Blu-ray Review: Fatso
When their beloved, yet morbidly obese, cousin Sal drops dead at 39, Antoinette (Anne Bancroft, The Prisoner of Second Avenue) insists her brother Dominick (Dom DeLuise, The Cannonball Run) to lose some weight. After breaking down at the funeral, Antoinette tells Dom she has made an appointment for him with a doctor. A chronic overeater, […]
Blu-ray Review: The Prisoner of Second Avenue
Directed by Melvin Frank (A Touch of Class), The Prisoner of Second Avenue is based on the hit Neil Simon play. Amid a New York City heat wave, long-time married couple Mel and Edna Edison (Jack Lemmon, Grumpy Old Men, and Anne Bancroft, The Graduate) are growing tired of big city life. Mel, already the […]
DVD Review: Mel Brooks – Make A Noise (American Masters)
I can’t remember the precise moment I became a Mel Brooks fan, but I believe I was around ten when I first heard the comedy album 2000 Years with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks, thanks to my local library. I listened to that album so much, that at one time, I could almost repeat it […]
Blu-ray Review: The Slender Thread
The directorial debut of actor-turned-director Sydney Pollack, 1965’s The Slender Thread is a tense, dramatic story shot in austere black and white. Based on real incident that was dramatized as the short story “Decision to Die” by Shana Alexander, which appeared in Life magazine in 1964. The film’s plot is a rather simple one; the […]
Blu-ray Review: Honeymoon in Vegas
While Honeymoon in Vegas is far from structural perfection, it’s quite funny (especially if you’re an Elvis Presley fan). With a wonderfully bizarre Nicolas Cage kvetching his way through the story, Honeymoon doesn’t pretend to be anything other than the goofy piece of fun it is. Writer/director Andrew Bergman (Fletch, The Freshman), whom New York […]
Patty Duke Is 61 Today
Patty Duke was born Anna Marie Duke in Elmhurst, Queens, New York to an Irish American father, John P. Duke, and an Irish-German mother, Frances McMahon. Her father was an alcoholic, and her mother suffered from clinical depression and was prone to periods of prolonged depression. When Duke was 6, her mother threw her father […]