Scout Tafoya

2 weeks ago | rogerebert.com | Scout Tafoya

Joe Don Baker was one of the first to teach me what screen acting was. As a kid, I was a "Mystery Science Theater 3000" obsessive, wearing out our VHS collection, buying the DVDs, taking near the entirety of my life to work out what every joke meant. As any other diehard will tell you, one installment stands head and shoulders above the others: Andrew V. McLaglen's "Mitchell!".

1 month ago | rogerebert.com | Scout Tafoya

This week, my friend Bridget Mallon passed away in her sleep at the age of 34. The country's been going to hell in a hurry, but there's always a way for things to get worse, and the loss of one of my best friends was that. At times like this, you forget that things can get better, let alone that they will, because it just seems implausible that the world stays this desperate and terrible forever.

2 months ago | rogerebert.com | Scout Tafoya

When he died on Tuesday at age 65 of pneumonia, everyone had their image of Val Kilmer at hand to personally mourn. There was the wonderfully showy Juilliard valedictorian, youngest actor ever accepted into the prestigious school, the young Brando who made his method bonafides known with theatrical, physical turns in "Tombstone," " The Doors," and " Wonderland ".

2 months ago | rogerebert.com | Scout Tafoya

The untempered version of world events right now: Things are not getting better. There's no opposition coming, there's no reckoning on the way, there is no stopping the free fall. And art is not going to save us. I don't have much use for the untempered version, even if, on my worst days, I believe it. So, I continue to make my art about art, and I continue to seek out the opinions of people who have not given up. And hope for the best and do what I can for people who need help.

2 months ago | rogerebert.com | Scout Tafoya

By Last month, I released my third book, "The Black Book: An Anthony Mann Reader." (You can order your copy here.)To celebrate a month of Mann madness, here's a very special unloved on "A Dandy in Aspic," the great director's final film, the last of the Anthony Mann B movies, and a beautiful haunting object it is. Enjoy this look at a true final film, a spy caper in which the central identity crisis comes to reflect the death of its maker.