Be a Yankee Doodle Dandy without leaving the comforts of home July 01, 2010 | Comment on this article Leave a comment BY DENNIS KING If sweltering summer heat, buzzing mosquitoes, noisy fireworks and charred hot dogs aren’t your idea of celebrating the Fourth of July, you can still be a Yankee Doodle Dandy in the comfort of your own La-Z-Boy. Just pop a patriotic DVD into your player and a bag of popcorn into your microwave,... Read More
Preserving ‘America’s Film Legacy’ from the classics to the obscure July 01, 2010 Movie critics’ “best” lists are quirky and highly personal at best. Top 100 lists from various film associations are arbitrary and debatable. Even the numerous readers’ choice lists of the best movies ever made can be maddeningly fickle. Perhaps the closest we’ve come to a comprehensive, scholarly and... Read More
‘Midnight Express' escapee will finally tell his story June 29, 2010 BY GENE TRIPLETT The Turkish government held Billy Hayes prisoner for five long years and Oliver Stone wrote an Oscar-winning screenplay about Hayes’ hellish ordeal and eventual escape, but the convicted drug smuggler thinks the Eurasian nation took a bad rap from the 1978 film “Midnight Express.” Hayes... Read More
Under the Radar DVD of the Week: 'Inbred Redneck Vampires' June 28, 2010 At the opposite end of the blockbuster bloodsucker spectrum from the romantic, high-toned “Twilight” sagas is “Inbred Redneck Vampires,” a micro-budgeted, direct-to-DVD comedy set to hit video shelves on Tuesday. Repackaged and reconfigured from a 2004 release titled “Bloodsucking Redneck Vampires,”... Read More
On DVD: 'Shutter Island' came to novelist Dennis Lehane in dream June 25, 2010 Martin Scorsese’s film adaptation of ’Shutter Island’ pays homage to Gothics BY GENE TRIPLETT Dennis Lehane has learned how to describe “Shutter Island” to a potential reader or viewer without giving away any of the dark plot twists or clues to the shocking surprise ending of his... Read More
Movie review: "Knight and Day" is dumb summer fun June 23, 2010 That Tom Cruise’s new big-boom summer action vehicle is a chop-shop contraption cobbled together from parts, premises and personalities of other movies is as obvious as, well, “Knight and Day.” Summer hype aside, when producers of this derivative blockbuster boast that their movie springs from an original... Read More
Under the Radar DVD of the Week: 'Rock Slyde: Private Eye' June 22, 2010 This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is: “Rock Slyde: Private Eye” Joining a roster of bumbling movie gumshoes of the Frank Drebin kind is “Rock Slyde: Private Eye,” a crime spoof that goes straight to DVD on Tuesday. Patrick Warburton (of “Seinfeld” fame) steps easily into the... Read More
‘Film Noir: The Encyclopedia’ – of gumshoes, femmes fatale and all things crime cinema June 15, 2010 The parameters of film noir, as well as our knowledge of this most sinister movie genre, are greatly expanded with the recent release of “Film Noir: The Encyclopedia” (Overlook Press, $45), a revised and redesigned fourth edition of the classic pioneering text that movie lovers consider the final word on the... Read More
Movie review: ‘Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo’ visits nation in love with bugs June 15, 2010 In a truly odd marriage of entomology and arthouse lyricism, “Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo” deftly explores Japan’s ages-old love affair with bugs of all stripes. For the traditional culture that eventually gave us Mothra (vs. Godzilla), creepy-crawlies apparently span a crucial gap between Japan’s... Read More
Under the Radar DVD of the Week: 'Gene Autry - 2 DVD Set in Embossed Tin Box June 14, 2010 This week, the most offbeat DVD to appear on release lists is: “Gene Autry – 2 DVD Set in Embossed Tin Box” Home video distributors are forever recycling, repackaging and reissuing old material in an effort to keep collectors happy and the wheels of commerce spinning. Oklahoma’s own singing cowboy... Read More
'Blastula': Flaming Lips documentary debuts at deadCENTER June 11, 2010 By Gene Triplett OKLAHOMA CITY — deadCENTER Film Festival-goers will be afforded a rare look inside the sonic laboratory of Oklahoma City’s mad scientists of psychedelic songcraft when The Flaming Lips’ “Blastula: The Making of ‘Embryonic’” takes its first big screen bow at 10 tonight (Friday,... Read More
Movie Review: ‘Metropolis’ restoration offers brave new world to film buffs June 10, 2010 It was a feat of cinematic archaeology worthy of Indiana Jones. The discovery in 2008 of an archival 16mm safety print of “Metropolis,” Fritz Lang’s 1927 futuristic masterwork, in a Buenos Aires museum has been hailed as the film buff’s holy grail, something one over-heated scholar said was “akin to... Read More
Movie review: ‘Ondine’ is a silky light selkie tale June 09, 2010 Neil Jordan is a resolutely independent and idiosyncratic filmmaker whose enthusiasms have often tread a fine line between gritty realism and unsettling fantasy in movies as diverse as “The Crying Game,” “In Dreams,” “The Butcher Boy” and “Breakfast on Pluto.” In his latest, “Ondine,” the... Read More
Under the Radar DVD of the Week: 'Goatsucker' June 07, 2010 This week, the most offbeat DVD to appear on release lists is: “Goatsucker” Joining a rogue’s gallery of mystery monsters that supposedly stalk the wild nether regions (count Bigfoot or Sasquatch, Yeti or the Abominable Snowman and the Loch Ness Monster among them) is a mysterious creature called... Read More
John Lithgow returns as 'Essentials Jr.' host June 04, 2010 BY GENE TRIPLETT Convincing kids that classic movies are cool is John Lithgow’s summer job. The award-winning actor and children’s author reports to work at 7 p.m. Sunday on the Turner Classic Movies channel as the host of “Essentials Jr.,” a weekly series designed to introduce young people to vintage... Read More
Common is an uncommonly humble rapper, movie star June 03, 2010 BY DENNIS KING NEW YORK – If Common hadn’t become a hip-hop music star and a promising screen actor, he no doubt would have tested his skills in the hardwood arena of professional basketball. As a Chicago native and lifelong Bulls fan, the 38-year-old rapper (born Lonnie Rashid Lynn) grew up in the... Read More
‘Tales From the Script’ – screenwriters dish on their work in DVD/book project June 03, 2010 It’s a fundamental truism of Hollywood that in the movie business, nobody works until the writer writes. But having written, and setting the gargantuan machinery of movie making grinding forward, the screenwriter quickly becomes persona non grata. In a business that lives or dies by the stories it tells, the... Read More
Under the Radar DVD of the Week: `Three Stooges Collection, Vol. 8: 1955-1959' June 01, 2010 This week, the most offbeat DVD to appear on release lists is: “Three Stooges Collection, Vol. 8: 1955-1959” With the Tuesday release of this final volume of Three Stooges features, the complete short works of the beloved knucklehead trio are now available on DVD. The 32 Columbia Pictures short subjects... Read More
'Sex and the City 2': High-fashion gal pals bond in the desert May 28, 2010 BY GENE TRIPLETT NEW YORK — From the number of guys stationed all over the place in gray suits with little electronic receivers in their ears and watchful looks in their eyes, one would think we were entering the private presidential quarters of the White House or the Federal Reserve Bank’s bullion-filled... Read More
Movie Review: 'Sex and the City 2' delivers high-fashion free-for-all May 27, 2010 New York’s best-dressed gal pals suffer mid-life crises and sand in their Manolos in their second romantic romp across the big screen, “Sex and the City 2,” a fashionably funny, playfully naughty and sometimes too-cute sequel to the sequel to HBO’s hit comedy series. It’s been two years since we last... Read More
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About the writers

