In 2009 filmmaker Casey Pugh and Jamie Wilkinson began collecting 15 second user-created scenes of the original Star Wars. The project, dubbed Star Wars Uncut, grew a devoted following, even winning an Emmy for Outstanding Creative Achievement In Interactive Media in 2010. Now, the 472 segments have been edited by Aaron Valdez and Michael Pugh into a full 2 hour remake. And Pugh and Wilkinson have posted that...

Is Mel Brooks directing this movie? Tonight’s final South Carolina debate will no doubt start as usual with the gang sitting under the palmettos full of Tea Party beans, competing to exude the loudest brain gas about Barack Obama and one another, but where do they go from there? Will Rick Perry, who almost started a war with Turkey last time, punch another horse? (Nope, late news is that he’s doing...

For those who have not yet discovered it, Downtown Abbey is an absolutely wonderful British produced miniseris along the lines of Upstairs Downstairs. It is set in the early 20th century at an English estate and follows the lives of the upper class family and the servants. Season (or should I say Series) Two is now airing on PBS. There are many great reasons to watch this series (not the least of which is Maggie...

Just look under the Hollywood sign.

It can happen. Miraculous resurrection can sometimes emerge from unspeakable tragedy. On Sept. 11, 2001 Lauren Manning, senior vice president and partner at Cantor Fitzgerald, an investment bank which had several floors of offices in the World Trade Center, was on her way to work and getting ready to enter the elevator at the North Tower when the 9/11 terrorist attack punched the building — and a giant,...

The PBS series is becoming the “West Wing” and “Sopranos” of the century’s second decade, mirroring Americans’ longing for escape from the Obama and Tea Party era as surely as its predecessors reflected a desire for a more human society, high and low, during George W. Bush’s time. As second season ratings soar, what is “Downton Abbey” telling us about ourselves? In midlife, a dozen friends...

You may go see the Non Sequitur cartoon from Friday, 1/13/12 which the Plain Dealer did not run. I used it as a teaching moment with my 6th grader and he got why it could be objectionable right away. Whether or not it should have been published is of course a different matter. Here are the comments at my Facebook thread and many times more can be found at former Plain Dealer journalist Connie Schultz’s...

The GOP debates could make a profit on Pay TV if they let Stephen Colbert join the panel. How much would it be worth to see him match wits with Mitt Romney and Rick Perry? Sadly, like his other ventures, Colbert’s South Carolina candidacy is only fodder for his reality-blurring show, the perfection of a trend that began to emerge in the 1960s when TV made American life too complicated for Bob Hope-Milton Berle...

by Walter Brasch Tucked between the New Hampshire primary and Ground Hog Day, and directly competing against an NFL playoff game, is Saturday night’s annual Miss America pageant. Although the headquarters is still near Atlantic City, where it originated in 1921, the pageant—don’t call it a beauty contest—has been a part of the Las Vegas entertainment scene for eight years. Apparently, the Las Vegas motto...

As Mitt Romney tries to seal the deal in the Palmetto state and keeps slipping in the polls there, memories come back of a culture clash when I was in basic training there during World War II. How much has changed in those seven decades? The country boys in my company were excited by anything exotic and, given their lives before induction, it took little to tickle them. One day they were chortling over a guy...

For some reason — some will say for good reason — election time in America does not seem to bring out the best in many Americans, including this one, when it comes to negative and gloomy opinion and commentary. Thus, when The Huffington Post announced the launch of a HuffPost Good News section “devoted to positive news, happy stories and uplifting opinion and commentary” and graciously invited...

Many TV viewers have no idea what an incredible performer Mandy Patinkin is. Watch him here doing a live performance of “Buddie’s Blues,” one of the songs from the masterpiece score of “Follies.” The character is having a bit of a breakdown: Here’s another great interpretation of this piece, by Danny Burstein:

Just in time, our frayed nerves go back to the quiet and calm of “Downton Abbey” in World War I after a weekend of Republicans crying havoc over Barack Obama, pausing only in sniping at one another for restful outbursts of road rage, blaming the President for everything wrong in the 21st century world. Robotic Mitt Romney, as befits a frontrunner, leads the pack in letting “slip the dogs of war,” stabbing...

