“You only get one shot. Do not miss your chance to blow – this opportunity comes once in a lifetime.” — Eminem Throughout film history, musicians and athletes have put their celebrity to use as actors to varying degrees of success. Some of these stars (Queen Latifah, Justin Timberlake, Arnold Schwarzenegger) have gone on to […]

Last year, on Halloween, I read the first reports about a Mandarin duck inexplicably appearing in Central Park. Flaming orange frills over a dark plum breast, brushed stripes of black and white feathers, forest green, royal blue, and auburn tufts slicked back into a mohawk at the top of his head — he became a […]

Like most self-absorbed teenage boys, my perspective on love in 2012 was complicated, to say the least. I was unattractive even by 14-year-old standards, I hadn’t had my first kiss, and every show or movie I got my hands on was about a nerdy guy with a beautiful girl. I felt like the story I […]

1999 is considered one of the strongest years of cinema in living memory. There will no doubt be countless articles in 2019 marking the 20th anniversaries of that year’s greatest hits and examining their impact and legacy. But this column isn’t about those movies. This column is about the overlooked gems from 1999 — the […]

No one could ever mistake a Jay Ward cartoon for being serious, not that they pandered to the preschool cheap seats either. Oh yes, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, The Dudley Do-Right Show, and George of the Jungle had animated safes falling on animated heads and enough puns to violate the Geneva Convention, but that […]

The only time I actually met Albert Finney, I was wearing an enormous cartwheel hat and chalk-white face paint and he was being propositioned by a stripper. Full disclosure, we were on the set of the period film Washington Square (1997); it was my first time working on a movie. I’d bluffed my way into a […]