Projections Movie Blog

Under the Radar DVD of the Week: 'Hair High by Bill Plympton' November 29, 2010 | Comment on this article

This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is: “Hair High by Bill Plympton” Pompadours and beehives are the order of the day in cult animator Bill Plympton’s gothic high-school comedy “Hair High,” due out on DVD Tuesday. “Hair High by Bill Plympton” is a 2004 cartoon feature that tells... Read More

Movie review: ‘Love and Other Drugs’ is a rom-com with identity crisis

November 24, 2010 “Love and Other Drugs” can’t quite settle on whether to be a frankly adult romantic comedy, a sharp satire of the go-go ’90s dot-com bubble and the rise of Big Pharma, or a tear-jerking degenerative-disease melodrama. So it waffles among the three: For a while it offers the often naked Anne Hathaway and... Read More

In Nordic odd-couple comedy ‘Elling,’ Oslo meets Broadway

November 23, 2010 Update: Despite original plans to run through March, “Elling” has closed on Broadway. According to the Associated Press, the final curtain came down on the play Sunday after just 22 previews and nine regular performances. Although elements of the play were widely praised by critics, producers said ticket sales... Read More

Lively Hollywood-to-Broadway connection is thriving

November 23, 2010 NEW YORK – The opening of “Elling” on Broadway marks the latest in a long line of movie-based stories making their way to the stages of the Great White Way. Some other movie-to-play translations that are currently on New York stages include: “The 39 Steps” – This witty spoof on Alfred Hitchcock’s... Read More

Under the Radar DVD of the Week: 'The Complete Metropolis'

November 22, 2010 This week, the most interesting DVD to appear on release lists is: “The Complete Metropolis” Though it was first released in 1927, Fritz Lang’s futuristic masterpiece, “Metropolis,” comes to crisp and vivid new life in a restored, expanded version due out on DVD Tuesday. Read More

‘Fair Game’ actress, director had eyes opened by dealings with real-life spy

November 19, 2010 BY DENNIS KING NEW YORK – When Naomi Watts first took on the role of real-life spy Valerie Plame in “Fair Game,” she’d just given birth to a son and admits that she was “a bit too soft and maternal” to be playing a covert Central Intelligence Agency operative. So director Doug Liman and the film’s... Read More

Movie review: ‘Fair Game’ penetrates veil of spy game, dirty politics

November 19, 2010 As well as parting the curtain of secrecy that shrouds most Central Intelligence Agency operations, director Doug Liman’s low-keyed “Fair Game” effectively peeks into the private lives of outed spy Valerie Plame and her diplomat husband Joe Wilson after they became targets of a White House smear campaign in... Read More

Movie review: ‘Agony, Ecstasy of Phil Spector’ a rock-Shakespearean tragedy

November 18, 2010 Behind Phil Spector’s lush, multi-layered acoustic “Wall of Sound” – the richly engrossing recording style that defined an entire epoch of pop music – the visionary record producer was busily evolving into a world-class eccentric, a resentful egotist, a self-styled unappreciated genius and a convicted... Read More

‘Empire of Dreams’: DeMille biography tells of epic life on-screen and off

November 17, 2010 DeMille is a name still synonymous with grand Hollywood film epics of biblical proportions and a film culture built on dazzling star power and hugely ambitious storytelling. And the man, Cecil B. DeMille, appears to have lived a life as large and grand and ambitious as any of his classic big-screen creations. In... Read More

Under the Radar DVD of the Week: 'Back From Hell: A Tribute to Sam Kinison'

November 15, 2010 This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is: “Back From Hell: A Tribute to Sam Kinison” Sam Kinison was an ordained Pentecostal minister who brought a fiery religious fervor to his irreverent career as a stand-up comic. That his intense, primal-scream brand of comedy influenced a whole... Read More

Movie review: Bizarre mockumentary declares ‘I’m Still Here,’ but who cares?

November 10, 2010 Taken at face value, Casey Affleck’s “I’m Still Here” would seem to be a torturous, train-wreck documentary on actor Joaquin Phoenix’s bizarre career meltdown and year-long descent into self-destructive celebrity hell. Read More

Under the Radar DVD of the Week: 'Badlands'

November 08, 2010 This week, the most interesting DVD to appear on release lists is: “Badlands” With native Oklahoma filmmaker Terrence Malick possibly set to shoot a new movie in Bartlesville, it’s a good time to revisit his first feature in a newly repackaged DVD of “Badlands,” due out Tuesday. The 1973 film, which... Read More

Movie review: Anti-chemistry of stars gives ‘Due Date’ its comic energy

November 05, 2010 There are likely to be few critics in the country who’ll fail to point out that “Due Date” – with its slapstick road-trip dynamic, its fat-guy/slim-guy co-stars, its prickly-mushy buddy movie formula – plays like a latter-day “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.” But instead of the buttoned-down... Read More

Director says ‘Fair Game’ speaks to evergreen American values

November 04, 2010 BY DENNIS KING NEW YORK – Filmmaker Doug Liman would like nothing better than to have Karl Rove sue him. In Liman’s new political film “Fair Game,” Rove and Scooter Libby and other hawks in George Bush’s administration don’t exactly come across as shining examples of noble democratic process. The... Read More

Under the Radar DVD of the Week: 'The Bing Crosby Collection'

November 01, 2010 This week, the most interesting DVD to appear on release lists is: “The Bing Crosby Collection” Although Bing Crosby is best known for the “Road …” pictures with Bob Hope and his Oscar winning performance in “Going My Way,” the crooner turned actor racked up a considerable resume of big-screen... Read More

In ‘Hereafter,’ Clint Eastwood asks eternal questions but offers no answers

October 31, 2010 BY DENNIS KING NEW YORK – As an actor, Clint Eastwood has dispatched more than his share of fictional adversaries into the great beyond. But as a director, when it comes to the mysterious passage from life to death, he admits he doesn’t have any answers. Only questions. And those are posed with admirable... Read More

Book looks at Charlie Chan through insightful Chinese perspective

October 28, 2010 Charlie Chan, the inscrutable Chinese detective of fiction and film, is often viewed today as a quaint, embarrassing relic of a time when America not only tolerated but embraced institutional racism in popular entertainment. Chan, who spoke in pidgin English, spouted Oriental homilies and was portrayed in scores... Read More

DVD review: ‘The Lost World of Mr. Hardy’

October 28, 2010 An early-day ad for Rolls Royce depicts a pristine new automobile parked outside the Pall Mall shops of Hardy’s of London, purveyors since 1872 of the world’s finest fly fishing tackle. It was a just measure of brothers William and J.J. Hardy’s family business, its quality craftsmanship and sterling... Read More

Actor-singer Juliette Lewis makes big impression in small role

October 28, 2010 BY GENE TRIPLETT Juliette Lewis has come by her Hollywood rock ‘n’ roll wild child image honestly, picking film roles and playing music that are dangerous and different. Read More

Movie review: Sister wages 18-year war against 'Conviction'

October 28, 2010 “Conviction” is based on a true story full of complex and extraordinary people – good, bad and somewhere in between – that any audience would be eager to get to know and try to understand, and a stellar cast brings them vividly to life in this absorbing tale of love, loyalty and sacrifice from director Tony... 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.