, Alberta, while a People magazine writer visited the "Barney Miller" wrap party in Los Angeles, California.
"Somehow it mentioned in the article that 'the late Abe Vigoda' was not [there]," Vigoda recalls.
"American Teen," the documentary that follows five Warsaw High School students through their senior year, is getting terrific reviews everywhere, including this writeup in the Washington Post:
The show that began as "Siskel & Ebert," then became "Ebert & Roeper" after Siskel died, is finally disappearing after limping along without the ailing Ebert for a couple of years:
Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert says he's cutting ties with the television show that he and the late Gene Siskel made famous.
[. . .]
Well, we'll all sleep better now, won't we?
A federal appeals court on Monday threw out a $550,000 indecency fine against CBS Corp. for the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show that ended with Janet Jackson's breast-baring "wardrobe malfunction."
A few years ago, I thought we might be headed for a cultural bottoming out when I read that Steven Speilberg really doesn't read -- all his movies were inspired by other movies. (I haven't been able to find the quote since, so maybe I dreamed it, or maybe it was George Lucas). I think the bottom is either here or very close. The top two opening weekends in movie history, and three of the top five, now belong to films inspired by comic books.
The 20 best movie endings of all time (and if you click on the titles, you can actually watch the endings). If we're talking emotionally satisfying, I'll go with "Casablanca." If we're talking, "Omigod!" heart-stopping, it's gotta be "Carrie."
Another reason to like Angelina Jolie:
If anybody comes into my home and tries to hurt my kids, I've no problem shooting them." That's Angelina Jolie, revealing her up-with-the-Second-Amendment maternal instincts to Britain's Mail on Sunday.
[. . .]
Wow. "Sex and the City" has knocked "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" off its No. 1 spot. Has anybody, I wonder, considered what a blockbuster it would be if those two movies could somehow be combined? It would be a guy's picture and a chick flick.
I continue my impressive record of seeing buzzworthy movies on cable months after everyone else has stopped even talking about them. This gives me the advantage of being able to read a lot of informed comment immediately after seeing the movie, to see if there's anything I missed. And there's little need to worry about issuing a SPOILER alert for anything I might write.
