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"DVD Journal deserves its reputation as the 'New Yorker' of DVD review sites."— Film columnist D.K. Holm, The Aisle View



























"A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it."

"A bad film is an object out there. A good film is a presence in here."

— Roger Ebert






















"Afraid? Me? A man who's licked his weight in wild caterpillars?" — Groucho Marx, Monkey Business
















Nora: "I read you were shot five times in the tabloids."

Nick: "It's not true. He didn't come anywhere near my tabloids."


— Myrna Loy and William Powell, The Thin Man























"The cuckoo clock. So long, Holly." — Orson Welles, The Third Man

















    




ALSO WORTH YOUR QUALITY TIME

Pros and press, more or less:

Jonathan Rosenbaum, et al., Chicago Reader

J. Hoberman, et al., The Village Voice

A.O. Scott, Manohla Dargis, et al., The New York Times

Dave Kehr

Roger Ebert

Scanners (Jim Emerson)

Sean Axmaker

Filmmaker Magazine

Film Comment

GreenCine Daily

The Guardian

IndieWIRE

The Onion A.V. Club (Scott Tobias, et al.)

The Warren Report (Warren Etheredge)

Shawn Levy's Mad About Movies

Slant Magazine (Ed Gonzalez, et al.)
L.A. Weekly




Film blogs, etc.:

The Auteurs

Bowen's Cinematic

Bright Lights Film Journal

Category D (Chris Cagle)

Cinebeats

Cinema Retro

Cinemasparagus (Craig Keller)

Cinematical

Criterion's Current

CulturePulp (M.E. Russell)

DVD Beaver

DVD Savant (Glenn Erickson)

Deep Focus (Bryant Frazer)

Film Experience Blog

Filmmaker Magazine's Blog

The Filmsnobs

Flick Filosopher (MaryAnn Johanson)

Getafilm

Girish Shambu

Hollywood Bitchslap

The House Next Door (Matt Zoller Seitz)

House of Mirth and Movies

If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats

Like Anna Karina's Sweater AKA Filmbrain (Andrew Grant)

Movie City Indie

Parallax View (Sean Axmaker)

The Powerstrip (Joseph "Jon" Lanthier)

Pullquote (Cinetrix)

Screen Savour

Self-Styled Siren

Senses of Cinema

Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule

Shadowplay (David Cairns)

Six Martinis and the Seventh Art

Some Came Running (Glenn Kenny)

SpoutBlog

Sunset Gun (Kim Morgan)

Thrilling Days of Yesteryear (Ivan G. Shreve)

Wonders in the Dark (Sam Juliano)





"Jack Cole's 'Plastic Man' belongs high on any adult's How to Avoid Prozac list, up there with the best of S.J. Perelman, Laurel and Hardy, Damon Runyon, Tex Avery and the Marx Brothers." — Art Spiegelman,
The New Yorker, April 19, '99























  


















"I always dress appropriately and impeccably for all occasions. I would show you a snapshot of myself in a G-string, taken at Simm-La, with a flying wombat, dingo dog and a wily platypus." — Professor Posthlewhistle (W.C. Fields)
























"You'll be a far better critic for it in the long run as you figure out what people like and don't like."

— Advice from an Internet commenter responding to a movie reviewer whose opinion didn't lockstep with his own. As an illustrative Zen koan, it is a bottomless well that it is better peered into than drunk from.

















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Movies (and other shiny objects)

I like, and like to write about, movies. So these pieces, aimed at their venues' various formats and target audiences, run the gamut from review and commentary to simply yours truly chatting (in, one hopes, an entertaining fashion) about releases that I think are worth spending time with. Or, in at least one case, about movies that just make me pig-biting mad.

Alongside my occasional fiction bylines, these are the items that generate the most fan mail that I receive. And that's steak and champagne to a guy like me. Keep it coming, and thankya much.

Fwiw, I'm apparently one of RottenTomatoes' "Top Critics," so many of the links below exist there as well, where you can sort them under Fresh, Rotten, and so on.

Update: In occasional posts at my blog Open the Pod Bay Doors, HAL, I elaborate on some of these pieces, updating and blogifying those that I'd like to revisit. Check it out.


DVD Journal

When the editor of DVD Journal — "the most readable and enjoyable DVD site on the Web," as one reader put it, or "wonderful" according to Entertainment Weekly, or #34 on "Men's Journal 100 Best Websites For Guys" (mmm, okay) — invited me to join his crackshot team of columnists, naturally I said Oh hell yeah.

For six years and some half-million words, it was a pleasure to be in their company. Plus, of course, I couldn't complain about getting free DVDs straight from the studios before they hit the streets.

Although DVD Journal is no longer updated as a destination site, its nearly 4,000 reviews remain up online, archiving a decade's worth of enjoyable critique and commentary. I still get email from its readers and am frequently pullquoted on other sites that use the J as a resource. (The New York Film Forum quoting me alongside Roger Ebert was a real "thumbs up" example.) One of the first and finest, it is missed.



Criterion editions

By request, here are the titles that represent stellar releases from the Criterion Collection.


TV on DVD



Film.com

Film.com logoFor a while I was a producer and writer for Film.com, which takes a pop-oriented, Entertainment Weekly approach to "movie reviews, TV shows, television listings, DVD releases, independent movies, and celebrity news and gossip." A representative sample: