Prince George was christened on October 23, 2013 in a royal sea of blue and cream. His parents, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, tweaked the baptismal traditions to update the celebration. Something New Let’s count the number of royal tradition-breakers in what looks to the rest of the world like a completely conventional event. The mother of the baby,...
Book Review: Miles Davis: The Collected Artwork by Steve Gutterman with Miles Davis
“I only listen to certain people when it comes to criticizing,” Miles Davis explains in one of many quotes found in Insight Editions’ new coffee table book, Miles Davis: The Collected Artwork. “I don’t ask anyone who’s going to try and tell me how much they know about art. It’s like the same thing with music.” Music, of course, is...
New Music for Old People: Farther From the Style Was the Plan
When I was in the band The Blues Project in early 1967, I started writing songs that suggested to me that horns would make them sound better. I asked the leader of the Project, Danny Kalb, if we could add horns to the lineup and he turned me down, saying we couldn’t afford it (true). My songs pestered me into...
Daydream Believer: Interview with Ironside’s Kenneth Choi
It is rare that an actor has a chance to walk in the well-worn shoes of a character already familiar to TV audiences. Kenneth Choi is one such actor. He can currently be seen as Captain Ed Rollins in NBC’s remake of the long-running police procedural crime drama Ironside, which aired on the same network from 1967 to 1975. Choi’s...
An Interview with Don Jon’s Jeremy Luke
When he was ten years old, Jeremy Luke begged his mother to let him take an acting class. She finally relented and agreed, but the summer class he signed up for was not exactly what he expected. “It wound up being more of a singing type of class and I was the only boy there along with all these girls...
Blu-ray 3D Review: The Little Mermaid (Diamond Edition)
In 1989, The Little Mermaid restored Walt Disney Animation Studios to the standards of its glory years after a very trying decade. An adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen classic, Mermaid’s co-directors Ron Clements and John Musker, aided immeasurably by the music of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, crafted a true Disney classic. Now available as a near-perfect Blu-ray Diamond...
Duking It Out: Interview with Dragon Day’s Ethan Flower
In today’s world, no country can feel 100% safe from an attack by a foreign power, especially if the assault is technological in nature. The upcoming 2013 independent feature film Dragon Day shows the United States of America falling victim to such a crippling security breech, and to make matters worse, the threat comes not only from outside forces, but...
DVD Review: Scooby-Doo! 13 Spooky Tales: Ruh-Roh-Robot!
The last few weeks have been a veritable feast for Scooby-Doo! fans. Late-August saw the release of the all-new feature film Scooby-Doo: Stage Fright. Earlier in September we had a new compilation, 13 Spooky Tales: Run for Your ‘Rife!. Now Scooby-holics can add Scooby-Doo! 13 Spooky Tales: Ruh-Roh-Robot! to their collections. It’s another two-DVD collection from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment...
Blu-ray Review: Drums Along the Mohawk – Twilight Time Limited Edition
Set in 1776, smack dab in the middle of the American Revolutionary War, Drums Along the Mohawk is an notably placid Western. The John Ford-directed film, shot in color in 1939, meanders along at a nearly casual pace. Gil Martin (Henry Fonda) marries his best gal Lana (Claudette Colbert, well into her 30s at the time—a tad old to play...
Blu-ray Review: Blood of Redemption
Some movies begin to slip from the memory as soon as the end credits roll. Others fade while actually viewing the movie, with each scene becoming increasingly harder to pay attention to. So it is with Blood of Redemption, a direct-to-video action flick so crushingly purposeless, it’s a challenge even following the by-the-numbers, cookie-cutter plot. Dolph Lundren stars as Axel,...