The Favorite Movies of 42 Famous People
Presidents & Politicians
What’s with presidents and High Noon?
1. Barack Obama – The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather: Part II (1974) When Katie Couric asked then-presidential-candidate Barack Obama what his favorite movie is, he replied, “Oh, I think it would have to be The Godfather. One and Two. Three not so much. That saga — I [...]
The Quick 9: 9 Awkward Places to Get Served
Getting served with divorce papers or lawsuits is never fun, but let’s face it – opening your front door and accepting an envelope is a lot less embarrassing than dealing with someone running out and handing you a sheaf of paper in front of your adoring fans at Wrigley Field. Here are 10 less-than-ideal places [...]
Are You Afraid of the Park? Ghosts, Conspiracies and Other Weird Happenings in Central Park
For a while, Central Park, the 770-acre green oasis in the middle of Manhattan, wasn’t considered a place you really wanted to go. In the early 1980s, there were 1,000+ crimes of various types committed in the park every year, but muggers and vandals aren’t the only creeps that have run rampant there. From its [...]
The Late Movies: Cooking Shows on Crack
Sometimes it takes a special blend of trippy editing tricks to show us just how weird cooking shows really are. There’s nothing like a little slow-mo, a creeping digital zoom, unsettling music and a lot of reverb to turn Paula Deen or Rachel Ray into some kind of phantasmagoric hell-beast, which I discovered after a [...]
Themes From Scary Movies
Quick, think of a piece of music from a scary movie.
If you could think of seven different themes, chances are a few of them are on Cinematical’s list.
One of the seven is one of my favorite movies of the genre, Poltergeist, music by Jerry Goldsmith.
Jerry Goldsmith previously contributed a classic horror theme with his score [...]
The Quick 10: AFI’s Top 10 Thrills
October is horror movie month at my house. We’ve been slacking a little bit this year, but so far we have managed to fit in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (the animated one with Bing Crosby, not the live-action Johnny Depp one), The Exorcist, The Mist and The Ruins. The latter was kind of horrible, [...]