REVIEW (blu-ray): HEAVEN’S GATE (1980) Dir-Scr: Michael Cimino A United Artists Release An indelibly maligned and misunderstood masterwork of New Hollywood cinema, Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (that’s the title in big letters on the spine and cover) has received a November, 2011, blu-ray restoration and critical reprieve courtesy the ever reliable Criterion Collection, and it’s […]
DJANGO UNCHAINED (2012) Dir-Scr: Quentin Tarantino A Weinstein Company Release A malformed pastiche comprised of equal parts loving movie homage and barbarous, bloody commentary on the dark violence in the American past and sometimes present, movie geek hero Quentin Tarantino’s latest work is a piece of flawed cinematic art that nonetheless demands attention and critical scrutiny.
After nearly a decade of writing, learning, writing some more, trying and failing and finally failing better — i. e., getting published in my modest but gratifying ways — in 2009 I came up with the idea of leading others on the path of the kind of discipline and thinking I’d cultivated in order to get […]
In stark contrast to Psycho, the making of which inspired both a book and this feature film adaptation, Sasha Gervasi’s Hitchcock provides breezy, bright, and brief glimpses into Hitch’s marriage and voyeuristic relationship with the young women he sought to shape into his personal vision of feminine beauty, actresses he wished to keep close at hand […]
Here’s a holiday ‘gift’ for my readers: this short story was conceived on Christmas Day a few years ago, composed, revised, and circulated to no acceptances. Revised this year (among many other stories), it is presented here in the spirit of the season. The voice, style, and content are meant to evoke the late Southern […]
At 12:19pm on 12/19/2012, I find that I’ve finished Novel #2 for 2012, a/k/a MIRIAM MULLINS, a long in the works YA about emotionally stunted, 25 year-old Courtleigh, who tries to relive her teen years by pretending to be fifteen again, but with heartbreaking and tragic consequences. Here is the breakdown of what I’ve accomplished […]
My third completed, but first published, novel King’s Highway began its life as literal backstory for a character who has yet to make his debut in my fiction, though in 2013 ‘Jasper Glasscock’ will finally come into his own in both WANDO, in which he is the protagonist, and again in 2014 when I am scheduled to […]
The next career benchmark, a manuscript request from one of the major publishing houses for DOGS OF PARSONS HOLLOW, has now occurred! Let’s hope the reader on the other end is as moved by the story as others have been. For those following my career, DOGS was designed and written to make a connection in a much […]
Here’s a lovely story by my friend and fellow Columbia, SC, native Craig Wright, who teaches creative writing at the University of Southern Oregon. His collection of stories Redemption Center can be found here. Here we see Mr. Wright in his other guise, as lead guitarist of Cast of Clowns.
A most memorable time of my life, the spring of 1987—successful and productive thus far in my chosen course of study, Media Arts, I found myself taking the third scriptwriting class in that track, a special section wherein students were expected in the course of the fourteen week semester to write a feature-length script. We’d […]
