Recession Cinema: White Christmas

Because of the asinine way holiday movies are programmed, tomorrow night’s probably your only chance to watch White Christmas (Lifetime, 9 p.m.). For anyone keeping count: that’s forty-eight hours after Thanksgiving dinner, about sixteen days until a weather report predicts white snow or unseasonal warmth on Christmas morning, and twenty-six days before meteorologists are proven Read More

Making Sweet Music On a Sunday Night

It might seem fair to say that Rich Conaty slips into a time warp every Sunday night from 8 p.m. to midnight. As the host of a program called The Big Broadcast, which airs at that time on WFUV-FM, Mr. Conaty plays and talks about music from the 1920’s and 1930’s—music made decades before his Read More

The Dark Side of the Force

Movies about corrupt cops are as common as road kill. But you rarely see one as skillfully directed, intensely acted and consistently gripping as Ron Shelton’s Dark Blue . The conflicted cops and twisted underworld killers who have turned the mind of writer James Ellroy into a lurid but fascinating kind of brainy crime lab Read More

The Dark Side of the Force

Movies about corrupt cops are as common as road kill. But you rarely see one as skillfully directed, intensely acted and consistently gripping as Ron Shelton’s Dark Blue . The conflicted cops and twisted underworld killers who have turned the mind of writer James Ellroy into a lurid but fascinating kind of brainy crime lab Read More