Movie review: ‘Dinner for Schmucks' serves up more screwball comedy than smart wit July 30, 2010 | Comment on this article Leave a comment Another of French social farce specialist Francis (“La Cage Aux Folles”) Veber’s films gets the Americanized treatment with “Dinner for Schmucks,” and while the U.S. version of “Le Diner de Cons” (aka “The Dinner Game”) has its moments of heart and hilarity, it loses a lot in translation —... Read More
Julianne Moore: Same sex parents deal with universal family problems in 'The Kids Are All Right' July 29, 2010 BY GENE TRIPLETT BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Julianne Moore seemed amused that it was Father’s Day morning and she was here to talk about her role as one-half of a couple of lesbian moms in “The Kids  Are All Right.” “Happy Father’s Day,” was her bright greeting to all the male reporters around... Read More
Movie review: ‘I Am Love’ revisits Hollywood melodrama with lavish, old-world style July 29, 2010 There’s such a tactile richness of detail and extravagant emotional lushness to director Luca Guadagnino’s modern melodrama “I Am Love” that it’s easy to overlook the austere spareness of the story. It’s in the lavish layering-on of exquisite detail from the privileged, old-world lives of its... Read More
Movie review: 'Kids Are All Right' takes funny, heartbreaking new approach to virtues of family life July 29, 2010 Two moms; two kids; one sperm donor. Not a conventional family unit in the minds of many. But no matter what your politics or moral views dictate, “The Kids Are All Right” conveys sentiments and truths about family ties and families coming unraveled that are universal. And it does so with great wit, wisdom... Read More
DVD review: ‘The Dinner Game’ serves up bracing dose of French bile July 28, 2010 As comedies of cruelty go, it’s hard to beat the French when it comes to dispensing Gallic gall. But an Americanized effort at just that arrives in theaters this weekend in “Dinner for Schmucks,” which attempts a trans-Atlantic spin on French writer-director Francis Veber’s 1998 social farce “The Dinner... Read More
Movie review: 'Ramona and Beezus' appealingly low tech, smart July 27, 2010 “Ramona and Beezus” is that rarest of summer multiplex enterprises – a G-rated movie for kids and parents that isn’t juiced by computer-generated effects or noisy explosions and isn’t crowded with cutesy animated creatures or comic-book superheroes and villains. It’s refreshingly human-scale and... Read More
Under the Radar DVD of the Week: '21 Jump Street: The Complete Series' July 26, 2010 This week, the most interesting DVD to appear on release lists is: “21 Jump Street: The Complete Series” Long before he was the moody, virtuoso actor often mentioned in the same breath with Brando and James Dean, Johnny Depp was a moody, struggling young actor looking for a break. That came when he was cast... Read More
DVD review: 'Film Noir Classic Collection Vol. 5' July 23, 2010 A movie doesn’t automatically qualify as classic film noir just because it has cops and robbers, ruthless femme fatales, a lot of night scenes and was shot in black and white between 1940 and 1960. With Volume 5 of “The Film Noir Classic Collection,” Warner Home Video seems to be scraping the bottom of the... Read More
Midsummer: Are our popcorn boxes half full or half empty? July 23, 2010 BY DENNIS KING Having passed the half-way point of summer’s big-bucks movie season, film fans must now be asking themselves: Is the popcorn box half full or half empty? Traditionally, Hollywood studios frontload the lucrative summer season with the hottest attractions in May, June and early July (the better... Read More
Movie review: Follow artist Banksy down the rabbit hole in ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’ July 21, 2010 Somewhere near the intersection of vandalism and pop art, and following sign posts that mark encounters with high art and hoax, graffiti and street culture, underground celebrity and sell-out commercialism, stands the mind-bending documentary “Exit Through the Gift Shop.” It’s a rigorously subversive bit of... Read More
Under the Radar DVD of the Week: 'A Town Called Panic' July 19, 2010 This week, the most offbeat DVD to appear on release lists is: “A Town Called Panic” If a surreal, feature-length, stop-motion animation comedy starring a bunch of plastic toys, all speaking in French with English subtitles, sounds like your version of “Toy Story” hell, pass by “A Town Called... Read More
DVD review: 'Insomnia' Blu-ray edition July 16, 2010 Compared to the fractured timeline storytelling of “Memento,” the noir-ish comic book world of his Batman epics, the violent alchemy of “The Prestige,” and now the layered semi-realities of “Inception,” the 2002 crime thriller “Insomnia” would seem at first glance to be the most conventional film in... Read More
'The Killer Inside Me' comes home on pay-per-view, Tulsa movie screen July 16, 2010 BY GENE TRIPLETT “The Killer Inside Me” has quietly stolen onto pay-per-view television. The controversial $13 million feature film that was shot in and around Guthrie, Oklahoma City, Enid, Tulsa and Cordell in May and June 2009 will also open Aug. 20 for a week-long run on the big screen at Tulsa’s... Read More
Movie review: ‘Cyrus’ walks a fine line between endearing and icky July 15, 2010 As Oedipal romantic comedies go, “Cyrus” is probably as close as you can come to generating charm and laughs without spilling over completely into off-putting creepiness. Thanks to a dead-on underground sensibility and a sure hand with off-track characters by writing-directing brothers Jay and Mark Duplass... Read More
‘Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.’ peeks behind the glamour of ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ July 15, 2010 It was a film that forever altered the nation’s collective sense of fashion, film and sexual mores – not to mention the brittle, squeaky clean image of actress Audrey Hepburn. “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” drawn from Truman Capote’s translucent novella that most Hollywood producers deemed... Read More
DVD review: 'A Star is Born' Blu-ray Edition July 12, 2010 No multigifted performer could have wished for a more perfect showcase than Judy Garland was given in “A Star Is Born,” the music-filled romantic drama from 1954 that displayed her singing, acting and dancing talents to fuller advantage than any other film in her stellar career. Read More
Under the Radar DVD of the Week: 'Neil Young Archives, Vol. 1 (1963-1972)' July 12, 2010 This week, the most interesting DVD to appear on release lists is: “Neil Young Archives, Vol. 1 (1963-1972)” Neil Young, that iconic singer-songwriter with the distinctive rough-warbly voice, has enjoyed an amazing and durable career that has spanned several eras of American music. So it’s entirely... Read More
Movie review: ‘Predators’ a worthy follow-up to 1987 original July 09, 2010 While John McTiernan and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1987 “Predator” spawned one official sequel and two ill-conceived spinoffs, it is only now that a truly worthy follow-up to the original has arrived on screens with the swift and deadly “Predators.” Disregard 1990’s muddled “Predator 2” and two... Read More
'Greenberg's' Rhys Ifans moves easily between two passions – acting and rock ’n’ roll July 07, 2010 BY DENNIS KING NEW YORK – Welsh actor Rhys Ifans exuded an appealingly shaggy, Scooby Doo quality as he strolled into a room full of reporters last spring to chat about his movie, “Greenberg,” and his role as an erstwhile rock guitarist turned regular, middle-aged family guy. With a weeks-old growth of... Read More
Movie review: ‘The Square’ spins a clever neo-noir tale with an Aussie twist July 07, 2010 After watching their taut, insidious and very clever neo-noir, “The Square,” you might be inclined to think of the filmmaking siblings Nash and Joel Edgerton as the Down Under Coen brothers. Shades of the Coens’ “Blood Simple” nihilism – along with dark doses of James M. Cain’s hardboiled ethic –... 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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