Jeffrey York

By sanding off the edges, these new versions wholly sacrificed most of the fun and audacity that made the originals so popular in the first place.

It’s in human nature to dread pain and failure.

Michael Corleone. Ferris Bueller. Beatrix Kiddo. John Wick. What do these four famous film characters have in common, other than that they all hail from classic movies?

Is anything harder in the world of fictional storytelling than coming up with an ending to a mystery that no one sees coming?

Does the Bond franchise continue along the grittier Craig path? Or does it turn Bond back into more of the gentleman spy from the original Fleming books?

Do most filmmakers consider it too gauche to center a film around a monster these days?

When the lights go down in the theater, I’m always hopeful that a sequel will rise to the challenge of making more out of its task than just being a quick money-grab.

Who’d have thought that Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, the creators of Seinfeld in 1989, would create a series that would come to foreshadow all the worst impulses and instincts evident in “the American experiment” in 2021?

As people get more of their news and information in shorter bursts, 30-minute series, be they comedies, dramas, or limited series, are becoming the rage.

“As an author [of a book], you have to be the camera. A script gets interpreted, but in a book, the words have to do all the work.”

Arguably, if the work isn’t its own reward, you’ve not chosen your career wisely, no matter what the profession.

For all the talk in Hollywood given to seeking out vital roles for women, the woman warrior has become every bit an egregious cliché as the hooker with a heart of gold was for half a century on film.

If a screenwriter thinks that there’s little to learn from the niche because they’re writing a horror film or a thriller, they’re (ahem) way off-key.

The limited series really must be considered long-from filmmaking, a brilliant hybrid of the best of the big and small screens.

What happened to sci-fi? When did it become so predictable, so unvaried, so unimaginative?