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I’ll admit it: I’m old enough to remember when the late Walter Cronkite delivered America its news every night at 7PM (if you were on the East Coast). I always loved him, and more important, I always believed him.

On this Labor Day weekend back in 1982, a significant event took place that was little noted at the time: a movie opened called “Fast Times At Ridgemont High.” In fact, so little was expected of this modest high school comedy that Universal Pictures almost opted not to release it on the East Coast.

We decided to look at a few of the past winners (and losers) to try to discern what might have contributed to some of the more head-scratching wins.

It isn’t Christmas without cookie-making, candy canes and chocolate Santas. But what we forget is that all that sugar puts kids on fast forward. To counter the ill effects of too many frosted things and to captivate spun-out minds, we've put together a list of can’t-miss movies for kids that grownups can enjoy too.

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. 

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.

Ah, that eternal question: which is better, the book or the movie? Though such comparisons are natural, even inevitable, they’re also kind of pointless, since the conventions of each medium differ so markedly. Books explore the dense inner lives of characters in a way movies can’t, while films use sight, sound and motion to create an immediacy books can’t.

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.