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The Ones That Made It Look Easy by Playing it Small
Tonight on TCM, the 1946 classic The Best Years of Our Lives airs featuring an actor I don’t often write about but one that has long been a favorite, Dana Andrews. He’s a favorite for all the reasons...
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Japanese Beat Cinema Part 3: Bakumatsu Taiyo-Den
Our journey through the world of 1950s-era Japanese Beat Movies continues this week with Yuzo Kawashima’s Bakumatsu Taiyo-den. This was voted the 4th Best Japanese Film Ever Made by a critic’s poll...
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Suggested reading for Tuesday: Dino
I’d like to thank Kimberly Lindbergs and Greg Ferrara for subbing for me while I was at Sundance and dealing with other issues. This Tuesday TCM will screen five films starring Dean Martin: The Stooge...
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Notes on Hitchcock
Next week, I begin a section on Hitchcock in my advanced film history course. Though I have taught Hitchcock many, many times in my career, I am challenging myself to come up with new approaches to the...
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Crime and Punishment: Day of Wrath (1943)
“Is it not a fact that the greatest dramas occur in silence?” -Carl Dreyer Day of Wrath (1943) is set in 1620s Denmark, a period of increasing paranoia surrounding the practice of witchcraft. King...
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Douglas Slocombe: A Tribute
You can enjoy some of Douglas Slocombe’s cinematography tomorrow, February 26, when TCM airs Close Encounters of the Third Kind at 5:30 PM EST/2:30 PM PST. Douglas Slocombe, the brilliant British...
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Sure I Like That Movie But Mainly For the Suburbia
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece here on ensembles and how, often times, I like the ensemble better than the leads which led to a comment by the incomparable Emgee who said, and I quote,...
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Japanese Beat Cinema Part 4: Pale Flower
As the recently paroled gangster Muraki in Masahiro Shinoda’s Pale Flower, Ryo Ikebe is practically the definition of cool. He looks like Elvis playing James Dean, or James Dean playing Elvis. In a...
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When Oscar Couldn’t Have Done Better
Tonight, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, better known as “those guys who hand out Oscars,” celebrates the movies of the previous year for the 88th time and, also for the 88th time,...
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Happy Birthday William Wellman
Director William Wellman was born on this day, February 29, in 1896. That would make today his 120th birthday, or his 30th, depending on your feelings regarding leap year. Nicknamed Wild Bill because...
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Growing Pains: The Boy and the Beast
The animated films of Mamoru Hosoda are all about the practical aspects of the fantastical. Wolf Children (2012) begins with the transcendent love between a city girl and a werewolf, but instead of...
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Warning! TCM’s Condemned Film Festival is Here
Throughout the Month of March TCM will be risking damnation by airing “condemned” films every Thursday night beginning this evening with The Story of Temple Drake (1933) followed by Black Narcissus...
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Watching the Movies in Bits and Pieces
Tonight on TCM, the great 1946 noir, The Postman Always Rings Twice, airs and it’s one of the best movies of the decade. It’s also a movie I have seen a few times, like so many other movies I call...
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Japanese Beat Cinema Epilogue: Carmen Comes Home
I’ve let this whole “Japanese Beat Cinema” kick run on way longer than I originally planned, and with your indulgence I’ll send it off with one last trip to the well: Keisuke Kinoshita’s Carmen Comes...
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The Film of Turin
Today’s scheduled post has been derailed by a recent conversation between Marc Maron and William Friedkin that I can’t get out of my mind. It’s a two-and-a-half-hour long talk that made me want to...
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The Winner Is. . . . The Lady Vanishes
A few weeks ago, I solicited help from the Morlocks’ readers in deciding which early Hitchcock film to show in my advanced film history class. After weighing the suggestions and reading the comments,...
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Blu-ray Blues
Blu-ray is dead. Long live Blu-ray. Last month a new home video format was released to replace it: Ultra HD Blu-ray, which offers quadruple the resolution of regular old BD. Compatible only with 4K...
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This week on TCM Underground: The Decline of Western Civilization Part II:...
Having paid her own way through UCLA’s film program with waitressing gigs and founded her own Los Angeles film production company through a winning combination of guts, initiative, and resolve,...
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