Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas is a surprisingly philosophical little holiday special. Of course, that’s nothing I would have considered when I was a little kid watching it for the first few times. Back then, I was respondi…
Remakes have been around for as long as humans have walked the Earth, and I like to imagine that even prior to the arrival of humankind, amoebas and other life passed around the same stories as well. Storytelling is in our DNA, whether you are…
In his quixotic quest to gift people with the greatest Christmas ever, Clark Griswold and I are soulmates. There is no better feeling than the warmth you feel in the pit of your stomach while fondly looking back on your family holiday memories…
Yippee ki yay, and then you can fill in the blank. Roy Rogers originated the phrase (the first part, that is) back when my parents were around the age that I was when I first saw Die Hard. I have never seen anything with Roy Rogers, but I will…
Directed by John Hughes at the height of his powers and starring Steve Martin and John Candy in their 1980s prime, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is the ultimate comedic roast of the true horrors of holiday travel. I personally have experienc…
Ghostbusters showed up on the scene like gangbusters when I was a kid, and I was thrilled to be part of the zeitgeist. The video for the Ray Parker Jr. song “Ghostbusters” was on MTV all the time and everywhere you went parents and…
It feels a little silly to talk about time travel fear in the context of Back to the Future. True enough, it gets pretty tense at times when Marty is attempting to set things right and keep himself and his siblings corporeal, but there is alwa…
I am not a huge sports fan. I do like going to a baseball game now and then, but I don’t prefer any certain team. If I’m honest, I find a high school game just as exciting as an MLB game. When it comes to other sports, …
I spent around seven years working as a freelance editor/proofreader for a fairly large publisher of romance novels. I hit all the subgenres—Regency, contemporary, sweet, erotic, and of course, paranormal. It was a fun job for some…
As a young teen, the movie Defending Your Life provided my curious mind with an incredibly imaginative idea as to what lay ahead in the afterlife, couched in the familiar form of satirical courtroom drama reminiscent of my favorite TV sitcom at the …
This is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsNot with a bang but a whimper. -T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men” Mad Max: Fury Road (and all the other Mad Max films for that matter) belong …
The first time that I clapped eyes on Raising Arizona I was 11, and I was baffled. My humor had not evolved beyond appreciation of more obvious comedy, and the idea of an action movie where the hero gets beat up and doesn’t deliver venge…
