Author Archives: Bob Hill

Lawrence Ferlinghetti is more pre-Beat than Beat. In fact, it would be completely accurate to describe Ferlinghetti as a catalyst … one of several that provided the infrastructure necessary for Beatnik culture to exist. Ferlinghetti was the first, and – … Read More … Read More

The kid was big, but he was a kid. He was standing beside the drive-in window at Church’s Fried Chicken on North Broad, asking the people who came by for money.  “Do you have some change so I could get … Read More

How influential was Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo? Well, for starters, it was influential enough that the opening sequence alone has been mimicked by every director from Scorsese to James Mangold. What’s more, Vertigo is currently ranked #1 on Sight & Sound‘s … Read More … Read More

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Ed Koch died this morning, at the ripe old age of 88. And that is a tragedy, to be sure. But it is also rather fitting, giving it occurred just a few spare hours before a feature film about this … Read More … Read More

“The movies have been so rank the last couple of years that when I see people lining up to buy tickets I sometimes think that the movies aren’t drawing an audience – they’re inheriting an audience. People just want to … Read More

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All roads lead back to The Bicycle Thief, one way or another. Vittorio De Sica’s cinematic homage to daily life in post-war Italy represents the pinnacle of Neorealism – a landmark piece of cinema that still exists upon the primary … Read More … Read More

“It is not that Los Angeles is altogether hideous, it is even by degrees pleasant, but for an Easterner there is never any salt in the wind; it is like Mexican cooking without chile, or Chinese egg rolls missing their … Read More

If you are either from or of the Philadelphia area, chances are you know much better than to bring up Mumia Abu-Jamal in mixed company. From a distance, the Mumia case might appear to be a harsh study in race … Read More … Read More