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Favorite Home Video Releases of 2013
Physical media is aging gracefully. If it dies, it will leave a beautiful corpse. Sales continue to crater, but DVDs and Blu-Rays have never looked so ravishing. And while the vast majority of film...
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The Anniversaries Are Coming! The Anniversaries Are Coming!
It’s almost 2014 and you know what that means, don’t you? That’s right, it means we are all going to be hearing about 1939, non-stop. Historically, it will be huge. It was in September of 1939 that...
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Telefilm Time Machine: Home for the Holidays (1972)
Eleanor Parker in 1972 The holidays can be a very difficult time for some. I know from firsthand experience that when you don’t have any family to rely on or any kind of financial security to speak of...
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Complete and utter foolishness
My Mom gave me the gift of THE GREEN SLIME (1968) this Christmas… and I was a child again. You don’t need to have seen the movie to get where I’m coming from, I don’t think. If the charms of this...
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Drunk history
We are here today to praise the drunkards. Specifically, drunk heroes. But let me clarify what I mean by this–because there are plenty of drunks in cinema, and many of them are protagonists or...
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LIGHTERS OF THE LAMP
Pope Francis may have edged out Eric Snowden as “Person of the Year” at TIME magazine, but the contributions by the latter have had a deep and ongoing impact on our national psyche. A lot of...
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A Forgotten Film to Remember: The Secret of Madame Blanche
Though quite popular among film-goers from the silent era through the 1950s, the melodrama has rarely gotten much respect from critics and scholars. A slippery genre to define, it is usually identified...
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Martial Fine Artists: Ninja II: Shadow of a Tear
The best action movie of 2013 went direct to video. Ninja II: Shadow of a Tear comes out today on DVD and Blu-Ray, and was released on VOD earlier in the month. It is the seventh DTV collaboration...
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2014: A New Year of Discovery
Each year I do this brings me closer to unraveling the mystery of cinema. All cinema is a form of communication between the artist and the audience but what’s being said can be elusive or plain,...
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Peter O’Toole: A Hellraiser Remembered
Last year we lost many great actors and directors but few were as widely beloved and revered as Peter O’Toole. The internet was overflowing with obituaries and remembrances of O’Toole during the last...
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This and that
This… … not this. This… … not this. This… … not this. This… … not this. This… … not this. This… … not this. This… … not this. These… … not these. Here… … not there. Yes… … no. Aye… … nay. Him… … not...
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Irony and the Fat Man
Tomorrow night, TCM is letting Roscoe Arbuckle loose to rampage across the prime time schedule in some seminal silent comedies produced by Mack Sennett. This is must-watch stuff, folks, even if you’ve...
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Portrait of the Painter as Anything But
Ah, the arts. From literature and poetry to music and theater, all have been portrayed on film. Artists from sculptors to architects have been given the Hollywood treatment. But when artists...
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Joan Crawford in ‘Flamingo Road’: The Face of Melodrama
A few years ago, I consulted on a film reference book filled with star bios, movie trivia, lists, and fun facts. The group of writers responsible for the content was divided into two camps: experienced...
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Back to the Perfume Counter: Joan Crawford in The Women (1939)
It is Joan Crawford month at Turner Classic Movies, with sixty-two of her features airing on Thursday nights in January. Today I’ll be looking at one of her scene-stealing supporting turns, as the...
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Hollywood, 1929: Let’s Revue, Shall We?
It’s rare that a single event changes the movies forever. So rare that, for all intents and purposes, it’s happened only once, with the advent of sound. The advent of color had almost no immediate...
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Joan Crawford in The Best of Everything (1959)
THE BEST OF EVERYTHING air on TCM Jan. 30th I love a good Hollywood melodrama. Particularly full-color big-budget melodramas that directors such as Douglas Sirk (ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS, WRITTEN ON THE...
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Never show fear: Joan Crawford in TROG
Even if there were a place left in this world where it might still be possible for Joan Crawford to get a fair trial post-MOMMIE DEAREST (1981), there exists no such venue in which to defend her for...
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Our Modern Joan Crawford
Jack Conway’s 1929 romance Our Modern Maidens climaxes with a wedding. Of course it does—it’s a romance, isn’t it? But there’s something decidedly off about this wedding—indeed the entire film seems...
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Joan Crawford goes Berserk!
Hi everybody—Pablo Kjolseth is off at Sundance doing Sundancey things, so I’m filling in for him today to help round off our week-long tribute to Joan Crawford. Yesterday I posted about one of Joan’s...
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