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Favorite Film Related Books of 2011 (Part II.)
This is the second half of a two part list I’ve compiled featuring my favorite film related books of the year. As I mentioned in my previous post, a surprising number of good books were published in...
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The All Golden: A Conversation with Van Dyke Parks
Our friend Paul Gaita fills in for me today with something special: an exclusive conversation with composer (and film composer) Van Dyke Parks. For nearly five decades, producer, composer and arranger...
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Hallmark Original Movies
This week I’m asking my son Max to join me in talking about a peculiar genre of movies I was unfamiliar with until he became obsessed with them last year. I wanted him to have the chance to share his...
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Films about Faith – a sequel
It’s been more than four and a half years since my first Morlocks blog on this topic, which is so long ago that Google no longer caches the page. While I’ve added a little bit to the original essay on...
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The Ten Best Films You’ve Likely Never Heard of for 2011
When I started my version of an annual top-ten movie list a few years ago, I decided to focus on little-known indies, documentaries, and commercial features that have been overlooked, unfairly judged,...
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The Top Twelve Genre Films of 2011
As the carcasses of prestige pics get picked over by awards committees and prognosticators, I like to distract myself from this pointless posturing by watching movies featuring actual corpses. After...
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The Fly in the Ointment: The Happer Effect
Taking in a great movie can be a thoroughly rewarding experience. A great film can enrich the mind and bolster the spirit in ways that few other things can, even if they’re not perfect. Of course,...
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Hammer’s Enduring Legacy: An Interview with Marcus Hearn
Last week I included Marcus Hearn’s latest book, The Hammer Vault: Treasures From the Archive of Hammer Films, in my two part list of Favorite Film Related Books of 2011. This week I got the...
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“We’ll tell scary ghost stories and … Oh, let’s just tell scary ghost stories!”
Some of us like to cut our Christmas with a little drop of poison – don’t judge. Or go right ahead and judge — we don’t care! The British have long had a tradition of ghost stories for Christmas and I...
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Rare Exports
“I didn’t know you could mix Santa Claus and horror movies,” my son Max told me this morning (y’all met him last week when he guest blogged on my behalf). He was referring specifically to his and my...
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The Perfect Mix of Schmaltz, Schmerz and Schmutz
That was how Preston Sturges described his screenplay for REMEMBER THE NIGHT (1940), directed by Mitchell Leisen. Overlooked and underrated for years, this small scale but intimate romantic drama has...
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Film Titles: The Game Is in the Name
I have a difficult time remembering film titles that are clichés. It is one thing if a title encapsulates the theme or point of the film, such as Field of Dreams or Unforgiven, or if it is a pun or...
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Learning Lattuada: The Overcoat (1952) and Come Have Coffee With Us (1970)
On December 6th, RaroVideo released two films from director Alberto Lattuada on DVD. Relatively unknown in the U.S., he was an eclectic talent who came up under the sway of neorealism, and who later...
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Everything is Awful, Always: Science Fiction and the Evils of Technology
Most of us have phones. They’re convenient. They’ve been convenient for well over a hundred years. We use them to keep in touch with, and gather important information from, people who are otherwise...
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40 Years of Masterpiece on PBS: A Look Back & Ahead
2011 marked the 40th anniversary of Masterpiece on PBS and I couldn’t let the year pass without making note of the show’s accomplishments and sharing some highlights from their current schedule. After...
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A Beginner’s Guide to the End of Everything
When younger, I always had the rum luck to come in at the end of something good. When I got to Southern Connecticut State College (now University) as a freshman in 1980, the smart money in the Theatre...
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The most important day of the year (IMHO)
Yes that’s me in the picture above–it was taken back in 2004, back when I was a bottle blonde. I was standing in front of the Grand Café at 14 Boulevard des Capucines in Paris, posing awkwardly as my...
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Properly equipped for a new era.
After the movie, the lights come on. I’m sitting in a very comfortable chair stuffed with memory foam. On the walls are murals by Thomas Hart Benton (1889 – 1975). During the film you can’t see the...
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“Never Trust a Ventriloquist or a Barber”
While watching The Twilight Zone marathon on the SyFy Channel over the holiday weekend, I got caught up in an episode titled “Caesar and Me,” starring Jackie Cooper as a ventriloquist who is at the...
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First Look: An Adventurous New Series at the Museum of the Moving Image
Since I’m not stinking rich just yet, my plan to go on a heavily medicated tour of international film festivals has been put on indefinite hold. Luckily, the Museum of the Moving Image has purloined 13...
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