Stories by Philip Martin

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Pete Rose's hit-king hustle Pete Rose turned 80 years old last week. He played his first game 28 years after Babe Ruth played his last one. It's been 35 years since Rose retired as a player; 32 since he was banned from baseball... April 18, 2021

OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: Real life post covid — top 10 The other day I had my first meal in a restaurant in about 13 months. We bumped elbows in greeting, then the three of us sat around an outdoor table, unmasked, and ate and visited for a little over a... April 18, 2021

OPINION | REVIEW: 'Vanquish' George Gallo wrote "Midnight Run," one of the best road movies ever and a highlight of '80s cinema. He also wrote the original "Bad Boys" and its sequel, "Bad Boys 2." He made his directorial debut i... April 16, 2021

OPINION | NEW MOVIES: Decreasing moviegoing not exactly a bad thing Two of my favorite Los Angeles movie theaters are in danger of closing. I have a hunch that someone will rescue them, that the ArcLight Hollywood (which isn't even 20 years old) and the Cinerama Dome... April 16, 2021

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s OnFilm column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm416 88_uK5ccPuw [Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88_uK5ccPuw] April 16, 2021

'All Quiet on the Western Front' (1930) It has become a cliche to say that every worthy war movie is actually an anti-war movie. Lewis Milestone's gritty and ambitious "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1930) was not the first epic war pictu... April 16, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Lincoln's last happy day "No element of Mr. Lincoln's character was so marked, obvious and ingrained as his mysterious and profound melancholy." -- Henry Whitney, Abraham Lincoln's friend On the night of April 13, 1865, W... April 13, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Me and Paul Last Monday evening I was doing a Zoom thing, a panel discussion on "Media and Polarization" hosted by a group of do-gooders called Braver Angels who have assigned themselves the task of healing the l... April 11, 2021

OPINION | REVIEW: ‘French Exit’ offers clueless characters in well-cast tale that takes its time To make a "French exit" is to do something without asking anyone's permission. These days, it's probably most commonly used as a synonym for "ghosting" -- when you leave a party early without saying ... April 9, 2021

ON FILM The video OnFilm column will return next week. April 9, 2021

OPINION | NEW MOVIES: Box office returns, yet again In normal times, I don't care about box office returns. There have even been times when I've thought about lobbying against our running weekly box office reports in this section. My feeling is this i... April 9, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Missing McMurtry A couple of days before Larry McMurtry died, I got a message from a friend who also happens to be a friend of his, giving me a head's up that the sad event was imminent. The author was in hospice; his... April 6, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Symbolic gestures, opening days For the second straight Easter, there's no Gin and Ham party to go to. Lots of people have had more important things canceled because of and during this pandemic that we might finally be getting out ... April 4, 2021

OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: Know their names BENTONVILLE — The difference between the artist and the artisan may be something like celebrity. Before the 15th century or so, the concept of "artist" barely existed. A typical medieval Europe... April 4, 2021

OPINION | ON BOOKS: 'First Person' — Deadpan humor, easygoing fatalism I don't read Japanese. So I don't really read Haruki Murakami, even though over the past 30 years I've read every book I could find with his name on the cover and everything I saw beneath his byline ... April 4, 2021

'Unholy': A writer's potential legacy film "The Unholy" opens today, and in the tradition of horror movies released theatrically on Good Friday (such as 2014's "Beaster Day: Here Comes Peter Cottonhell"), it wasn't screened for the critics who... April 2, 2021

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s OnFilm column at: arkansasonline.com/0402onfilm 8GYwCOe-QRM [Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GYwCOe-QRM] April 2, 2021

Road trip BENTONVILLE — Before I could drive, I found most car trips boring. We used to take them, in the ’60s, rides through America in various Chevrolets. I always wanted to stop sooner than my parents did, ... April 1, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Wreck on the highway ON THE ROAD TO BENTONVILLE -- There is a line of trucks, each separated by a couple hundred yards, strung out in the right lane over the next quarter-mile or so. They are all moving at about the same ... March 28, 2021

OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: Neil Young — An entrepreneur extraordinaire Most things happen with nobody sitting around taking notes. At least it seems it was that way for most people, for most lives, before digital technology made it possible to record our lives as they h... March 28, 2021

OPINION | REVIEW: 'Six Minutes to Midnight' I always thought "Downton Abbey" ended too early. The series should continue into the 1930s, when things really get interesting for the British aristocracy. If they'd carry it forward a generation, t... March 26, 2021

OPINION | NEW MOVIES: Theaters are reopening, so are our perspectives Movie theaters re-opened in New York on March 5. They re-opened in Los Angeles on March 19. And just like that, the Hollywood apparatus begins to grind. Now that movies can play in theaters in the la... March 26, 2021

OPINION | ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s OnFilm column at: arkansasonline.com/326film JMPFzm0-Kf0 [Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMPFzm0-Kf0] March 26, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: To infinitive and beyond Karen's telling me this: She's riding her bike and another cyclist pulls alongside her. "Can I tell you something?" he asks politely. "I noticed you're really working hard. It would be a lot easier t... March 23, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Ali, Frazier and Mr. Tony I was listening to Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon talk about the 50th anniversary of the first fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier on Kornheiser's podcast the other day. It was one of thos... March 21, 2021

