Author Archives: Ted Hicks

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About Ted Hicks

Iowa farm boy; have lived in NYC for 49 years; worked in motion picture labs, film/video distribution, subtitling, media-awards program; obsessive film-goer all my life.

What I Saw Last Year: Best Documentaries 2014

Posted on January 13, 2015 by Ted Hicks

              ____________________________________________________ CITIZENFOUR (Laura Poitras, director). Most documentaries, much like histories, tell their stories in retrospect, looking back to evaluate events that have already happened. Citizen Four unfolds largely in the moment. During the … Continue reading →

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What I Saw Last Year: Best Feature Films 2014

Posted on January 9, 2015 by Ted Hicks

Of the approximately 230 feature films I saw last year, here are the 30 new films that stood out for me. Some of these choices are pretty obvious, others maybe not so much. These are films that entertained and sometimes … Continue reading →

Posted in Film, Home Video, TV | 2 Comments

John Huston – The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of

Posted on December 31, 2014 by Ted Hicks

As I write this, the Film Society of Lincoln Center (FSLC) here in New York is in the midst of a complete John Huston retrospective (December 19 – January 11). The series includes thirty-seven features and five documentaries directed by … Continue reading →

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“Rosebud was his sled!” – Random Notes on Orson Welles

Posted on November 14, 2014 by Ted Hicks

*************************************************************************************** The first time I saw Citizen Kane — an experience I’ll never forget — was in a film class at the University of Iowa in 1964 or ’65. The class was held in a long, narrow room with rows of … Continue reading →

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Film School Flashback – Double Feature

Posted on November 3, 2014 by Ted Hicks

I knew I wanted to be a writer when I started at the University of Iowa in 1962, but at the time I thought that meant journalism. I quickly found out that wasn’t the kind of writing that interested me, … Continue reading →

Posted in Film | 6 Comments

Headbanging with “John Wick”

Posted on October 30, 2014 by Ted Hicks

John Wick is an uncommonly good action film, a B-movie on steroids. It’s lean and mean, and gets the job done. I found it immensely satisfying from beginning to end, much the same way I felt during Guardians of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Film | 2 Comments

“Force Majeure” – Women and Children First

Posted on October 17, 2014 by Ted Hicks

If you’ve ever wondered, as I often have, how you’d react in a crisis situation (you’re with your family on a ship that’s sinking, or in a store that’s being robbed at gun point, or trying to get out of … Continue reading →

Posted in Film | 2 Comments

“Tracks” – On the Road with Camels and a Dog

Posted on September 18, 2014 by Ted Hicks

In April of 1977 a young woman named Robyn Davidson set out walking from Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia on a 1,700 mile trek through Western Australia, much of it desert, to the Indian Ocean on the … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Film | 3 Comments

On the Radio – Monsters & Noir Podcasts!

Posted on September 3, 2014 by Ted Hicks

Podcasts are now available for the two interview shows I did earlier this year for “Talk Art Radio” on WSOU, the campus radio station at Seton Hall University in South Orange, NJ, not far from Manhattan. I wrote about doing … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Comics, Fiction, Film, Home Video, TV | Leave a comment

Barry Gifford on Film Noir – A Way with Words

Posted on September 1, 2014 by Ted Hicks

As a writer, Barry Gifford definitely gets around. Born in Chicago in 1946, Gifford’s hefty  output (over 40 titles to date) includes fiction, non-fiction, biographies, poetry, and screenplays. I first became aware of his name as the author of the 1989 … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Fiction, Film, Home Video, TV | 3 Comments