By John H. Foote It should come, really, as no surprise that the great Martin Scorsese has five of the fifteen films on this list, while Francis Ford Coppola has two within the top three. Each man revolutionized the gangster genre with their films through the last near 50 years. While Quentin Tarantino arrogantly declared…
By John H. Foote (***) During our podcast for the fifties, which we recorded a couple of nights ago, Alan professed deep affection for the John Huston adventure The African Queen (1951) one of the last classics to come to Blu Ray and DVD. Shot on location in the African Congo, which was not common…
By John H. Foote Ian Holm, one of the greatest though less known British actors, has died at 88. Best known to this generation of film audiences as Bilbo Baggins in the superb The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-02-03) and as Mitchell Stevens the lawyer in The Sweet Hereafter (1997), Holm had a career…
By John H. Foote (***) In the shadow of the success of Batman (1989), Warren Beatty brought his long awaited live action film of the famous comic strip “Dick Tracy” to the screen for the summer of 1990. With the same eye for detail he brought to his Oscar winning film Reds (1981), Beatty had…
By John H. Foote Let me be clear, these books are not written by the editor, they act as gatherers of information, they are detectives seeking out old interviews, nothing more. So Lane, a self-described acclaimed film and television director, producer and writer, lent not a creative bone to this book, by far the weakest in…
By John H. Foote There was a time not so terribly long ago when the mainstream cinema emerging from Canada was something of a joke. Films were horribly written and directed, the acting was high schoolish, and nothing about the films truly appealed. So much has changed, yet so much remains the same. I remember…
By John H. Foote (****) Kevin Costner won an Academy Award for Best Director for his western epic Dances with Wolves (1990), which won six other Oscars including Best Picture, and saw the likable star nominated for Best Actor. This was very near the beginning of his career, when his baseball films Bull Durham (1988)…
By Nick Maylor On our latest podcast, John and I discuss the career of Mr. Johnny Depp. Check out our official YouTube channel for all of our podcast episodes. Nick MaylorNick is an actor/writer/comedian/musician from Hamilton, ON Canada. Having been a film nut since the early days of his life, Nick has had an obsession…
By John H. Foote No long-winded commentary, just the director and their single greatest work to argue about, debate or ponder thoughtfully. All according to yours truly. Took over three months of research to come up with this list, enjoy. Please, no point arguing with me, I agonized over every single entry, NONE OF YOU…
By John H. Foote “The British have their Shakespeare; we have the American western” said actor Robert Duvall to me in 2000 while discussing his work in the superb television series Lonesome Dove. “They have their Hamlets and Macbeths” he went on, “but I played Gus McCrae, so I can die a happy man” he…