Leonora Cravotta
Arabella: The Dark Money Network of Leftist Billionaires By Scott Walter (Encounter Books, 248 pages, $29.00) At first blush, Arabella Advisors LLC appears to be a garden-variety D.C. consulting firm. Their website exudes typical K-Street verbiage: “We help changemakers create…
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire opened in theaters on March 22 and, despite mixed reviews, quickly became that weekend’s box office champ with a $45 million profit. To date, it’s garnered $78.5 million domestically, bringing collective franchise revenue over the billion-dollar threshold…
The Oscars played it safe with a return engagement of Jimmy Kimmel as the master of ceremonies for the 96th Academy Awards. The jokes were plentiful, although a few were in questionable taste (such as the ones about Robert Downey…
Hitchcock’s Blondes: The Unforgettable Women Behind the Legendary Director’s Dark Obsession By Laurence Leamer (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 336 pages, $29) When I first heard about Laurence Leamer’s Hitchcock’s Blondes: The Unforgettable Women Behind the Legendary Director’s Dark Obsession, I was…
The American Spectator’s founder and editor-in-chief, R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., suggested that I review for these pages Michael Mann’s latest film, Ferrari. Given that the film is based on Brock Yates’ excellent 1991 biography Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Cars,…
Connecticut in the Movies: From Dream Houses to Dark Suburbia By Illeana Douglas (Lyons Press, 352 pages, $40) Hollywood has had a longstanding fascination with Connecticut, as evidenced by the more than 200 films set in that state. In her…
It is hard to believe that it has been forty years since the release of Trading Places (1983), the comedy that asks the age-old question: Does heredity or environment determine our destiny? Trading Places tells the story of two blue-blood…
“It’s Christmas Eve and we are going to go celebrate being young and being alive,” Miles (Jack Black) declares to Iris (Kate Winslet) in the delightful Christmas romantic comedy The Holiday (2006), which concerns two “unlucky in love” women, Iris…
The Warner Brothers By Chris Yogerst (University of Kentucky Press, 360 pages, $34.95) I visited Hollywood California in the summer of 2022 and shared my LA story in these pages. I toured some of the major sites, including Warner Brothers…
