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Not surprisingly, the movies' depiction of women in the workplace has evolved roughly in line with societal changes. There weren’t a lot of female CEOs portrayed in film before the advent of feminism in the 1960s, but there have always been smart, charismatic women in extraordinary professional roles, many of them leadership positions.

The challenging, colorful lives of writers often make for solid drama on-screen. While the act of writing is hardly gripping, what it goes into it- the process of delving deeply and fearlessly into the mess and grit of life- can be. 

In our divine gathering of movies that tackle the big question of what happens when we die—or when we don’t die as planned, we immerse ourselves in fantasy. Or perhaps not. Do angels exist, and is there a heaven? If so, where do all the evil folks go? Of course, nobody knows, but visitations from angels or other spirits counter the notion that death brings only oblivion. And that's a comforting thought indeed.

Top-ten lists of holiday films abound right about now, but what about picking the top three Christmas movies ever made? Certainly there's plenty to choose from. Christmas movies are almost a genre unto themselves: between live-action and animated features, there are literally hundreds of titles out there. Inevitably, some are pretty bad, others amusingly cheesy.

As producer/director Roger Corman once told me, movies are a kind of alchemy, an outcome of many complex elements. Bad movies can be forged from wrongheaded decisions, great ones can often be attributed to … plain dumb luck. The resulting concoction is all that counts. Of course, when you watch an amazing performance in a great film, it’s hard to envision how it could have been done any other way. Casting is crucial because most often we associate movies with the actors that star in them. But consider how differently a movie might have turned out if an alternate choice had been made. Just a tiny shift in the recipe can make a world of difference.  Here then is a list of 9 actual “what might have been” casting choices from some of our favorite films that prove my point. 

The finest sports movies are about more than the glory of the contest; they peer into the psychology of fans and players alike. Who are these athletes as people? And what’s behind all the devotion fans feel for them?

Once again, I hear Alice Cooper in my head screaming out that anthem of freedom: “School’s out for summer!” I was actually on the cusp of high school when that song became a hit, and I took the lyrics very much to heart. Back then, summer seemed like a time of endless possibility- parties to attend, girls to meet, and um, everything else associated with that.

Cheap knockoffs are usually pretty easy to spot in real life. Buying a purse for my wife once in Chinatown, I asked, “is this a REAL Coach bag?” The vendor produced a hot glue gun and a Coach emblem and said, “It will be when you buy it.”  This kind of thing shouldn’t surprise us — in movies, it happens all the time. For those who don’t already know, Hollywood’s unspoken mantra is: “If it works, buy it or steal it!” This means that studios pilfer from successful foreign films all the time, and have for years. After all, as more than one sage has noted, there are no new stories, only new ways to tell them... Sometimes it’s just plotlines that get recycled. Example: observe how certain scenes in Akira Kurosawa’s “The Hidden Fortress” (1958) resemble a little movie called “Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope” (1977).

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.