Westerns – the Great American Movie Genre.  Yes, the Italian cinema has its Spaghetti Western – Cameriere, more Sangiovese, please!  But we’re talking real, honest-to-John-Wayne American westerns here.  The kind with a big, wide-open-spaces theme by somebody like Elmer Bernstein, Alfred Newman, orLerner and Loewe.  Morricone magic is better served with the aforementioned grape of Chianti – and…

Have you ever been riding your chopper down a southern U.S. highway, lookin’ for America and unable to find it?  If so, “Easy Rider” is the movie is for you.  I’ll call a spoiler alert here in order to mention that in between the moment you see that shotgun barrel stickin’ out of the pickup…

The Fastest Guitar Alive” is one of those rock’n’roll movies that rock’n’roll would probably like to disown.  In fact, it may have driven rock’n’roll to drink – and it was doing all right in that department before this film came along in 1967. It’s Roy Orbison’s only acting role – for a clue as to…

In “The Beast With Five Fingers,”  the severed hand of a dead piano player comes back from the grave to… play the piano some more!  There’s plenty of melody in those ghostly tunes, even though the hand appears to be a left hand. If that were true, wouldn’t it just be playing the bass notes?  Aah, I…

In Martin Scorsese’s “King of Comedy,” Robert De Niro plays Rupert Pupkin, a demented fan obsessed with the late-night talk show host played by Jerry Lewis.  If De Niro’s digs in Taxi Driver creeped you out, what did you think of his basement room in this movie?  The fake talk show set – complete with…

When we talk about wine, the talk always turns to Pinot Noir. It’s considered by many wine snobs to be the grape that’s hardest to get into the bottle, but the most expressive of the conditions from which it comes. If you’d like the full-length lecture, just ask the nearest wine snob. Make sure you…

When Ron Howard’s first film, “Grand Theft Auto,” was made, I thought great wine was the Spanada my mom kept in the fridge.  I don’t know how mom would feel about her favorite beverage being relegated to the category of “bum wine,” but at  $7.70 for a magnum, it would seem to come in on…

Kim Novak and James Stewart may have been feeling a bit dizzy from “Vertigo” when they teamed up again less than a year later for “Bell, Book and Candle.”  This romantic comedy is set in Manhattan, during the Christmas season.  The story revolves around a subculture of witches there.   Despite the beautiful cinematography, the backdrop…