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65 Years of the Cannes Film Festival: An Early Photographic History Part II.
Last week I shared photos from the first 15 years of the Cannes Film Festival. While the 65th Cannes Film Festival is still unfolding on the French Riviera I thought I’d continue celebrating by sharing...
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Isn’t it SHOCKing?
If you are hooked up to the Internet you will, through no fault of your own and in inverse proportion to your native apathy or antipathy towards such things, have to sift through a gauntlet of...
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Four Lions, an appreciation
Several times over the last year I have sat down to write something about Four Lions, one of my favorite films of the past couple of years, but each time I abort the mission. As much as I love the...
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The Man With the Codfish Eyes
Donald Pleasence is DR. CRIPPEN. British actor Donald Pleasence has played his fair share of nutters and villains through the years from infamous grave robber William Hare in The Flesh and the...
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Searching for Old Hollywood, Part 2
The Hollywood Museum is located on Highland Avenue near Hollywood Boulevard. The innocuously named museum was formerly the Hollywood History Museum, which likely sounded too dry or dull for tourists....
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Edwardian Comedy
John Ritter’s spastic freak-out in a parking garage in Skin Deep is an archetypal Blake Edwards image. What characters repress or ignore will always be expressed through their bodies, with or without...
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When I Was Younger, So Much Younger Than Today
A long time ago in lifetime far, far away, I went to see a movie with a couple of friends from school. Revealing it will most decidedly date me, even if I stress it was a re-release (which it was),...
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Spy Games: Dirk Bogarde – The Reluctant International Man of Mystery
British actor Dirk Bogarde never played James Bond but he did appear in a handful of interesting spy films made during the ‘60s and ‘70s. He may not have resembled the tough, no-nonsense brute that...
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Live! In person! Me!
On Sunday, June 3rd, I’ll be appearing IN PERSON! at the New Beverly Cinema in West Hollywood to help present a double bill of Joseph Losey’s THE DAMNED (US: THESE ARE THE DAMNED, 1961) and Joe...
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Tales from the trenches: Me vs. the Asphyx
I’m holding in my hands an absolutely marvelous Blu-Ray edition of the terrific British sci-fi chiller The Asphyx, and I can say unequivocally that you need to own this. Among other things it...
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FAN EDITS
I’m a late bloomer when it comes to the many films out there that have been edited by fans. Twelve years ago professional editor Mike J. Nichols, originally billed as “the Phantom Editor,” decided to...
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James Mason the Dark, Young God
James Mason is most often remembered for his voice—described variously as distinctive, melodious, mellifluous, even honeyed. It is an attribute that served him well in his trademark roles as ill-fated...
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The Top Ten Films of All Time (Sort Of)
Later this summer Sight & Sound magazine will unveil the results of their once-a-decade poll of the greatest films of all time. In 2002 they queried 145 critics, writers and academics, who placed...
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The Other Great Performance in the Movie
Almost twenty years ago, my mom, dad and me went to see Philadelphia in the theatre. It had already won Best Actor for Tom Hanks when we caught up with it and, as a big fan of Jonathan Demme, I was...
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Sherlock Holmes On Screen
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s crime solving super sleuth has been the subject of numerous films and television shows over the years. How numerous? According to author Alan Barnes, Sherlock Holmes has...
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What might have been
To know the history of movie-making is not merely to know about the movies that got made but also the ones that never did. Or were planned one way and came out another, with this actor instead of that,...
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Tales from the trenches: Pahlen Season
Having retired from the DVD business, I am realizing now that I’m sitting on 15 years’ worth of anecdotes from behind the scenes that I never felt like sharing publicly at the time, because I worried...
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In Their Own Words: Actors on Film Flops, Disappointments and Missteps
Marlon Brando on A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG, Beverly Garland on SWAMP WOMEN and STARK FEAR, Tony Curtis on SON OF ALI BABA, Patricia Neal on THE FOUNTAINHEAD, Richard Widmark on SLATTERY’S HURRICANE,...
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Come Back to the Screen, Harry Dean, Harry Dean
Though I am generally underwhelmed by comic-book blockbusters, Joss Whedon’s The Avengers rises above the other superhero films by style-less, no-name directors who tend to be mere pawns for studio...
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Alien Dimensions: Prometheus in 3D
It has been 30 years since Ridley Scott directed Blade Runner, and he hasn’t lensed an indelible image since. That is, until Prometheus, the Alien prequel which resurrects H.R. Giger’s oozingly organic...
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