Dennis King


Movie Critic
King spent 31 years as an ink-stained wretch working for newspapers in Seminole, Ada, Oklahoma City and Tulsa. He holds a B.A. degree in English from the University of Central Oklahoma and for 16 years served as an adjunct instructor in journalism and English at Tulsa Community College. For 20 years, he was full-time film critic at the Tulsa World.

In 2006, he left Tulsa and along with his wife, Suzan (a retired English professor), moved to a cabin in Dingmans Ferry, PA. There, along the banks for the Delaware River, he chased after two rambunctious Labrador retrievers, fly fished the waters of the Poconos and did his best to become a full-time trout bum. Still scratching a writer’s itch, he freelanced articles for Explorer magazine and Gray’s Sporting Journal and wrote a stage play about classic movies and old movie theaters, titled “Spirits of the Coronado” (after his long-gone boyhood theater at 39th Street and MacArthur Boulevard).

In December, he and Suzan moved into an apartment in upper Manhattan, where they plan to eat bagels for breakfast and street-cart hot dogs for lunch, haunt the Angelika Theater and the Film Forum, go to plays and museums, ride the subways, complain about the subways and generally live like true New Yorkers.

Gene Triplett


Entertainment Editor

Gene Triplett is another Oklahoma newspaper dinosaur who's been cranking out copy for 34 years, first at the upstart, long defunct Oklahoma Journal, covering just about every news beat imaginable, then at The Oklahoman, where's he's bounced back and forth from features to the news side as assistant city editor, city editor and entertainment editor, managing to hold down the latter position for more than 10 years. He holds a B.A. degree in journalism -- also from the University of Central Oklahoma -- and, also like his colleague King, chases after two loony Labrador retrievers. He does not live by a trout-filled river, but he and his wife Carol do own a swimming pool, much to the delight of their dogs.


The Tripletts enjoy gourmet outdoor cooking year-round (rain, sleet or snow), entertaining friends, road trips to scenic wooded parks that rent rustic lakeside cabins, listening to music, watching classic movies and, in the summertime, swimming with their dogs.



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