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Joan Blondell: “I Was the Fizz on the Soda”
In the twilight of her career, sassy, brassy Joan Blondell reflected on her star image by noting, “I was the fizz on the soda.” Considering her talent for snappy patter, her ability to get the most out...
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Skyscraper Souls: Don’t Go Breaking My Heart (2011)
The evil geniuses over at Hong Kong’s Milkyway Image productions (above, looking evil) have begun their takeover of the Mainland. Johnnie To (seated) and his long time co-director and screenwriter...
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Revisiting The Sting (1973) and other spoiled or “once is enough” movies
I watched this Academy Award winning Best Picture again for the first time in decades the other day and, while it’s an entertaining film that features the second & last classic pairing of acting...
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In Memoriam: Linda Dubler, 1950-2011 – Media Arts Curator of the High Museum...
Last Thursday the Atlanta film community lost one of their most gifted and committed champions in bringing diverse and multicultural cinema to the city….and I lost a dear friend. I first met...
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SHOCK it to me!
Just in over the transom is the latest issue of Steve Puchalski’s essential, incomparable, irreverent, inflammatory, indomitable Shock Cinema, whose motto is “Serving the Film Fanatic since 1990.” Can...
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Neighbors, a defense
Like Popeye, Neighbors is a film I love but which no one else I know can even stand. I hadn’t seen it in years when it finally resurfaced on some obscure cable outlet recently and I delightedly made my...
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Strange on the Range – THE LAST SUNSET
One of the more ambitious and offbeat Westerns of the early sixties, THE LAST SUNSET (1961) is an odd duck that has its admirers and detractors with several participants of the film – director Robert...
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Thoughts on Marilyn Monroe
Next year marks the 50th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death, but the pop culture machine is already ramping up to review her life and recast her career. Recently, the famous white dress from The...
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The 2011 New York Asian Film Festival and Japan Cuts
If you’re suffering from the summer blockbuster blues, there’s no greater pick-me-up than the New York Asian Film Festival, an invigorating potpourri of the finest in creative Eastern bloodletting. It...
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Life With Father (1947) – underappreciated
Life With Father (1947) is a delightful, charming, cleverly written and, apparently, underrated gem. In a year in which anti-Semitism was apparently the focal point in Hollywood or at least of the...
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Chaplin vs. the Mimics
[Slapsticon, the greatest film event of the year, has been canceled this year. To grieve it, I am devoting the entire month of July to posts about slapstick comedy.] It’s mid-summer 1928. A...
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Salvaging 16mm children’s films from the library.
A library in Colorado Springs recently purged its collection of short 16mm children’s films. Thanks to the alert eye of a librarian on my campus these have been rescued and I plan to screen some of...
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The Movies of Marilyn Monroe
I believe the best way to understand the appeal of Marilyn Monroe is to separate the flesh-and-blood actress from the two-dimensional icon by focusing on her work. In this second of my three-part...
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DVD Roundup: Shout! Factory and Warner Archive
Edmond O’Brien enjoys a post-Independence Day fireworks display in Rio Conchos, the 1964 Western just released by Shout! Factory on DVD. With all my squawking about studios cutting back on library...
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No, No, That’s Not Your Movie, This is Your Movie!
Years ago, Hugh Hefner came across Fay Wray at a party and famously told her, “I loved your movie!” She replied the only way she could, by asking, “Which one?” This story has made the rounds enough...
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Pierre Cardin: A Career in Movies
Pierre Cardin & Jeanne Moreau When people see the name Pierre Cardin they usually associate it with high fashion. The French designer is known worldwide for his cutting edge fashion designs,...
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Death of a packaging junkie
Though I was an infrequent VHS tape buyer until the medium was nearly dead (at which point I went a little crazy buying out the stock of shuttered video stores) and I never got on the laser disc...
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Mack Daddy, Daddy Mack
[Slapsticon, the greatest film event of the year, has been canceled this year. To grieve it, I am devoting the entire month of July to posts about slapstick comedy.] He was the Roger Corman of comedy....
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Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (1973)
WE WANT YOU SALLY….WE WANT YOU….COME TO US! For those who first saw DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK at a young impressionable age when it originally aired on ABC in 1973, those maniacal, whispering...
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Marilyn Monroe: The Making of an Icon
After Marilyn Monroe died during the wee hours of August 5, 2012, perceptions of her life and career began to change, and her blonde bombshell star image evolved into something more complex. Like...
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