Is it too much of a stretch to say that *Chicken Little* perfectly captures the zeitgeist of the moment: ‘Holy crap, the sky really *is* falling, and we were idiots not to have noticed all along’? Cuz the little guy here is right — there were no WMDs, and there never were. Er, I mean, the sky is indeed dropping down around his little world, even the first time he said as much. He was never, to mix some fairy-tale metaphors, crying wolf, and is it his fault if no one believed him?

You remember the old Veterans’ Day TV marathons for polio research that Lanny Morris and Vince Collins used to host, don’t you? You know, the two Rat Packers who made those great buddy comedies, where Vince was the priggish straight man and Lanny was the hilarious drunk? No? And then there was that scandal with the dead girl in their hotel suite? No? Not ringing a bell?

His novel *Breakfast at Tiffany’s* was banned in the little town of Holcomb, in the ass end of Kansas, when Truman Capote went there in late 1959 to investigate the brutal murders of a local farm family. It’s not a fact that *Capote* makes a big deal out of — it’s just sort of slipped in sideways in an interesting revelation about one of the locals — but it’s a tidbit that keeps niggling at the back of my mind. The irony of it, you know: Capote was so moved by the short article in *The New York Times* about the murders, reading in his brownstone in Brooklyn, that he went to Holcomb before the crime was even solved, determined to write about the dead family and the impact the killings had on the close-knit town… a town that had already decided that he was a peddlar of bad influence and inappropriate attitudes.

Ghosts don’t have to be scary, right? Real life is too frightening right now, what with killer hurricanes and hideous Supreme Court nominees and the terrifying pit that *ER* has fallen into — I don’t think I could deal with traditional spooks at the moment. So instead I’m finding Halloween refuge in pleasant specters, the kind you wouldn’t mind hanging out with and trading witty banter, the kind . I mean, an emphatic *yes* to Alan Rickman in *Truly Madly Deeply,* but he’d have been even better if he was in black-and-white, right?

Ah, this is one of those movies that starts off intriguing and tricksy, gets bogged down after a while with its own inventiveness — so that you sorta squirm your way through the middle of the film, afraid that the film’s gonna end up all hat and no cattle — and redeems itself so tremendously … more…

Saw as a title made perfect sense for Saw, given the prominent, horrifying role played by that piece of hardware. Saw II as a title is pointless, except to set off the Pavlovian response of horror fans and bring them running — it has little in common with its predecessor beyond the washed-out colors and … more…

If it’s otherwise idle hands in Hollywood who make sitcoms, does that officially make them the devil’s work? Cuz it’s always seemed that way to me, with the typical sitcom’s idiotic pretense to ordinariness (*Everybody Loves Raymond* and *The King of Queens,* for instance) as a disguise for the basest stereotypes (*Everybody Loves Raymond* and *The King of Queens,* for instance) and its appeal to the lowest of the lowbrow. Except, of course, when it wants us to go all mushy over some moron learning the true meaning of fatherhood or puppies or Arbor Day — then the LAUGH sign prompting the conditioned studio audience switches over to AWWW and the bread-and-circuses entertainment switches from making fun of beer-bellied blue-collar schmoes with impossibly tolerant and beautiful wives and simply impossible mothers-in-law to asking us to welcome the spirit of Veterans’ Day into our hearts.

You can’t make this stuff up, and they didn’t: this is a true story. Mostly. Domino Harvey was a poor little rich girl who, seeking to escape the deprivations of Beverly Hills and the rough life of a fashion model, turned to — no shit — bounty hunting for adventure and excitement. I say “was” … more…