Bring back Ellen! Bring back Ellen!

Billy Crystal was a pretty darn good host of The Oscars back in his day. Ellen Degeneres was a really good host of The Oscars just one year ago. Sunday night Neil Patrick Harris was a train wreck. I wrote about it as part of my weekly Film News blog for the Syracuse New Times…

Don’t judge so quickly, coach

When the coach played by Kevin Costner in “McFarland, USA” takes one look at the the situation he’s gotten he and his family into, he’s an unhappy fellow. But then Jim White learns he shouldn’t just assume stuff, a pretty good lesson for a man who’s a teacher. And by the time the Disney movie…

Word says ‘Star Wars 7’ will kill off a character

The latest round of speculation surrounding the seventh installment of the “Star Wars” frachise says a beloved character from the initial triology will not be left standing a the end of “Star Wars Episode Seven: The Force Awakens.” In my weekly Fim News blog today on the Syracuse New Times site, I quote writer Joseph…

No secret: These Brits can figure out clues

James Bond had his decades, oh so many of them. Jack Ryan. Jason Bourne. Bring on Gary “Eggsy” Unwin. Yeah, “Kingsmen: The Secret Service” continues the long line of agent thrillers, but this young British hero has more to do with 007 than the rest, with gadgets and fighting and cool. You can read my…

Connecting the dots between Yayoi Kusama, Eddie Murphy

There’s a movie being make about the life of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, a woman whom I must report I’d never heard of until I saw that fact that “Life in Polka Dots” was being filmed while collecting items for my weekly Film News blog for the Syracuse New Times. She was a contemporary of…

I first interviewed SpongeBob in 2006, and I can prove it

As I sat watching the silliness of “The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water” Saturday at Destiny USA in Syracuse, I kept puffing up my chest like I took in too much water, thinking, I know SpongeBob. Well, sort of but not really. It is a cartoon character, you know, even when the animation stops…

Oh, ‘Boyhood,’ now I’ve been spoiled

How am I ever going to watch a movie that took just a year to film again? Richard Linklater, you’ve spoiled me with “Boyhood.” The director took his time filming the story he wrote about a brother and sister coming of age in Houston. The Texas native, in fact, shot the film over a dozen…

What would you do with a time travel machine?

The five teens in “Project Almanac” start off with a really big need when they discover one of them lurking around as they watch the just-discovered video in the background of his seventh birthday party. As you would imagine. What the …? How did that happen? Can we make it happen again? Very interesting premise…

As the football game interrupts the commercials, which will be your favorites?

I remember when everybody loved to talk about the football game. Like way back in the third Super Bowl, before it was one big league that decided this yearly get-together deserved Roman numerals, when upstart renegade Joe Willie Namath stamped his guarantee and his and my New York Jets of the American Football League beat…

On the wake of a farcical ‘Mortdecai,’ how do you prefer your movie humor?

Johnny Depp goes deep in his comedy closet in “Mortdecai,” while Gwyneth Paltrow as his wife is funny while using different tools. You can read my take about the farce directed by David Koepp from a screenplay by Eric Aronson as today’s weekly Film Blog review post on the Syracuse New Times site by clicking…