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Batman & Superman v. The Audience

I’m about to give away the biggest spoiler imaginable regarding this multimillion dollar movie: it sucks. That’s not a word I usually employ but I can’t think of a better way to describe my reaction to the overblown, overlong, poorly written film awkwardly titled Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. It’s built on the foundation of a bad idea (pitting two larger-than-life superheroes against each other) and goes downhill from there. My biggest complaint is that the brain trust behind Batman v Superman has managed to drain all the fun out of these characters and their world. I thought superhero movies were supposed to be fun. I don’t even understand the premise, which has Bruce Wayne/ Batman blaming Superman for the cataclysm at the end…

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Movie Poster Mysteries…Solved!

I bought my first movie still when I was 12 years old at a used bookstore in Hackensack, New Jersey. It was a nice shot of Buster Keaton that cost 25 cents, which was exactly what I could afford. Then I saw a classified ad in The 8mm Collector offering pressbooks. I didn’t know what they were, so I asked the man who placed the ad and he patiently answered me. (This was all accomplished by snail mail in those primitive days before the Internet.) That got me interested in those oversized, advertising-packed journals for theater owners. I only started acquiring posters and lobby cards as an afterthought. My main source was a fantastic outfit in Canton, Oklahoma called Movie Poster Service run by two…

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Movie Poster Mysteries…Solved!

Movie Poster Mysteries…Solved!

A Jazz Approach to ‘Vertigo’

I love listening to jazz—or what I now have to identify as “mainstream” or “straight-ahead” jazz, to be clear—so I always look forward to a new release from clarinet master Ken Peplowski. His new CD, Enrapture, on Capri Records offers many pleasures including a number of tracks where he trades his mellow clarinet for an equally beautiful-sounding tenor sax. The album features an incredibly eclectic lineup of tunes by everyone Duke Ellington and Noel Coward to John Lennon…along with a jazz treatment of Bernard Herrmann’s main theme from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo! In his liner notes, Ken credits his wife for nudging him to record the cue officially called “Scene D’Amour,” and explains that in his research he discovered that there was a pop-song version of the…

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A Jazz Approach to ‘Vertigo’

A Jazz Approach to ‘Vertigo’

Special Indeed: Jeff Nichols’ Midnight Special

Jeff Nichols made my favorite film of 2013, Mud, so I was keen to see his latest effort. Midnight Special is not an easy film to describe, but it held me in its thrall from start to finish. It also serves as a wonderful starring showcase for Michael Shannon, who has been in all of Nichols’ previous pictures (Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter, and Mud) and reveals a tender side he’s seldom had a chance to explore until now. The movie is best described as a science-fiction thriller. At its center is an 8-year-old boy (beautifully played by Jaeden Lieberher) who has special powers that mark him as a target. Some want to exploit him, others think he is a messenger of God. His father (Shannon)…

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