Great Movies
Festivals & Awards
KVIFF 2023: Wrap-Up and Awards
A wrap-up of this year's Karlovy Vary Film Festival and announcement of this year's winners.
A wrap-up of this year's Karlovy Vary Film Festival and announcement of this year's winners.
The latest on Blu-ray and streaming, including Cocaine Bear, Creed III, Champions, 80 for Brady, and Criterion editions of Thelma & Louise and Wings of Desire.
The latest Home Entertainment Consumer Guide, including the best of new releases on Netflix and Blu-ray, including Criterion releases of "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul," "My Darling Clementine" and "The Vanishing".
Marie writes: If you're like me, you enjoy the convenience of email while lamenting the lost romance of ink and pen on paper. For while it's possible to attach a drawing, it's not the same thing as receiving hand-drawn artwork in the mail. Especially when it's from Edward Gorey..."Edward Gorey and Peter Neumeyer met in the summer of 1968. Gorey had been contracted by Addison-Wesley to illustrate "Donald and the...", a children's story written by Neumeyer. On their first encounter, Neumeyer managed to dislocate Gorey's shoulder when he grabbed his arm to keep him from falling into the ocean. In a hospital waiting room, they pored over Gorey's drawings for the first time together, and Gorey infused the situation with much hilarity. This was the beginning of an invigorating friendship, fueled by a wealth of letters and postcards that sped between the two men through the fall of 1969."
Actress Jill Clayburgh, whose portrayal of women in the 1970s helped define and and reshape the role of leading lady, died last week of chronic lymphocytic leukemia at her home in Lakeville, Connecticut; she was 66. She's best known for her Academy Award nominated roles in "An Unmarried Woman" (Winner: Best Actress Cannes 1978) and "Starting Over." Roger has remembered her on his site: Jill Clayburgh: In Memory.
Q. You wrote: "It's like the dilemma of the 10 hot dogs and eight buns: You can never come out even at the end." Well, of course you can come out even: Four packs of wienies and five packs of buns yields 40 hot dogs.
It's the "Number One Movie in America!" Again. Who wrote it? The "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" screenplay is credited to its star Kevin James and Nick Bakay, who also wrote and co-starred in some episodes of James' TV series, "King of Queens." Meanwhile, an anonymous tipster ("Nomen Nescio") who claims to have worked on the film has sent me a link to an award-winning, undated (but pre-2004) script named "Mall Cop" by a self-described ghostwriter named Alfred Thomas Catalfo, whose IMDb credits include the shorts "The Norman Rockwell Code" (2006) and "The Stag Hunt" (2008).
So, would you believe that "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" is based on an award-winning screenplay by an uncredited writer? What's the story? Or is there one? Surely more than two scripts have been written involving mall cops in "Die Hard" parodies. And maybe it's a coincidence that the movie was shot in New England, where Catalfo is also based....
UPDATE (2/5/09): Catalfo now tells The Boston Herald that he got a rejection letter from Adam Sandler's Happy Madison productions saying they prefer to develop their projects "in house."
