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2 weeks ago | 
saturdayeveningpost.com | Donald Liebenson
This year marks the 75th anniversary of director Joseph H. Lewis’s Gun Crazy, a bust on its original release in 1950, now recognized as a singular and seminal crime film that influenced the French New Wave and the young New Hollywood upstart directors.
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1 month ago | 
rogerebert.com | Donald Liebenson
On Fri. Jan.
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2 months ago | 
rogerebert.com | Donald Liebenson
Andrew Buss was 14 when he, his father, and grandfather went to see " Superbad " at the Regal Cinema in Lake Zurich, Illinois. He has two memories of that night. The first is that it was a bonding experience between the three generations that the Buss's rarely seen outside of a Cubs game. Second, was the laughter. "Like there was going to be structural damage to the theater," he recalled. "To this day I've never experienced anything like it where the laughter was that strong.
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2 months ago | 
vanityfair.com | Donald Liebenson
Saturday Night Live has comedy’s deepest bench: hall-of-famers, heavy-hitting superstars, and indispensably versatile utility players. But just as in baseball, even the show’s most venerable players sometimes strike out.
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2 months ago | 
msn.com | Donald Liebenson
Continue reading More for You Continue reading More for You
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2 months ago | 
washingtonpost.com | Donald Liebenson
Joe Piscopo is an old show business soul. You can feel the genuine love and respect when he talks about his idol, Frank Sinatra (whom he still calls Mr. S), his formative years watching “The Ed Sullivan Show” and his appreciation for obscure comedic character actors. In his new memoir, “Average Joe,” and in conversation, he presents himself as a humble awestruck Jersey boy ever grateful for his good fortune at achieving his modest dream of being a working actor.
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Dec 11, 2024 | 
kirkusreviews.com | Donald Liebenson
When life—as it is wont to do—feels frustrating, Karin Jensen has a ready-made reality check that instantly sets her back on track: stories written by her Chinese American mother, Helen. “Mine are first-world problems,” Jensen says with a laugh. “They’re not about growing up in poverty and hunger, worrying about whether I am going to live or die, feeling disowned by my father, or wondering where my husband is late at night.”To wit, take getting her first book, The Strength of Water, published.
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Nov 19, 2024 | 
chicagoreader.com | Donald Liebenson
I was hoping that Red One director Jake Kasdan might do for the soulless, overstuffed, CGI-driven Christmas movie (I’m looking at you, 2000’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas) what he did for the tortured-artist biopic with Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007). Instead, Red One answers the question: What if there were a Fast and Furious Christmas movie?
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Nov 12, 2024 | 
saturdayeveningpost.com | Donald Liebenson
One of the more telling sentences in Tripp Whetsell’s excellent Norman Lear: His Life and Times is the author’s surprise upon hearing of the legendary producer’s passing. “The one thing I never anticipated was Norman’s death on December 5, 2023,” he writes. Lear was 101! “He was the Energizer Bunny,” Whetsell told The Saturday Evening Post with a laugh. “He never slowed down.
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Nov 5, 2024 | 
vanityfair.com | Donald Liebenson
During a September 23 rally in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump was mid, uh, “weave”—ranting about late-night talk show hosts Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Kimmel, who mercilessly ridicule Trump on a nightly basis. “Where is Johnny Carson?” he asked. “Bring back Johnny.”Alas, Carson died in 2005. But the next best thing, a new biography called Carson the Magnificent, does an exhilarating job of bringing him back. Even more, it brings back its author, Bill Zehme.