With a double-header debate this weekend, memories arise of the legendary Satchel Paige who, before baseball was integrated, was the greatest pitcher in America, often starting two games in a day and was considered by Joe DiMaggio et al the best they never had to face in the big leagues during his prime. Satchel pitched well into his sixties, famously saying, “Never look back, something might be gaining on...

Back in October, I reviewed Susan Winters Cook’s newly published Nozuko’s Story: The Story of an African Family. The final chapter has now been written. Photograph copyright Susan Winters Cook

Parsing Iowa results is like trying to solve the old riddle of why French intellectuals loved screwball comic Jerry Lewis, critics gave “The Nutty Professor” their Oscar and the government showered him with honors. In the world of slapstick, you never know which way the croissant will crumble and, post-Iowa, Michele Bachmann is gone, Rick Perry has his foot on a banana peel and Newt is revving up to pummel...

We are all familiar with the separation of the sexes in Saudi Arabia and in other Islamic countries and with the many laws restricting and limiting the rights and activities of women. While many of the Sharia laws are ostensibly to protect women from the prying eyes and other inappropriate gestures or advances by men, curiously women shopping for panties, bras, negligees, etc. had to endure the embarrassment...

CODA: Doing some “Googling” on languages and dreams, I was amazed at how many entries there are on the subject, “What language do you dream in?” There’s even a book at Amazon.com titled — you guessed it — “What language do you dream in?” So, given the interest and since it has been more than three years since I wrote about it here, let me try it again,...

Here’s a collection of the best political cartoons of the week.

Some years ago, particularly after the 1963 assassination of President John F.Kennedy was accurately predicted by psychic Jeane Dixon (but some say her prediction was exaggerated), the mainstream media and tabloids had a field day with end-of-the-year predictions. Sometimes these predictions were silly and didn’t come true. But sometimes they were spot on. It’s much harder to find lists of predictions...

If Mitt Romney wins in Iowa next week, he could find nipping at his heels still another challenger. Two weeks ago, in post-debate stupor, I woozily compared the GOP race to an action movie: “If the Great Screenwriter in the Sky is following the…plotlines, after all the car chases, explosions and reversals, the eventual nominee is clear: Rick Santorum. He’s been a bit player who has never had a big...

If I were a Republican this coming election year … I would vote for Rick Santorum because of his views on gays and lesbians and gay marriage, his promise to reinstate “don’t ask, don’t tell” and his stance on singling out Muslims for extra screening at airports. I would vote for Ron Paul for wanting to eliminate almost all of government, income taxes, the IRS and for declaring MEDICARE,...

Breaking up is hard to do, but much more expensive in today’s Hollywood than rural Georgia of three decades ago. Mel Gibson is finally divorced from his wife of more than 30 years and mother of seven children after turning over an estimated half of his $850 million in movie earnings. At the same time, the nation’s other Lethal Mouth seems to have been lying about his first divorce three decades ago as CNN...

If you want to understand Pakistan and a good deal about South Asia buy “Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi.” South Asia has always been of huge interest to me, from the time I was a student at Colgate University, to my internship on “The Hindustan Times” in New Delhi in the early 1970s, to a couple of years I spent in that city after graduating the Medill School of Journalism and...

A mutual grandparent at holiday dinner confronts me with the accusation that I fired a cinema icon in the 1960s. Guilty. So I may as well share my confession with the whole world. I brought out the worst in Pauline Kael. She started irritating me the minute we met and never stopped. Looking for a movie reviewer with intelligence and style when I became editor of McCalls, I had read and admired Kael’s work...