Big Man on the Small Screen — Woody Strode on TV

August 7, 2010, 6:55 pm

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I hope you’ve all gained as much respect and admiration for actor Woody Strode as I have after reading all the great posts this week, and after watching Strode in action.  Jeff referred to himself as the “loose caboose” in our Woody Strode blogathon, but I may be an even looser one.  Because I’m a [...]

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Cowmageddon

August 8, 2010, 12:42 pm

≫ Next: Elvis on Tour: Split Screen Fit for a King

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Exactly one week ago today I was in a clear green field near an aspen grove here in Colorado, staring down at a suspiciously mutilated cow. Aside for a few flies, nothing else was near it. Oblivious to its gender I dubbed it “Fred.” My girlfriend and I took some pictures and we continued along [...]

Elvis on Tour: Split Screen Fit for a King

August 9, 2010, 10:00 am

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Elvis Week begins tomorrow in Memphis, and fans and tourists are descending on the King’s city to mark the 33rd anniversary of his death with a week of concerts, movies, Graceland tours, and informal get-togethers. This year would have been Elvis’s 75th birthday, adding a special note to Elvis Week. To honor—and exploit—both occasions, Fathom [...]

The 30th Anniversary of Airplane!

August 10, 2010, 11:00 am

≫ Next: Remembering Tom Mankiewicz (Part I.)

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On July 2nd, 1980, AIRPLANE! was released in the United States. For its 30th anniversary, the Film Society at Lincoln Center held a screening and a Q&A last night with directors and writers David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker (hereafter known as ZAZ). Ever since I stumbled out of THE NAKED GUN (1988) as [...]

Remembering Tom Mankiewicz (Part I.)

August 12, 2010, 9:28 am

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On July 31, 2010 screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz passed away at his home in Los Angeles due to complications from cancer. The Mankiewicz family is the stuff of Hollywood legend and consists of Tom Mankiewicz’s father, the Academy Award winning director and writer Joseph L. Mankiewicz, as well as celebrated screenwriters Herman J. Mankiewicz and Don [...]

Remembering Tom Mankiewicz (Part II.)

August 12, 2010, 1:41 pm

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This is the second half of David Konow’s interview with the late Tom Mankiewicz. The first part was posted earlier today. ………. It was the early ’70s and Cubby Broccoli was preparing Diamonds Are Forever. He told David Picker, then the head of United Artists, “I’m lookin’ for a writer who’s young. I think we [...]

The Incredibly Strange Film Fiends Who Had Kids and Became Mixed-Up Horror Dads, Part 3

August 14, 2010, 7:28 am

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Returning to our ongoing discussion of raising children in a world at least partially devoted to fear and loathing is Jeff Allard, Dennis Cozzalio, Greg Ferrara, Paul Gaita and Nicholas McCarthy. PAUL GAITA: Lot of common threads in all of our “origin” stories. I remember feeling (or being made to feel) different as a kid [...]

Party Out of Bounds

August 14, 2010, 9:42 am

≫ Next: “Salvation is a last-minute business, boy.”

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This week I’m here to praise BFI Flipside, a classy underdog in the world of DVD distribution, who launched this label in 2009 with the following explanation on all of their box art: “The Flipside: rescuing weird and wonderful British films from obscurity and presenting them in new high-quality editions.” Earlier releases have included Richard [...]

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“Salvation is a last-minute business, boy.”

August 15, 2010, 12:12 pm

≫ Next: Written Words on Spoken Word: Victor Nunez’s Latest Film

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I spent two weeks working round-the-clock to put together my fall film calendar and to meet my printer’s deadline last Friday. I celebrated with top-shelf beers and a 16mm screening in my backyard of The Night of the Hunter (1955). It was the great actor Charles Laughton’s only directorial excursion, using a script by Pulitzer [...]

Written Words on Spoken Word: Victor Nunez’s Latest Film

August 16, 2010, 10:06 am

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Like his peer John Sayles, director Victor Nunez is a veteran independent filmmaker of three decades. Even before the Hollywood studios closed their doors to auteurs and turned their backs on audiences who appreciate complex dramas and original styles, filmmakers like Nunez and Sayles realized the need for a production model that existed completely outside [...]

