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I’ll never forget the segment on “60 Minutes” a couple of years ago, when Morley Safer interviewed our most famous living historian, David McCullough.

A great screenwriting professor once told me, “A screenplay is like a chalk drawing – it’s a beautiful thing until they stomp all over it like a bunch of circus ponies.” Many writers can be precious with their work, but to the typewriter-jamming chagrin of some Hollywood screenwriters, a movie is a living thing, and sometimes changes have to happen at the very last split-second – even as film is rolling.

Summer is vacation season. This year, let’s presume you’ve set your sights on going abroad. First you take a deep breath and buy the plane tickets. Ouch — they’re pretty steep, an unpleasant fact explained by two little words: “peak season.”

When birthday time rolls around for the good ol’ U. S. of A, tradition dictates we set something alight and watch it go boom. Useful tip: just make sure the thing that explodes has left your hand in time; don’t dampen the festivities by losing a digit (or two). And if you really want to play it safe, eschew launching those rockets yourself, and get your fireworks on film instead.

Here’s a bold statement: Giving your children the chance to watch classic films can be just as vital as anything they learn in school. 

Over the years, some film directors have had their own so-called stock companies. We’re not talking Wall Street stocks, folks, but rather groups of actors they felt so comfortable working with that they cast them in their projects time and again. The great John Ford’s stable of thespians was perhaps the biggest and most prolific in Hollywood history. In fact, some of its members appeared in the iconic director’s films over twenty times; bit player Jack Pennick worked with the filmmaker a whopping 41 times, although several of his roles were uncredited. Of course, starting in the forties, John Wayne was Ford’s favorite star. “The Duke,” who also had an abiding off-screen friendship with “Pappy” Ford, could be seen in 24 Ford enterprises, all starring roles in some of Ford’s most iconic work (you can see some of these movie titles at the end of this article).

In Hollywood, August is rather indelicately known as a “dump month”— a time when studios traditionally litter theaters with films that have low box-office expectations and pack all the heft of a half-eaten Twizzler (à la this year’s “Let’s Be Cops” and “The Expendables 3”).  However, now and then over the years, the scheduling gods have managed to include a real gem with all the other celluloid junk. Here’s a look at some of the films that—from the 1950s to the 2010s—have defied their dog-day August release dates and become timeless works of art.   

It boggles the mind that only a couple of generations back, women were sometimes referred to as “the weaker sex.” That’s not only sexist, but misleading.  Plenty of tough, cunning, even deadly female characters have graced the screen over the past six decades that prove this idiotic saying wrong.   Here are an even dozen.

It’s nearly impossible to discuss a truly great movie without mentioning its musical score. Can you  honestly ponder the Spielberg classic “Jaws” (1975) without hearing those relentless, alternating two notes (played on a tuba!) that announce the killer shark’s arrival? Or think of “Rocky” (1976) without remembering how Bill Conti’s soaring trumpet theme made your heart race?