The corny pun in our headline was jokingly coined for that special brand of magical sentiment in films by writer-director Frank Capra. Those include Meet John Doe, You Can’t Take It with You, It Happened One Night and of course, It’s a Wonderful Life. I’ll be speaking on the latter at Brown Library — 5:30
There are many ways to gauge a film’s legacy: critical tributes, best-of lists, online ratings — not to mention Oscars and a host of other honors. As a lifelong reader, I like to ask how many books have been written about (or inspired by) the movie. Until this year, I thought the record-holder was Psycho
Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 shocker Psycho has inspired three sequels and two TV shows—including AMC’s five-season Bates Motel, with Freddie Highmore as Norman Bates; there was also a surreal shot-for-shot color remake in 1998; and a “making-of” movie starring Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren and Scarlett Johansson (they play, respectively, Hitch, his wife and actress Janet Leigh).
Perhaps only Wes Anderson would have the audacity to cast Bill Murray as God. He’s also among the few people who could pull it off — without seeming blasphemous or just plain silly. In fact, the latest from this idiosyncratic filmmaker — The Phoenician Scheme — winds up charting a similarly surprising spiritual journey: It
“I wanted to make the greatest rock record that I’d ever heard.” That’s Bruce Springsteen describing Born to Run — which seems to have fulfilled this hope, as it’s still going strong for its 50th anniversary. Released Aug. 25, 1975, the Boss’s third album became his breakout — a perfect suite of eight magnificently engineered
When Webb readers receive this issue on Aug. 26 or 27, I’ll be in the throes of my first-ever week teaching college. And yet I also officially retired more than six years ago. Here’s what happened: Regular followers of my movie pieces will recall that on July 31, I gave a talk at Brown Library
