Email Author Robert Wilonsky

2002 Stories by Robert Wilonsky

• TV or not DVD

  published November 14, 2002

  Four signs the show you're watching is among The Greatest Series in the History of Television: It's an ensemble comedy that often resembles a... More >>

• Fake Out

  published November 14, 2002

  Rarely does a theme unify a film festival; such gatherings, for the most part, are glued together only by movies few have seen and movies few will... More >>

• X

  published November 14, 2002

  It's the unimaginable, the fucking unfathomable--X, reunited 'cause it feels so good, playing live after on-and-off years of playing dead, or at... More >>

• What Else Is On?

  published November 7, 2002

  'Tis the season The Simpsons jumps the shark, literally; that's how the first episode--second, actually, if you count last Sunday's... More >>

• See, Hear

  published November 7, 2002

  The best thing about turning 80, insists the maestro who has been making music for movies for half of the medium's lifetime, is that you no longer... More >>

• Run, Rabbit, Run

  published November 7, 2002

  Three years on, the besieged phenomenon--the scourge, Antichrist or the Vanilla Ice of the '90s, pick 'em--has been rendered beloved; when they,... More >>

• Paul Faaaaag!

  published October 31, 2002

  Paul Feig remembers everything about his childhood you want to forget about yours--the ass-kickings, the name-calling, the overwhelming smell of a... More >>

• Ho Ho Hunh?

  published October 31, 2002

  The Santa Clause, released at the height of Home Improvement's popularity, played like a Very Special Holiday Episode of that... More >>

• Good for Nothings

  published October 31, 2002

  For Eric Schaefer, it all began when he was a masters film student at the University of Texas at Austin in the mid-1980s. One day, he stumbled... More >>

• U2

  published October 31, 2002

  The acolyte will deride the obvious misses amid this collection of hits, among them "The Fly," "Please," "The Wanderer" and "Elevation," at least... More >>

• Number One With a Bullet

  published October 31, 2002

  On Tuesday, Interscope Records at long last released Nirvana, a 14-song best-of that features not only tracks from Bleach,... More >>

• True Dat

  published October 24, 2002

  CHARACTERS Russell Simmons: He is 45, wears a white baseball cap, a T-shirt with the words "40 Acres and a Bentley" on the back and a sweat... More >>

• Damaged Goods

  published October 24, 2002

  Not as bad as its rep--Miramax has been hiding this sucker on the shelf for danged near two years--but not good enough to overcome its status as... More >>

• Yes, But Whose Truth?

  published October 24, 2002

  Once more, it all boils down to the stamps--which, if you have seen Stanley Donen's 1963 comic-thriller Charade, nearly ruins the last 10... More >>

• I See Nothing

  published October 24, 2002

  There's an invigorating, inspiring film about a famous dead person opening in a few days: Julie Taymor's Frida, scheduled to arrive... More >>

• Doug Kershaw

  published October 24, 2002

  Decades after Warner Bros., and a handful of other labels, tried to make Doug Kershaw a star by selling his "crazy Cajun" (read: unreliable... More >>

• Foo Fighters

  published October 24, 2002

  By now, the story of how the Foo Fighters' fourth album happened--and almost didn't--has been well-documented, to the point of becoming humdrum... More >>

• Sad Gilmore

  published October 17, 2002

  Paul Thomas Anderson, the would-be Altman without the madman-genius baggage getting in the way, has forever ruined Adam Sandler. No longer will... More >>

• Out of Focus?

  published October 10, 2002

  No one denies that a man's head was smashed in, most likely with a camera tripod, on June 29, 1978, in an Arizona hotel room. No one denies that... More >>

• School Daze

  published October 10, 2002

  Roger Avary's screenplay for The Rules of Attraction is a remarkable work of literature: the disassembly and reconstruction of an... More >>

• Dawson's Crossing

  published October 3, 2002

  This is not how he's supposed to talk. These are not things he's supposed to say. These are not things he's supposed to do. Not the Teen People... More >>

• Various Artists

  published October 3, 2002

  Dubbed by TV Guide as the "best show you're not watching," the WB's Gilmore Girls is also the best show you're not listening to,... More >>

• Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

  published October 3, 2002

  Tom Petty's as pissed as a millionaire gets, meaning you'd best take this (ahem) concept album about rock-and-roll corruption with a grain of salt... More >>

• Laughter Is the Best Weapon

  published September 26, 2002

  Rare is a documentary about a movie as vital and essential as its subject; Lionel Chetwynd's Darkness at High Noon: The Carl Foreman... More >>

• Dead On

  published September 26, 2002

  It is a decade ago, and Neil Burger has trekked from New York to the small Texas town of Fredericksburg, where Admiral Chester Nimitz was born,... More >>