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Gasp! Choke! SHOCK CINEMA 44 reviewed!
Just in time for summer vacation, the new issue of Shock Cinema is in the house! The issue’s big, manly interview is with Hollywood veteran Stuart (shirt optional) Whitman, star of such...
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Lucy vs. Lucille Ball
Recorder alert: set your DVRs for June 13th’s middle-of-the-night airing of the underrated screwball gem Next Time I Marry. This fun B-movie is a thinly-disguised knock-off of It Happened One Night,...
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Looking Back at (and in) DETOUR
A recent weeknight found me flipping through my DVD collection looking for a film I could watch in one sitting. No BEN HUR on a Wednesday. No HIS GIRL FRIDAY, for that matter. I’ve discovered I have...
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Still Searching for Old Hollywood, Part 3
Back by popular demand is another installment of “Searching for Old Hollywood” based on my recent trek to Hollywood Forever Cemetery looking for clues to uncover some unique or forgotten insight into...
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No Such Agency: The NSA, Enemy of the State and Edward Snowden
Top: Edward Snowden, bottom, Jason Lee in ENEMY OF THE STATE (1998) “I made the judgment that we couldn’t survive with the popular impression of this agency [the NSA] being formed by the last...
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The Quiet Cinema
This week at the AFI I saw A Man Escaped (aka The Wind Bloweth Where It Listeth), the 1956 masterpiece by Robert Bresson. For a little over an hour and a half, the audience follows Le lieutenant...
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Final Faces
Top: Madeleine (David Lean; 1950) Bottom: Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean; 1962) While watching David Lean’s MADELEINE last week I was struck by the film’s powerful final image of Ann Todd’s face. Her...
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The 40/50 split
When I was in high school, I hung with an older crowd. Starting with my freshman year, I palled around with seniors on the yearbook staff, which I later joined. Throughout my four-year bid, my friends...
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Artists and Models (no, the other one)
There is a fairly well-regarded American comedy called Artists and Models. It has Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine in it, and was directed by Frank Tashlin. This post is not about that...
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Is Genre Served Best by Convention?
When someone praises a movie by commenting that it “rises above its genre’s conventions,” I usually get more than a little annoyed. Personally, I like genre conventions but more than that, the comment...
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Bing Crosby: A Way with Words
Late tomorrow night, the Rat Pack musical Robin and the 7 Hoods will air on TCM at 2:15 am. Set during the Depression, this loose interpretation of the Robin Hood story features Frank Sinatra as Robbo,...
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The Feminine In Your Mind: Lifeforce (1985)
The summer of 1985 was a chilly one for Hollywood executives, with box office grosses declining 160 million dollars from 1984′s take. In his Los Angeles Times moratorium, Jack Mathews blamed the lack...
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Why Does The Cinema Replace Rather Than Expand
When colorization became viable some decades back, one of the biggest arguments against it (other than it looked hideously awful in its early stages) was that it was not the original intention of the...
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A Few Fun Facts About Mamie Van Doren
This evening TCM is airing a batch of films starring the atomic blond bad girl, Mamie Van Doren. Starting at 5PM PST and 8PM EST you can catch Mamie in a stream of black & white B-movies beginning...
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You know where to find me…
Sometimes a friend will post a movie photo on his or her Facebook page or blog and my kneejerk response is, invariably, “I am so there!” Kneejerk or knot, I mean literally that. The magic of art in...
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Why a duck?
Last week we looked at a 1937 Jack Benny picture with no regard for narrative cohesion. To my absolute delight, the comments thread lit up with readers name-checking other anarchic comedies of the...
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On Ginger Rogers and the Choreography of Comedy
Could Ginger Rogers be a greater comedienne than dancer? It seems a vaguely heretical thing to ask. Rogers is, after all, half of the most famous dance team the movies have ever known, and her...
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The Entertainer: Allan Dwan (Part 1)
“Directing movies — I’d do it for free, I like it that well.” -Allan Dwan to Kevin Brownlow, The Parade’s Gone By… The 400 or so films that Allan Dwan directed are playgrounds for their actors,...
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Gotta Sing, Gotta Act!
If you tune into TCM on July 4th, you’ll be in luck. Not only will you get a great selection of patriotic Hollywood fare, but quite a few musicals, too. Frank Sinatra’s in two of them, Take Me Out...
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Francois Truffaut – Friend, Teacher & Film Critic
Throughout the month of July TCM is spotlighting the films of François Truffaut. Every Friday night viewers can tune in at 5PM PST or 8PM EST and expect to see a well-rounded selection of the French...
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