OPINION | ON BOOKS: Author in the footnotes gets his due Charles J. Finger is one of those authors whose life spans the 19th and 20th centuries and is therefore in danger of receding into the mists of irrelevance. He won the Newbery Medal for children's lit... March 21, 2021

OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: 'The Last Picture Show' portrays ennui in Texas Larry McMurtry's third novel, 1966's "The Last Picture Show," is a brutal book that sizes up the North Texas plains as a killing floor for human dreams and dignity that Thomas Lask, the longtime poetr... March 21, 2021

Oscar nods not necessarily sign of quality I've never been good at remembering what films won Oscars; I thought about it for about 15 minutes before looking up the winners of last year's Academy Awards. Bong Joon-ho's "Parasite" won Best Pict... March 19, 2021

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s OnFilm column at: arkansasonline.com/319film/ 5DxOF_y1on4 [Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DxOF_y1on4] March 19, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: A journal of the plague year "I lived . . . about midway between Aldgate Church and Whitechapel Bars . . . and as the distemper had not reached to that side of the city, our neighbourhood continued very easy. But at the other end... March 16, 2021

OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: Haunting tales At first he failed to understand his predicament. To become a ghost upon dying was one thing, but to become a ghost centuries before you were born was something else entirely: a fate for which his im... March 14, 2021

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s OnFilm column at: arkansasonline.com/312film/ wFRoslukYrg [Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFRoslukYrg] March 12, 2021

OPINION | NEW MOVIES: Bollywood comedy film opens today Everyone who works in a newsroom has a list of stories they want to get around to but probably never will. Here's one of mine from about six years ago: Find out what's going on with the Bollywood mov... March 12, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: When prime ministers cry "I don't think it's wrong when prime ministers cry . . ." -- former Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt to the BBC in 2014 Does anyone remember the great selfie scandal of 2013? It involve... March 9, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: A route less uncomfortable There is a couple living on the banks of the Arkansas River under the Broadway Bridge in North Little Rock. This is about a mile from where we live. A couple of times a week we walk our dogs past the... March 7, 2021

OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: Nostalgia is realization that we can never go back Nostalgia is often dismissed as a cheap and superficial emotion — a longing for an idealized past that never was. We often receive the past as a kind of theme park dedicated to the Good Old Days, wher... March 7, 2021

OPINION | ON BOOKS: Rooting for the Other in 'Klara and the Sun' One way to start a boring argument is to declare someone the world's greatest living novelist. So I'm not nominating Kazuo Ishiguro for the honor. I'm just saying there's nothing in his latest book, ... March 7, 2021

New book 'The South Never Plays Itself' a must read I don't know Ben Beard, but after reading his book "The South Never Plays Itself: A Film Buff's Journey Through the South on Screen" (New South Books, $28.95) I would like to. Beard is a writer and e... March 5, 2021

OPINION | NEW MOVIES: Cinema is changing, so are we This column is published under the rubric "new movies," which is both a nod to a previous feature in these pages -- one that listed the new movies opening in Arkansas theaters in a given week -- and a... March 5, 2021

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s OnFilm column at: arkansasonline.com/35film/ r_xKbOdft4Q [Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_xKbOdft4Q] March 5, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Fulfilling the first finale If we never see Tiger Woods play golf again, I will be all right with that. The last time we saw him play was just before Christmas, at the PNC Invitation, a silly season scramble event he played wit... March 2, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: La beauté et le Beat "Don't call me a Beat. I was never a Beat poet." -- Lawrence Ferlinghetti "Autumn Leaves" is one of those songs you probably know whether or not you recognize its name. It's a jazz standard recorded... February 28, 2021

'The Vigil,' 'Tom and Jerry' open today sans reviews I thought we were out of danger Monday morning. The 18 inches of snow we had in the past week had melted considerably overnight, and while we were still around 30 degrees at 7 a.m., it was going up i... February 26, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: The relativity of weather By Saturday, the River Road was clear, and 34 degrees felt almost warm in the sun. Four red-tailed hawks rode thermal updrafts in the empty northern sky, corkscrewing higher, scanning the snow below,... February 23, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: It's not always boring Fyodor Dostoevsky was a curious young man in a dangerous time to be curious. His association with Petraschevsky and his bunch was casual and expedient; he wanted to read the banned books they'd colle... February 21, 2021

OPINION | ON BOOKS: Mythology gets update that pleases Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something. In the past couple of weeks, the mail has delivered "Women's Liberation! Feminist Writings That Inspired a Revolution & Still Can," edited by Al... February 21, 2021

OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: Princes, Judases and Black Messiahs "This Prince left us dense and went home to God too soon." — Chadwick Boseman, "Deep Azure," 2002 We watched "Judas and the Black Messiah" the other night. It's a story that should be familiar t... February 21, 2021

OPINION | REVIEW: ‘Nomadland’ dives into a seldom-noticed community traversing the U.S. We went to the RV show at the Statehouse Convention Center last weekend to look at the fantasy wagons. We have talked, my wife and I, about someday buying a small but luxe vehicle -- maybe a customiz... February 19, 2021

2020's best list includes 'Nomadland,' 'Minari,' 'Judas' "Nomadland," which at the end of December I deemed the best film of 2020, opens in theaters today. I still think that, though back then I hadn't yet seen "Judas and the Black Messiah" or a number of ... February 19, 2021

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s OnFilm column at: arkansasonline.com/219film/ 41BpWH7hitI [Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41BpWH7hitI] February 19, 2021