The Deuce – The Complete First Season The Deuce The Complete First Season (HBO Home Entertainment – 2018) New York City in the 70s was dirty, sleazy, violent and wild, but it also had a certain throbbing energy that the current Disney-ification of the city has pretty much defanged. Long before sky-high rents and massive chain stores turned the city into the world’s largest mega-mall, New York was America’s dangerous heartbeat; a throbbing, passionate netherworld of crime, mus

Boyz II Men – Under the Streetlight Boyz II Men – Under the Streetlight (Sony Masterworks) Boyz II Men have embraced the sound of old-school doo-wop music from the very beginning. Their second huge single from their breakout debut album Motownphilly was an a capella cover of an obscure soundtrack single from the 70s – “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday,” which came from the long-forgotten film Cooley High – and was essentially an attempt to bring street-corner singing

Richard Price Richard Price Living a Lush Life in Some Small Dive by Ronald Sklar Since he was a mere twenty-four, writer Richard Price has been greatly admired for his amazing ear for dialogue, his seemingly seamless writing style and his compelling urban plots. His new novel, Lush Life (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux), about worlds colliding on New York’s contemporary Lower East Side, is just the right Price: a living and breathing thing in your hands. It’s not often that a new

Richard Price RICHARD PRICE BETTER THAN FICTION BY RONALD SKLAR If Richard Price’s life story were made into a movie, you would accuse the joint of being too far-fetched.  But, as the old cliché goes, truth is stranger than fiction. Price came up in a Bronx housing project, but his gift for writing gained him entrance into the some of the nation’s top colleges.  He thrived at Cornell, Columbia and Stanford, despite his feeling like a fish out of water.  His first novel, The W

Corky Romano CORKY ROMANO  (2001) Starring Chris Kattan, Vinessa Shaw, Peter Falk, Peter Berg, Christopher Penn, Fred Ward, Richard Roundtree, Vincent Pastore and Fiona Hale. Screenplay by David Garrett and Jason Ward . Directed by Rob Pritts. Distributed by Touchstone Pictures.   85 minutes.   Rated PG-13. Saturday Night Live may be responsible for a revolution in television comedy, but the show and its actors are also responsible for some of the worst films ever made. In a

Elwood Reid Elwood Reid He Didn’t Six By Ronald Sklar Elwood Reid and I have formed the I-Love-Richard-Price Club. You already may (and should) know that Richard Price (The Wanderers, Ladies’ Man, Blood Brothers and Clockers) is the most brilliant working-class writer who ever lived. Elwood and I worship and adore him. So, kids: now you know the yin-yang of Richard Price. And, of course, you know me (I’ve held ten thousand jobs and my novel is in the works and it’s coming soo