It is a sad and beautiful world

A friend found this on her windshield when she returned to her car after shopping. Along with the candy were two packages of hot chocolate. Feel free to pass it on.

Can movies kill?

It’s easy to dismiss NRA vice-president Wayne LaPierre as a moral imbecile – because, well, you know, he is a moral imbecile – but unlike many of my colleagues, I can’t blithely disregard his claim that psychos might be inspired by movie mayhem.

Of course, I find it more than a little ironic that LaPierre specifically referenced American Psycho as an example of Hollywood product capable of bringing out the worst in copycats. Because… Well, here’s something I wrote a few years back in my currently out-of-print book:

The cause-and-effect debate over movie violence has continued unabated since Taxi Driver was linked to a real-life would-be assassin. Mary Harron addressed the controversy – and admitted her ambivalent attitude -- in a New York Times essay she wrote prior to the release of her American Psycho (2000): 

 “Once you accept the idea that the representation of violence is in itself harmful to society, much of the finest world cinema could be banned, from Eisenstein to Kurosawa to Kubrick and Polanski to Coppola and Scorsese. Most genre films would have to go too: film noir, horror, gangster films, Westerns. This form of censorship, taken to its logical conclusion, clearly means the end of art.

“However, it does have a point, because no matter how moral or ironic or satirical a filmmaker might think a work is, he or she can have no control over how a member of the audience will receive it. No sane person could watch Taxi Driver and decide it was a good idea to shoot the President — but an insane person did.

“And who is to say that your audience will always consist of the sane?”

"Gun Nut" makes headlines

OK, is it just me, or does Wayne LaPierre look a lot like the Red Skull with cheap glasses and a bad toupee?

Merry Christmas from the Dallas cast: Pow!

This video is hilarious. Still, I have to admit: It's a little sad to think it will be the last Dallas Christmas promo ever to feature the late, great Larry Hagman.

Henri the Existential Cat in The Worst Noel

To which I only can add: Joyeux Noël, mon ami.

Flash: Django Unchained screening tickets giveaway

If you want to see Django Unchained this Friday at 6 p.m. in Houston text VENGEANCE to 43KIX (43549) and your zip code. (Example: VENGEANCE 77027) There is no charge to text 43KIX. Message and data rates from your wireless carrier may apply. Rules here.

Me on TV: You Better Watch Out!

No, that's not Santa talking movies with Deborah Duncan. It's... well, me. This is 40 and Les Miserables are a couple of the holiday season releases that loom large in our conversation.

Lee Child thinks Tom Cruise is a fantastic Jack Reacher

So all you clowns who have questioning the casting of Cruise in the upcoming Paramount release -- take off, eh?

Review: Silent Night

For those of you who have always wanted to see a psycho Santa Claus apply an electric cattle prod to a bratty little girl – and you know who you are, so don’t try to be coy about it – there is Silent Night, a kinda-sorta remake of the notorious 1984 slasher movie Silent Night, Deadly Night. You can read my Variety review here. But be forewarned: You know a slasher movie is in trouble when even the psycho killer gets tired of his murder spree, and simply dispatches a victim by beating him to death.

Fantastic Fest: "It is a celebration of geekdom at its geekiest"

Produced for public television station KLRU of Austin, All My Friends Are Vampires is a way-cool overview of the phantasmagorical frenzy that is Fantastic Fest, the world's wildest genre-movie exposition. I'm on screen to offer pithy commentary at the 11:30 and 15:00 marks (and off-screen, but still heard, at around 24:10). But, hey, you owe it to yourself -- and to director Mario Troncoso -- to savor the whole dang thing.

Happy Thanksgiving, movie fans!

As I have noted elsewhere: It's a melancholy fact of life that if you live long enough, you reach a point when you start to wonder: How many birthdays do I have left? How many Christmases? Independence Days? Thanksgivings?

