Frank Capra would have appreciated the present moment. In two of his best films, Mr. Smith Goes the Washington and Meet John Doe, the political system is entirely beholden to big money. And in both films, those financial interests control media empires which can crucify inconvenient upstarts who rock the boat. In the end, the only thing which stands between those interests and doing the right thing is the uncommon...

Bill Schorr, Cagle Cartoons This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

No political or social infamy today but, as my odometer turns to 87, a memory about the sweetness of youthful longing. Seventy-four years ago, on my Bar Mitzvah day, I went to the movies to see the elegantly beautiful British actress Madeleine Carroll and, on the day the Jewish religion declared me a man, I fell hopelessly in love with the most golden shiksa of them all. A decade and a war later, at my alma...

A great rendition of “A Little Tin Box” from the musical “Fiorerllo,” performed by a talented student group:

Can this year’s Academy Awards be interpreted as a slap in the face to American cinema? According to columnist Renato Silveira of Brazil’s Cinematorio, the fact that True Grit went away empty handed and ‘The Social Network’ nearly so to the benefit of The King’s Speech was nearly inexplicable. For Brazil’s Cinematorio, Renato Silveira writes in part: The Academy sent American...

Cardow, The Ottawa Citizen This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Mike Lester, The Rome News-Tribune This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

If Charlie Sheen doesn’t get his axed CBS show “Two and Half Men” back then perhaps he can team up with British fashion designer John Galliano to star in a new show: “Two Half Wits.” It’ll be a reality show. The news cycle has been dominated by news of Sheen and Galliano — yet further examples of super-rich, super-pampered and super-arrogant celebrities who have it all but still want more. They...

As 94-year-old Kirk Douglas upstages the upstarts at the Oscars comes word that the oldest living veteran of World War I has died at 110. Kirk teases the supporting actresses by dawdling with the envelope, pinches winner Melissa Leo at her request and, after she drops an F-bomb, lets her grab his cane as they exit, she looking less steady than he. Meanwhile, Frank Buckles, who as a 16-year-old lied about his...

Right now the media is crammed with stories involving two well-off celebrities who have become poster guys for young people on how not to behave and for parents on how they don’t want their kids to turn out. First, there’s Charlie Sheen, the enormously talented actor, who has seemingly canceled his own CBS show “Two and a Half Men” by his radio and Internet website interview rants against...

Will there be Gadaffi music groupies soon? It COULD happen. Watch this: h//T Newser

This year’s Oscars are about something. One marvelous movie recalls a day in June, 1939 at the New York World’s Fair, a 15-year-old boy watching an open car with the King and Queen of England slowly driving by, less than fifty feet from his excited eyes. Until then, the outside world had been grainy newspaper pictures and black-and-white newsreels, but here was a flesh-and-blood couple, he in resplendent...

The opposite of hero worship is negative self-definition that tells you who you are not and could never be. Such anti-role models can influence a life as much as those you admire and want to emulate. Hugh Hefner has always been at the top of the not-me list and, now that the geriatric Playboy founder is exposing himself to ridicule by marrying a 24-year-old Playmate (“It will be,” says Letterman,...

by Walter Brasch The last segment on every Friday’s broadcast of ABC-TV’s “World News,” with Diane Sawyer, is a “Person of the Week.” Usually, those persons have gone out of their way to do something good for people, or have lived a long and distinguished life, or by their example give inspiration to others. Recent “persons of the week” have included a very...

In an email with a young TMV reader, we discussed my favorite musical comedy bit in a movie: Jim Carey doing “Cuban Pete” in The Mask. This readers was unaware of the fascinating gensis of this number. It was first made famous in the early 1950s by Desi Arnaz singing it on “I Love Lucy.” Here’s the segment: In the mid-70s, Arnaz, now elderly and largely retired, appeared on Saturday...

In a salvo directed at Netflix, with Apple and the cable networks, perhaps, as collateral damage, Amazon announced today that AmazonPrime customers now have free (bundled) access to thousands of movies and TV shows. When it launched in the United States in 2005, the Amazon Prime membership program touted unlimited fast shipping on all eligible purchases for an annual membership fee. Subsequently, Amazon extended...

“I’ll Take Boring, for $500, Alex” by J. Thomas Duffy I’ve been on the DL the past few days and didn’t have a chance to weigh in on the – if you want to believe the Technology Geeks – the greatest event since sliced bread, that being the Jeopardy – IBM Watson Computer hose job . So now I am … BORING!!!!!! One night would have been more than enough, but they...

Reading the headlines around the world, this song from the 60s review “Pins and Needles” seems fitting today:

Stephen Colbert poked some fun this week at Arianna Huffington and the news aggregation practices of The Huffington Post. Colbert complained that the HuffPo is embedding videos from his show without payment, “I have yet to receive my percentage of the Huff bucks.” With that he introduced his new site, “The “Colbuffington Re-post.” Arianna, every bit the shrewd pageview monetizing netizen, took advantage...

I have this song from Carole King’s 1982 “Speeding Time” album on my ITunes, but there is no video online, and the WordPress software will not allow me to embed it as an mp3 audio file in this post. So, best I can do is give you the lyrics and link to a partial audio of the tune at the Amazon site. The song has been running through my head lately. It’s obviously about a relationship,...

From Henny Youngman (watch the musicians crack up in the background):

It’s Friday evening, the end of a long week and in some ambiences it’s happy hour time: half price beer, half-price something stronger. Since I am writing this, I’ll forsake my beer for now. Quite a sacrifice, since—as you may have noticed if you read my posts—I love beer. As I love Dutch beer, especially Heineken and Amstel Light, one might deduce that I acquired the taste while living in...

What used to be unspeakable is now not only news but fodder for tweets, blog posts and myriad forms of comment. Freedom of information has advanced, hasn’t it? A 39-year-old woman, CBS correspondent Lara Logan, is “beaten and assaulted” by a crowd in Cairo. We know because her network issued a terse press release, which the Washington Post and New York Times respectfully reported, adding only...

There’s bad news for readers (particularly those who travel and love to find a big bookstore) and authors: Borders, the country’s second largest bookstore, is filing for bankruptcy protection and is closing 200 stores — 30 percent of its total. It’s the victim of a changing market (in books and how people buy them) and technology (in how some readers now read them). And — like...

Jazz Legend George Shearing Dies by J. Thomas Duffy I heard this on the radio this morning, and it shadowed the beginning of the day in sadness; George Shearing dies aged 91 Announcing the death due to heart failure at Shearing’s home in Manhattan, his agent, Dale Sheets, said: “He was a totally one of a kind performer. It was something wonderful to see, to watch him work.” I had the good...