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Ricky Jay vs. Melies
2006 was sure a bumper year for movies about nineteenth-century magicians. Of course, if you were the maker of one of those movies, you might feel a bit peeved at having to compete head-to-head...
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Happy 100th, Danny!
I haven’t been around here in a while, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to wish success to TCM’s Danny Kaye 100th Birthday celebration all day this coming Sunday — tomorrow. As I showed in...
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Some of the Many Faces of Danny Kaye
In honor of tomorrow’s TCM Danny Kaye 100th Birthday 24-hour celebration, here are a few of my favorite pictures of him from my collection, in no particular order. It’s great to know that there is...
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Nudie Cohn: “It’s Better to Be Looked Over than Overlooked.”
I love Old Hollywood. In my imagination, I have romanticized the Hollywood of the Golden Age as a glamorous era of larger-than-life, charismatic figures who linger poolside at the best hotels or dance...
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The Young Adventures of John Wayne
Marion Morrison had to work hard to become John Wayne. His earth-straddling lope and taffy-stretched line readings were not invented by John Ford or Howard Hawks, only finely exploited by them. The...
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The Beginning or the End?
No, not the movie with Hume Cronyn, but an actual question about the beginnings and endings of movies. Probably the majority of all movies ever made could be accurately described as having...
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A Brief History of the Telefilm
One of the best gifts I received during the holidays was a set of books that I’ve been eager to get my hands on, Michael Karol’s ABC Movie of the Week Companion and David Deal’s Television Fright Films...
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Riding shotgun with Bobby, or the Thompson Guide to Targets
I pulled my copy of Peter Bogdanovich’s TARGETS (1968) the other day as part of a job I was finishing on an upcoming Boris Karloff box set. I’ve seen the movie countless times since I first clapped...
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Children of Fantasia
On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, I had the privilege and pleasure of attending a rare screening of a more-or-less unique version of Walt Disney’s Fantasia. The venue was the Chicago Symphony...
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When the Ending is the Movie
Earlier this week I wrote a post on the beginnings and endings of movies, which ones have better beginnings, which ones have better endings and which rare few have a great beginning and an ending. I...
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Best of the Fest
Sundance wraps up its 10-day-long festival today. The films that garnered awards were announced last night in an awards ceremony that clocked in at under two hours and during which over 30 prizes were...
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The Legend Was Never Fact
Recently, I showed Edwin S. Porter’s The Great Train Robbery to my film history class. Porter was known to base his flickers and one-reelers on the newspaper headlines of the day. As I explained that...
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An Interview with Director Robert Day
At the age of 90, British director Robert Day has seen it all. Starting as a London clapper boy in the 1940s, he became a highly sought after camera operator in the 50s, before settling into a long and...
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A Command of the Scripted Language
Last Sunday night, my wife and I were listening to the Lux Theatre Radio Production of The Letter, hosted by Cecil B. DeMille, recorded on March 6th, 1944. It starred Bette Davis and Herbert Marshall,...
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Out, out, brief candle: Jon Finch 1942-2012
Jon Finch in Roman Polanski’s MACBETH (1971) “… Out, out, brief candle. Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more …” – Macbeth,...
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Random observations: Pre-Code edition
It doesn’t have to be a manifesto every Friday (he says to himself, justifying the feeling of not wanting to spend a lot of time here today). Sometimes it just comes down to a whole bunch of ideas and...
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The secret genius of Preston Blair
There are certain names that have gone in history as legends of animation: Walt Disney, of course, Max Fleischer, Winsor McKay, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, John Hubley… but amongst their ranks there is an...
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Understanding Visual Storytelling with Steven Fierberg
Over the years, I have listened to many cinematographers speak about film. Whether describing their role in the making of a specific movie or talking about classics from previous eras, I have never...
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Seiter House Rules: Movietown Baby Grows Up
On July 13th, 1934 the madcap RKO comedy We’re Rich Again was released, the sixth collaboration between director William A. Seiter and star Marian Nixon. They married soon after, and five years later...
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The Last Wave: A Shadow of Something Real
The Last Wave is a secretive movie. I don’t mean to say, as the cliche goes, that it keeps its secrets closely guarded. I mean to say that The Last Wave doesn’t want you, the viewer, to know much of...
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