An Irish American family go back to 1883 to discover what's most important in the present. What could be more parental than to wish to show your children how good they have it today? To take your family into the past and give them a taste of real life, when necessity stared you straight in the face and your mettle was tested by the sometimes–cruel vicissitudes of nature? For … [Read more...] about The Clunes’ American Adventure
Film and Television
Irish Eye on Hollywood
Liam Neeson played German businessman Oskar Schindler in the acclaimed film Schindler's List. And he was recently seen on Broadway as a tortured Puritan in Arthur Miller's The Crucible. So why should anyone be surprised that the Ballymena-born Hollywood star portrays a Russian in his latest film, K-19: The Widowmaker? Neeson's ethnic-bending role is just one of several … [Read more...] about Irish Eye on Hollywood
Sins of the Fathers: On the Road to Perdition
The legendary B-movie writer-director Samuel Fuller once told me about a script he had written called The Bag Man. The title character is a bag man for the mob, a functionary whose job is to deliver packages but never to look inside them. One day he makes the fatal mistake of looking inside. He takes the money and runs. Explaining the real novelty of his story, Fuller said … [Read more...] about Sins of the Fathers: On the Road to Perdition
Film Forum: The Importance of Being Earnest
Hyping up Wilde in Earnest won't win Parker and Oscars. "Life is too important to be taken seriously," Oscar Wilde observed. He demonstrated that principle most dazzlingly in The Importance of Being Earnest, his 1895 play satirizing, among other things, the uselessness of British upper-class twits, the hypocrisy of would-be moral arbiters, the shallowness of social standing, … [Read more...] about Film Forum: The Importance of Being Earnest
Dennis Swason: WNBC
Dennis Swanson is president and general manager of WNBC in New York, the flagship station of the NBC network. Less than a week after the World Trade Center tragedy, WNBC-4 launched a public service campaign entitled "We Shall Overcome." The two-minute video featured Fire and Police Department and civilian rescuers accompanied by a Bruce Springsteen version of the song that was … [Read more...] about Dennis Swason: WNBC