Learning to Love Raoul Walsh

August 17, 2010, 11:00 am

≫ Next: Courage Conquers Death in Christopher Strong

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Raoul Walsh was nothing if not adaptable. As a teenager, he tagged along with his uncle on a trading mission to Cuba and Mexico. The schooner was damaged in a storm and had a long layover in Vera Cruz. It was there, Walsh claimed, that he learned roping from a man he only knew as [...]

Courage Conquers Death in Christopher Strong

August 19, 2010, 2:29 pm

≫ Next: Look out ol’ Bela’s back!

≪ Previous: Learning to Love Raoul Walsh

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I can still recall the first time that I saw Dorothy Arzner’s Christopher Strong (1933). I was just a teenager flipping channels one lazy afternoon and suddenly the opening credits appeared on my television. I noticed Colin Clive’s name so I paused. I was familiar with the actor thanks to his role as Doctor Frankenstein [...]

Look out ol’ Bela’s back!

August 20, 2010, 8:00 am

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Bela Lugosi lives… in the funny pages. Bela Lugosi, the Hungarian expatriate actor who achieved a kind of damned immortality in Hollywood as the first, proper cinematic DRACULA (1931), went to his own grave on August 16, 1956, before many of us were born. He has lived on, after a fashion, in the many movies [...]

Bird on a Wire

August 21, 2010, 10:27 am

≫ Next: Films for when you feel icky and gross.

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“If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”  -  Leonard Cohen Missing in action since it was first filmed by Tony Palmer in 1972, BIRD ON A WIRE, a documentary account of Leonard Cohen’s European tour, has finally surfaced on DVD after being painstakenly restored frame by frame by the director who [...]

Films for when you feel icky and gross.

August 22, 2010, 11:43 am

≫ Next: Lon Chaney and His Gallery of Grotesques

≪ Previous: Bird on a Wire

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I was reading The Onion and took a peek at my horoscope. It said “You will make medical history this week as the first person to recover from smallpox only to die from a never-before-seen strain of enormouspox.” My actual fate was not so dire, but that printed and malignant prophecy did manage to land [...]

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Lon Chaney and His Gallery of Grotesques

August 23, 2010, 10:06 am

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Each year I look forward to the Silent Summer Film Festival at the Portage Theater, one of Chicago’s few restored movie palaces. For six consecutive Fridays, the Silent Film Society of Chicago (SFSC) presents a variety of well-known and unknown silent movies accompanied with live organ and sound effects by professional “photoplay organists” Dennis Scott [...]

Raoul Walsh’s Group Therapy

August 24, 2010, 11:00 am

≫ Next: Impossibly Funky, Fresh and Dope

≪ Previous: Lon Chaney and His Gallery of Grotesques

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My  hopscotching education in Raoul Walsh skitters on this week, with five gut-punching thrillers. I’m jumping through his career haphazardly, watching whatever I can easily acquire. Last week led me from 1930 to 1955, but today I’m mired in the 1940s, thanks to the Warner Bros.-TCM box set, Errol Flynn Adventures (feel free to ignore [...]

Impossibly Funky, Fresh and Dope

August 26, 2010, 12:30 pm

≫ Next: Spooks on the loose… in Los Angeles!

≪ Previous: Raoul Walsh’s Group Therapy

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I haven’t had the chance to do much reading this year and that’s been really frustrating. Like many people, I often enjoy catching up on my reading during the summer months when the hot weather makes it difficult to do much of anything except lounge around in a comfortable chair or on a sofa and [...]

Spooks on the loose… in Los Angeles!

August 27, 2010, 7:44 am

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Opening on September 3rd and running until September 22nd, 2010, Gallery1988 in Los Angeles (in conjunction with The Autumn Society of Philadelphia) will be home to an exhibit of original artwork inspired by the classic 80s era sci-fi/fantasy/horror comedies GREMLINS (1984), GHOSTBUSTERS (1984) and THE GOONIES (1985).  Now at the quarter century mark, these one-time [...]

Mountain Men

August 28, 2010, 10:18 am

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As one of the movies being presented as part of TCM’s 24-Hour Tribute to the Telluride Film Festival on Monday evening, September 6th at 2 am (ET), THE CHALLENGE (1938) is a bit of an oddity. Rarely seen in the U.S. and not one of the better known films about a famous mountain-climbing expedition, it [...]