Film # 119: Ryan's Daughter

I had long stayed away from David Lean's Ryan's Daughter (1970) because it had been so thoroughly drubbed by critics upon its release. But, in watching it in its newest DVD release, I was convinced that it was nearly as fine, in its own way, as Lean's previous efforts; it was really given the shaft by snooty film writers who expected something more "important" from the Oscar-winning director who

SIDE ORDERS #10

To start off in the latest edition of SIDE ORDERS, I have the simple but powerful video that pops up in the middle of Barry Shear's 1968 movie Wild in the Streets. An incendiary work like this couldn't be produced today; its premise: the youth have taken over America, and a pop star, Max Frost, is elected to the U.S. presidency. All people over 35 are put into concentration camps and fed LSD (