Posts Tagged ‘movies’
Oliver Stone’s Untold History
Oliver Stone is no stranger to controversy. His trilogy of Vietnam war films, Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July and Heaven & Earth; his take on the Kennedy assignation in JFK; the violence of Natural Born Killers; his “greed is good” indictment in Wall Street, his portrayal of Turkish people in Midnight Express, and … Read More »
Top 5 – Halloween Movies (Part 2)
4) The Old Dark House, 1932, directed by James Whale, starring Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Gloria Stuart, Ernest Thesiger, Raymond Massey, and Elspeth Dudgeon The most acclaimed horror films from the early days of sound were those produced by Universal Pictures in the early 1930′s: Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, and The … Read More »
Top 5 – Halloween Movies (Part 1)
Since Halloween is near, I thought I would share with you my top five favorite horror movies. We certainly have come a long way since I was a child in terms of what is permissable for public viewing. The other day I saw the rotting corpse of a zombie from The Walking Dead on the front … Read More »
Frankenweenie – review!
“This is what Tim Burton is GOOD at!” When I left the theater, I felt like Burton had returned to his roots. I was a fan of Edward Scissorhands, Nightmare Before Christmas, Sleepy Hollow and Beetlejuice… but in recent years I was underwhelmed with the Corpse Bride and Sweeney Todd, and outright repelled by Charlie and the … Read More »
It Was a Good Summer
Does anyone ever get over the feelings of our childhood, when as school children we anticipated the arrival of our summer vacation with heart palpitating impatience, and greeted the inevitable return to classes in September with both wistful resistance and the thrill of new beginnings. As Joni Mitchell said in her song “Urge for Going”, … Read More »
Sugarman
Noêl Coward has Elyot say in “Private Lives”, “It’s extraordinary how potent cheap music is.” Well, I think most music is potent, cheap or not, and I was reminded of this all over again when I went to The Charles this weekend to see “Searching For Sugarman.” My creative nonfiction professor alerted me to it … Read More »
My First Time …
For my reminiscenses on how I “got the bug” for classical music, check out my earlier blog “Discovering Classical Music” and my bio. But as an overview and focus on my “first time”: my parents were both musicians and music teachers, so I was exposed to music since before I can remember. My earliest experiences were … Read More »
2 great movies and a new meaning for the term “soap opera”
While all of us on the WBJC staff love movies, we’re often annoyed by the way in which classical music is portrayed on the silver screen these days. If it’s used at all, it’s generally depicted as something stuffy rich people enjoy, or it’s the background music to a serial killer’s gruesome exploits. This wasn’t … Read More »
Walking “The Way”
A couple of weeks ago my wife and I watched a new movie called “The Way” on DVD. We liked it so much that we saw it a second time a few days later, and then sat through it a third time to hear the commentary track by the filmmakers. “The Way” is … Read More »
I Coulda Been a Contender… The BSO Goes to the Movies
You may recognize the opening title of this blog from one of history’s most famous film scenes starring Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy in On The Waterfront. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will perform Leonard Bernstein’s score to On The Waterfront accompanying the film during the new season. This morning the BSO held a press conference … Read More »
