DVD Tuesday Taxi Driver Robert De Niro Martin Scorsese and New York Citys Heart of DarknessDid the world really need a new collectors edition of Taxi Driver 1976 Probably not but its a great excuse as though one were needed to recommend a great film And on top of Taxi Drivers intrinsic merits watching it again was a fascinating reminder of how much New York City has changed since the mid-1970s Check out Columbus Circle sans the massive glass slabs of the Time Warner Center visit the now-vanished Bellmore Cafeteria and witness the grunginess of Central Parks unrefurbished Maine Monument and the sheer sleazy glory of Times Square before Disney scrubbed the life out of it Theres a shocker in every scene and thats before Travis Bickle Robert De Niro starts his personal cleanup campaign I remember that New York vividly and seeing Taxi Driver brings it all backFor anyone who doesnt know the plot it chronicles the mental disintegration of insomniac
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CNN is planning to cancel the low-rated Paula Zahn Now, says Variety, perhaps filling the 8 pm time slot with a news program anchored by NBC's Campbell Brown, if a deal can be worked out.... The 41st Annual Country Music Association Awards will air Nov. 7 on ABC.... DVD release dates have been set for Taxi Driver: Limited Collector's Edition (Aug. 14) and Dane Cook: The Lost Pilots (featuring two never-aired comedy pilots starring you-know-who, Aug. 21).
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One of the weirdest TV weeks ever continued Wednesday as reality TV continued to get it right, with American Idol finally kicking the ridiculously out-of-his-depth Sanjaya Malakar to the curb. But does this leave Ryan Seacrest and Simon Cowell something — anything — to talk or argue about?Meanwhile, in the actual real world, the horrific saga of the Virginia Tech shootings took yet another surreal turn when NBC revealed and analyzed on air the existence of a disturbing package of video, text and photos sent by the shooter on the day of the killings. Unimaginably, he went to the post office between sprees to mail his deranged manifesto to the media in a final bid for media immortality. (I have decided not to name the shooter here, in a personal bid to deny him, at least in this space, that publicity.) This package of angry rants and deadly poses, resembling a nightmare vision out of Taxi Driver, is without question legitimate news, and its contents will be devoured on air...
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The one thing I realized as Oscar night droned on and on for nearly four hours: If I ever had to choose someone to be stranded with for hours on end (say, like those poor Jet Blue passengers a few weeks ago), it would have to be Ellen DeGeneres.Keeping her cool, and her genuine aura of chipper goodwill, throughout three costume changes (in suits from red velvet to all-white to royal blue) and what seemed once again like an overindulgent excess of movie montages (we definitely could have done without Michael Mann’s fuzzy survey of cinematic American history), Ellen was welcome nearly every time she popped up. Offering a spec script to Martin Scorsese, directing Steven Spielberg on how to take her photo with Clint Eastwood, asking the megastars in the front row to lift their legs as she vacuumed the Kodak past midnight (ET), while informing us that Helen Mirren had just asked for a rum and coke (sounded pretty good to me at the time), Ellen did her darndest to deflate the bloat a...
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Question: It seems that many critics are not happy with the Academy for failing to recognize Brokeback Mountain as the right film at the right time. What are some other famous snubs that the Academy is still embarrassed about? Thanks.
Answer: I personally think the Academy is shameless, and I've never ever heard — nor do I think I ever will — an official spokesperson concede that its membership made a big fat mistake giving the best-picture Oscar to one film rather than another. But I think there's a pretty overwhelming consensus among everyone else who cares that calling Ordinary People — a genuinely good movie, I hasten to add — the best motion picture of 1980 when it was up against Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull, which is widely con
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