“What is this ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ thing?” I remember thinking this in 1978, when I heard about a movie of that title somehow playing midnights for weeks (months?) on end in a multiplex near Western Michigan University. Being an impressionable college student who liked movies (but hadn’t yet grown to love them), I thought

It might seem difficult to think of the 1990s as the “Golden Age” of anything. No offense to the ’90s, but they just don’t seem so long ago. However, that period could be described as such for the hip-hop scene in Flint. Rapper Eric “MC” Breed achieved national chart success in 1991 with his first

If you watched the recent Academy Awards telecast, you will remember its strange and stunning conclusion. The show’s producers unwisely broke tradition by saving the announcement of the Best Actor award until last, presumably to honor the posthumous expected winner, Chadwick Boseman. When Anthony Hopkins was named as the winner instead, the Oscarcast ended with

Film festivals have come and gone in Flint, but the longest continuous cinema fest in Genesee County is going strong – even during the pandemic. The 17th Karen Schneider Jewish Film Festival is taking place May 2-23, albeit with some pandemic-related changes. The annual collaboration of the Flint Jewish Federation and the Flint Institute of

Watching “Nomadland,” as I did the other day, was an experience I will never forget. And not just because the movie was exceptionally good. For the first time in a year, I was “going to the movies,” as opposed to “watching a movie on my laptop” or “hooking up my laptop to my big-screen TV.”

Hollywood loves to make movies about its own history – and audiences and reviewers, generally, have liked them. Witness Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” last year, “La-La Land” and “Stan & Ollie” before it, and the Best Picture Academy Award-winning “The Artist” prior to those. A major contender in the next Oscar

Those who have seen “Searching for Sugar Man,” the 2012 Oscar-winning documentary about the search for a long-forgotten but influential ’70s musician from Detroit, will recall its more-or-less happy ending. In a similar vein now comes “The Changin’ Times of Ike White,” another small slice of pop music history with a back story just as

When I was introduced to “Cat’s in the Cradle” over the Top 40 airwaves in 1974, I was a teenager who was attracted to Harry Chapin’s wistful song about father-son relationships. When I listen to it now on satellite oldies radio, I connect with it from the other end of the age spectrum, as a

There are movies about Christmas that embody high, holy ideals – peace, joy, fellowship, generosity – expressed through familiar images of the manger in Bethlehem or even Santa Claus coming down from the North Pole. And there are movies about Christmases less glorified or romanticized – about people just trying to get through the holiday

“So, Ed, what did you do on your ‘summer vacation’ from movies at the FIA?” Well, since you’ve asked, I had enough time to finish work on a book that was published in June – with an inadvertent reminder of the current global pandemic. The photograph on the cover of Hollywood Musicals You Missed: 70

To paraphrase wording used frequently in these trying times, I am older than 60 and have a pre-existing condition. That’s right: I am a Monster Kid. That’s what horror film-crazy folks who grew up in a certain age like to call themselves, specifically Baby Boomers who watched Dracula, Frankenstein, the Invisible Man and their kin