Old Cameron’s Avatar: America’s Favorite Asshole Makes Another Kick-ass Thriller
Vampires? Yeah, we’ve got that. Oh, and Michelangelo too
Author: Alan Vanneman
Alan Vanneman is a writer living in Washington, DC. He is the author of two dead-tree novels, Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra and Sherlock Holmes and the Hapsburg Tiara, both published by Penzler Press. Sherlock Holmes and the Hapsburg Tiara is available as an audiobook from Blackstone/Downpour. He is also the author of three new Nero Wolfe novellas recreating Rex Stout’s famous fat detective, a FREE ebook, and Author! Author! Auden, Oates, and Updike, a collection of two short stories and a novella, available both as an ebook and print on demand. All of his fiction can be accessed here at his blog Literature R Us. Portions of his article "Alfred Hitchcock: A Hank of Hair and a Piece of Bone," which originally appeared online in Bright Lights, have been included in a textbook anthology by Allison Smith, Trixie Smith, and Stacia Watkins.
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
Fred Astaire, Two Steps Forward and One Step Back: Fred and Vera-Ellen, Not Quite Walking on Air in The Belle of New York
Can quantity trump quality? Not so much
Documentaries · Music & Musicals
When Thelonious Met Pannonica: Hannah Rothschild’s The Jazz Baroness
“The Jazz Baroness goes beyond the barrel of stereotypes the screeching monkeys of society use against the intricate gusts of life swirling about us.” Really!
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
Astaire Reborn! Jane Powell Gives Fred a Lift in A Royal Wedding
“I hope he knew how much the world loved him.”
Books: Fred Astaire, by Joseph Epstein
Fred Astaire, by Joseph Epstein. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2008. Cloth $22, 198pp. ISBN 978-0-300-11695-3. Does it count as a labor of love if you don’t work very[…]
Busby Berkeley’s Hollywood Hotel: Bring on the dancing girls! Oh, wait! There aren’t any!
Thank God for the Benny Goodman Quartet
Book review: Encyclopedia Shatnerica, by Robert Schnakenberg
Encyclopedia Shatnerica: An A to Z Guide to the Man and His Universe, by Robert Schnakenberg. Philadelphia: Quirk Books, 2008. Paper $16.95, 290pp. ISBN: 1-594-74230-8. William Shatner, it may be[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Directors
Looking at Charlie: City Lights: An Occasional Series on the Life and Work of Charlie Chaplin
“If you could only see me as I really am, not as I appear but as I really am, as I am in my heart.”
The Volleyball in the Void: Tom Hanks Is Cast Away
Pascal . . . Kierkegaard . . . Nietzsche . . . Zemeckis?
Crime · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Early Jeanne, Early Louis, Early Miles: Louis Malle’s Elevator to the Gallows
“Paris at night in black-and-white with Miles on the soundtrack? It’s a perfect fit.”
Iron Man Takes the “Reigns”: Robert Downey, Jr., Lookin’ Healthy
Racist and slow-moving, withoccasional cool shit
Who Do You Love? Jean Renoir’s Rules of the Game Reconsidered
Was Le Grande Jean too soft on the aristos?
Kim Masters, Natural-Born Killer
Kim Masters, Slate’s assassin for hire, who clearly does not know the meaning of the words “You’ll never have lunch in this town again,” pisses all over Jerry Seinfeld’s major[…]
Whose Noir Is It, Anyway? Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly
Mike Hammer deconstructed, or Mike Hammer disrespected? Back in the day — way, way back in the day, when life in America was not a total girlie show — Americans[…]
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Reviews
Looking at Charlie — The Gold Rush: An Occasional Series on the Art and Life of Charlie Chaplin
Hats off, dudes! A masterpiece! The Gold Rush is Charlie Chaplin’s masterpiece — the one film in which his desire to make the audience laugh and the desire to make[…]
Too Gay, or Not Gay Enough? Greg Mottola’s Superbad
The urge to merge with a splurge — story of my life Personally, I think it’s just wonderful if two young men want to hold hands and shout out their[…]
Monk After Five Years: Still funny, still no queers
“Well, you know, we only go round once in this life.” “If only I could be sure of that.” And so it goes with Adrian Monk, some-time detective and full-time[…]
Mickey Kaus, He’s a louse
An imperfect rhyme for an imperfect schmuck. Mickey Kaus joins with Bill “Whore told me I had a big penis” O’Reilly in castigating The Bourne Ultimatum as un-American because, among[…]
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