For better or worse -- though I strongly suspect it's for the better -- I have no way of answering those nagging questions. But I do know this: You can enjoy all the holidays you want, any time of year you desire, at the movies. In honor of the day, here are two guides to notable flicks featuring Thanksgiving gatherings -- one from Time Magazine (including two personal favorites, Judd Apatow's Funny People, pictured above, and Jodie Foster's Home for the Holidays) and another from (OK, don't laugh) AARP Magazine (featuring a fave that, oddly enough, I had almost forgotten: Alice's Restaurant).

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all. And as I am wont to remind folks on occasions such as this: It's a miracle that we're even here and alive.

It's Take 4 for Houston Cinema Arts Festival

The hits just keep on coming this weekend at the 2012 Houston Cinema Arts Festival. And so, being the shameless gravy trainer that I am,  I have hitched my wagon to it.

A few days ago, I got a chance to interview HCAF artistic director Richard Herskowitz for CultureMap and, as you can see in the above video, KHOU-TV. But wait, there's more: I offer a guide to promising HCAF offerings here, and my own tribute to HCAF special guest Robert Redford here. (Redford -- interviewed here by CultureMap editor Clifford Pugh -- will be honored with the festival's Levantine Cinema Arts Award.)

And don't forget: After the 9:15 pm Saturday screening of the most excellent documentary Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp at the Sundance Cinemas, I will host a Q&A with director Jorge Hinojosa.

Because, really, it's all about me.

Four more years! Four more years!

Celebrating the RE-election of Barack Hussein I Smoked Bin Laden's Ass Obama. Let the good times roll, y'all.

Insert Laurel and Hardy joke here

Politics make for strange... bipartisan partnerships.

Scary stuff, kids! Talkin' 'bout horror flicks on Great Day Houston

Better late than never, here's a segment devoted to Halloween-appropriate movies, with me and Deborah Duncan, that ran last Wednesday on Great Day Houston.

Lena Dunham talks about her "first time"

The lovely and talented Lena Dunham made me laugh out loud with this video in support of President Barack Obama. At least, I laughed until, for the second time in less than a week, I was reminded that I cast my first vote in a Presidential election all the way back in 1972, for George McGovern. God, I feel old. As Vincent Price once said after he realized that, out of all the people in an old movie he was watching on TV, he was the only one still alive: "I put down the drink -- and picked up the bottle."

R.I.P.: George McGovern (1922-2012)

Two things that immediately popped into my head when I heard the sad news this morning about George McGovern's death.

First, he was the first Presidential candidate I ever voted for -- at a time when this country seemed even more divided and yet, strangely enough, at the same time, somewhat more civil than it is now.

Second: It has been impossible for me to read or hear McGovern's name ever since seeing All the President's Men without thinking of Hal Holbrook in that dimly lit parking garage telling Robert Redford, in the condescending tone of someone explaining the obvious to a none-too-bright child, that McGovern was the liberal Democrat that Richard Nixon and his flunkies wanted to run against in 1972, because he'd be so much easier to beat than Ed Muskie.

I have never ceased to agree with those who've praised George McGovern as a good and honorable man. But I still shudder when I consider how easily and ruthlessly he, and we, were manipulated by his opponent.

Joe Biden's here, and he brought doughnuts

You have to hand it to Joe Biden and the Democrats -- they're big on bringing junk food to the party. And I for one appreciate that.

Coming soon: Zombies Versus Gladiators. No, seriously: Zombies vs. Frickin' Gladiators

As H.L. Mencken once sagely noted: "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." Wonder what the old boy would make of Amazon.com's announced intention to get into the movie production business with "crowdsourced" projects like... like... well, Zombies Versus Gladiators.

Latest reason I love being a teacher

Tonight, I had a student thank me -- actually thank me -- for screening His Girl Friday during a History of Film class at Houston Community College. But wait, there's more: He also said that he wanted to someday, somehow, make a movie as smartly written as this one. I told him: Good luck. I look forward to reviewing it.