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I have an ongoing love affair with New York, the city that formed me. I was born here, and though I’ve left occasionally, it was never for very long. The pace, color, and excitement of this amazing town always drew me back like a magnet, and holds me still. No surprise then that I love experiencing the potent nostalgia of great films that recall the New York City of my early years.

I will always remember the pure exhilaration I felt watching Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” for the first time in a theater thirty years ago. The memory is so clear of first realizing that I was experiencing an extraordinary piece of filmmaking, deliriously entertaining but also completely fresh and unique. What made “Pulp” so exciting and distinctive?

Katharine Hepburn, whose birthday falls today, remains the only actor or actress to be awarded four Oscars. Yes, Meryl has long since surpassed her on nominations, but Kate still leads on wins. Few people now realize that by the end of 1938, after just six years in Hollywood, pundits were saying Kate was all washed up. In 1939, the year many point to as Hollywood’s finest, Kate didn’t have a single movie credit.  True, she got her first break early enough, as talking pictures in the early ‘30s were always searching for young, attractive Broadway-bred comers who could actually speak. Kate made an auspicious debut in 1932’s “A Bill Of Divorcement," opposite the aging, alcoholic John Barrymore (who played her father).