Happy New Year–the Year of the Dragon in 2012! Most of all, I want to thank all of you for your comments and email!
With 2011 coming to an end, I wanted to take a look back at the movie reviews I wrote this year. I am an unabashed cinephile– 500 films (maximum allowed) in my Netflix queue with another 88 in my Instant Queue. So,...
“Becoming Santa”–Home for the Holidays
I saw this delectable morsel of an indie film at the Napa Valley Film Festival last month and had a chance to talk with Jeff Myers, the director, for a few moments afterwards. The backstory is fascinating but the movie stands on its own. “Becoming Santa,” reveals a lot more about the human spirit and generosity towards the tiniest among...
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers–The Most Famous Whistleblower of Our Time?
Nominated for a 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary, this past June marks the fortieth anniversary of the release of the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, which was forced to stop publishing by a cease-and-desist order mandated by the Nixon administration. “The Most Dangerous Man in America” tells the inside story through...
“J. Edgar”—Investigating the Investigator
Based upon a script by “Milk” screenwriter, Dustin Lance Black, and directed by Clint Eastwood, “J. Edgar” is a biopic of the controversial FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover. In this spellbinding movie, Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays Hoover, ages five decades, as he grows from an ambitious young law enforcer to the most...
Napa Valley Film Festival–Is this the next Sundance?
Last week (November 9-13) I attended the inaugural Napa Valley Film Festival (NVFF) with a friend who lives in Calistoga and has volunteered in the festival’s planning. Over 100 films were presented, many for the first time at any film festival, in 12 screening locations from Napa to Calistoga. Along with viewing films we had the ...
Profile in Scribbles–“All About Me”
I will be reviewing some movies from the upcoming Napa Valley Film Festival in the next few weeks. But in the meantime, I am posting a recent interview profiling my background writing “scribbles” in the newsletter by the same name distributed by my writers’ group, Central Coast Writers. Some of you have been asking for more...
