Email Author Robert Wilonsky

2003 Stories by Robert Wilonsky

• A Fan's Notes

  published December 11, 2003

  This being the end of the year, and since none of the people I wanted to write about this week felt it necessary to return any of my calls, from... More >>

• Comics From the Front

  published December 4, 2003

  Maybe you know the feeling. Maybe it struck you one morning as you stared in the mirror before trundling off to the job you hate, or maybe it hit... More >>

• Dance This Mess Around

  published December 4, 2003

  Honey is one of those movies you will see, swear you've seen before in several other guises and incarnations, then immediately... More >>

• The "S" Word

  published November 27, 2003

  Bad Santa, in which Billy Bob Thornton plays a drunken department-store Santa who repeatedly swears at children, pisses... More >>

• Indian Giver

  published November 27, 2003

  In director Ron Howard's The Missing, Samuel Jones (Tommy Lee Jones) takes his place among the oldest archetypes in the Western... More >>

• Free Will

  published November 6, 2003

  Even when people were watching Will Ferrell on television every Saturday night, they weren't seeing Will Ferrell. They saw no more than a... More >>

• Tights Fit

  published November 6, 2003

  Tis the season and all that jive; beneath the tree this first week of November, you will find two films set during the final week of December,... More >>

• The Boss

  published October 23, 2003

  On October 12, BBC America aired the second-season premiere of The Office, the beloved mockumentary that follows paper-selling rats 'round... More >>

• Half Great

  published October 9, 2003

  The opening credits insist Kill Bill: Volume 1 is "Quentin Tarantino's 4th film," when it's actually his 3.5th; it's too incomplete... More >>

• The Reel Who

  published September 25, 2003

  The publicity materials sent in advance of the at-long-last release of The Kids Are Alright on DVD suggest that the maker of the 1979... More >>

• See Dick, and Tom, Run

  published August 28, 2003

  A respected comedy writer sits over lunch with a man who, in the late 1960s, was very, very famous. This man, slender and balding, was a comedian... More >>

• Stupor Man

  published August 28, 2003

  Harvey Pekar, star of a long-running comic-book series he writes and others illustrate, is reminded early in American Splendor that... More >>

• Lit Up

  published August 21, 2003

  On Sunday, HBO will air the final episode of what has been the most consistently entertaining--and aggravating--show of the summer television... More >>

• For Love of the Game

  published August 14, 2003

  He knows there are people, too many, who do not like him. He has to know. They've told him to his face--the studio executives who slice and... More >>

• Into the Sunset

  published August 14, 2003

  Kevin Costner appeared in his first Western when he was thirty and looked to be in his early twenties. He was a slender, restless actor in... More >>

• You, Spy

  published July 31, 2003

  David Wolstencroft moved from London to Los Angeles in November, and not only so he could rise each morning for a game of tennis--though there is... More >>

• Heaven Sent

  published July 31, 2003

  There's magic in Northfork, both in the movie, by twin brothers Mark and Michael Polish, and in the Montana town soon to be drowned... More >>

• Virtual Family

  published July 24, 2003

  Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over continues a fine tradition of turning third installments of film series into three-dimensional efforts;... More >>

• Family Affair

  published July 17, 2003

  I purposely avoided reading anything about Capturing the Friedmans before seeing the film, which was no easy task. Andrew Jarecki's... More >>

• Still Smilin'?

  published July 10, 2003

  Stan Lee, for better or worse the most recognizable face in the history of the comic book, insists he has no love for rehashing his past. He... More >>

• Greek Out

  published June 12, 2003

  You need not leave the house to know what's playing in movie theaters in coming weeks. You've already seen these films, with titles consisting of... More >>

• Hammer of the Gods

  published June 5, 2003

  In November there will arrive on newsstands a music magazine edited by Alan Light, who left Spin to embark on his endeavor of publishing a... More >>

• Dem Blues

  published May 29, 2003

  You've been warned: This is a column about politics wherein a popular-culture critic (dunno what that is either, but says so on my tax returns)... More >>

• Till Death -- If We're Lucky

  published May 22, 2003

  Occasionally I can be convinced that it's the singer, not the song. I've no love for Britney Spears's "Baby One More Time," but I can't get enough... More >>

• Terror Firmer

  published May 15, 2003

  In March 2002, days before President Bush was scheduled to visit Peru, a car bomb exploded near the U.S. embassy in Lima, killing nine and... More >>