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Spy Games: Stanley Donen’s ARABESQUE (1966)
Today is Sophia Loren’s 77th birthday and I decided to celebrate by focusing this month’s installment of Spy Games on one my favorite Loren films, Stanley Donen’s ARABESQUE. But before you start...
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If I owned a Halloween costume shop!
We had just celebrated Labor Day in my household when the Halloween costume catalogs began flooding in by mail. My children were delighted, of course, and due to the high volume of offerings from Party...
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Modern Love
I’ve been postponing this for years, waiting for what I wrongly assumed was the imminent DVD restoration of an important and greatly enjoyable comedy from the transitional talkie era. But I’m only...
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Programming Blunders
Last night I had the sudden realization that a pending and key event on my fall film program is going to bomb. I’m flying out a filmmaker for both a Q&A and special show after the screening, and...
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A Walk Through Time: Hollywood 1948
Last year marked the 100th anniversary of the movie fan magazine, a milestone that came and went with little fanfare. The lack of attention is not surprising as the movie magazine really belongs to...
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The 50th New York Film Festival, Part 1
The 50th New York Film Festival, which runs from September 28th – October 10th, marks the end of an era. Richard Peña, the Program Director of the Film Society at Lincoln Center, as well as the...
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The Feel of Horror, Not the Plot
And so we arrive at another celebration of horror as we approach October. It’s the only month that gets a genre all to itself as Sci-Fi September and Musical May have never really caught on despite my...
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Musique Fantastique: An Interview with Author Randall D. Larson
“Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make.” – Bela Lugosi, DRACULA (1931) A soundtrack can often make or break a movie for me. While some might find it easy to overlook a dissonant...
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Meet you at the cemetery gates!
I keep on my desk a small phial (yes, a phial!) of cemetery earth. I do this for two reasons: 1) it reminds me of my roots as a New England swamp Yankee and the happy times I spent kicking around the...
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Movies About the Movies
The highly anticipated Hitchcock opens the AFI Film Festival on November 1. Based on the book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, the drama interprets the behind-the-scenes production of one of...
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The 50th New York Film Festival, Part 2
The 50th edition of the New York Film Festival opened this past Friday night with a Gala 3D screening of Ang Lee’s The Life of Pi. While that digital projection was warmly received, later that weekend...
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That Sly Come Hither Stare
Sometimes when movies from other countries get released in America, funny things happen. Usually it has to do with the title and sometimes with certain elements of plot. One of my favorite horror...
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Tom Chantrell – Illustrator of Nightmares
Throughout Hammer studio’s long reign as Britain’s most infamous purveyor of horror films, Tom Chantrell became their unrecognized ambassador of goodwill. Chantrell was a talented artist who created...
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Heads up!
Because I’m a big weirdo, I get a particular thrill when a horror film (or any film really) pulls a prop head out of its kitbag. There’s just something about a fake severed head that says the magic of...
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The worst people in the world
We have gathered here today to discuss a landmark of American screen comedy. It is a film about a reporter, and he is a reprehensible example of the most caricatured excesses of his profession. He is...
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The Great Silence
It’s not often that I wire over a thousand dollars to European banks for the privilege of screening an obscure western. And, yes, more than one bank was involved because the exhibition rights were held...
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The Secret Life of a Character Actor
The careers of character actors seem to be a study in contradictions: They are unsung in their roles yet highly respected in the industry; they are unknown by name but recognizable by face. Though...
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The 50th New York Film Festival, Part 3
The New York Film Festival is in its final week, concluding on Sunday night with a screening of Robert Zemeckis’ return to live-action filmmaking, Flight. Most of the action this past weekend, though,...
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Showdown – Horror Style
Almost every movie ever made that involves any kind of conflict has a showdown. It may not be the grand finale and it may not last more than a few seconds, but showdowns are a part of dramatic...
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Spy Games – International espionage in… Nashville?!
One of the strangest spy spoofs to emerge from the sixties has got to be HILLBILLYS IN A HAUNTED HOUSE. This oddball musical comedy arrived in drive-ins in 1967 accompanied by the tagline, “If you’re a...
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