D.K. Holm

We all know someone who looks like Pee-wee. The undersized suit, the close-cropped hair boasting a Tintin-like comma-lick at the crown. The recessively phallic tiny bow tie. The faint sense of make-up, the flushed cheeks, the pouting mouth. Yet also like Pee-wee, there is the raging man hidden within the child who comes out on […]

From her perch at the prestigious New Yorker magazine, Pauline Kael ruled movie reviewing for 20 years. She was a “love it or hate it” kind of reviewer, over-praising favored films and directors while disparaging those she viewed as nothing less than crimes against humanity. Top Gun, for example, was “a recruiting poster that isn’t […]

Nicholas Ray invented the teenager. Oh, sure, the biological entity spanning ages 11 through 19 technically existed before the director made Rebel Without a Cause in 1955, but before then, this creature was mocked in homespun Hollywood fare, which rendered them as little more than gum-chewing layabouts with crushes on movie stars. It took Ray […]

No one matches me in my admiration for Ashley Judd. From her lead role debut in Ruby in Paradise to her superb turn in Heat, to her dignity-stripping appearance in Bug, Judd has proven herself to be an intense and versatile actress, evincing the rare ability to show believable rage on screen. Her fans have […]

For the past three years, the off-Broadway production Celebrity Autobiography has staged live readings and reenactments of celebrity memoirs. Passages from books by Suzanne Somers, Tommy Lee, Loni Anderson, and the Jonas Brothers are read by the likes of Craig Bierko, Rachel Dratch, Sharon Gless, and others; the point of the show, apparently, is to […]

Can Robert Redford really be this boring? He’s a world-famous sex symbol who was in numerous hits before going on to invent the Sundance Film Festival. Also, being a handsome guy from the febrile ’70s and ’80s, he must have had to fend off the world’s top dishes, right? But from the evidence presented in […]

We domesticate our bad boys. Like moony schoolgirls crushing on the class rebel, we are drawn to rambunctious evil, like Stefano DiMera on Days of Our Lives or Tony Soprano, because we think we can tame them. Indeed, in his new memoir, Ice-T comments on the “attracted-to-bad-boys” phenomenon: “I’m going to tell it to you […]

Welcome to Bio Hazard, a monthly Blogtown column by local film writer D. K. Holm that delves into the best (and worst) in Hollywood-centric biographies. This month: Conversations with Scorsese, critic Richard Schickel’s book of interviews with Ol’ Eyebrows. —Erik Does Martin Scorsese ever weary of telling his life story? While doing press for each […]

Bibulous British actors have long been a cliché of the trade, and new biography of history’s most crapulous quartet is probably the most thorough drunk tank log of actorial excess ever. Like this (occasional) column, Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole, and Oliver Reed (Thomas Dunne Books) is […]

Welcome to Bio Hazard, a monthly uh, semi-regular Blogtown column by local film writer D. K. Holm that delves into the best (and worst) in Hollywood biographies. This month: Angelina: An Unauthorized Biography. —Erik Does the public truly like Angelina Jolie? Sure, the actress won an Oscar, has been heralded as sexy in magazine polls, […]

Welcome to Bio Hazard, a monthly Blogtown column by local film writer D. K. Holm that delves into the best (and worst) in Hollywood-centric biographies. This month: Party Animals: A Hollywood Tale of Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘n’ Roll Starring the Fabulous Allan Carr.Take it away, D. K. —Erik Given the current economic climate, we […]