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Pirates 101: Intro to Hollywood Buccaneers, Privateers, and Swashbucklers
Avast, ye buckos and scallywags! Prepare to pillage and plunder with pirates and privateers as TCM’s Friday Night Spotlight offers 21 pirate pictures during the month of June. One summer long ago, I...
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Cahn Artist: Edward L. Cahn’s Redhead (1941) and When the Clock Strikes (1961)
Whenever I have a spare sixty-five minutes, I try and watch a movie by Edward L. Cahn. While he started out making well-regarded Westerns and crime films for Universal Pictures in the early 1930s,...
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The Scenes You Take With You, Part 1
A while back, I did a post here on the money shot, the big set piece that gets much of the film’s budget and most of its attention. Think Ben Hur‘s chariot race, the parting of the Red Sea in The Ten...
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Hammer Noir: Terence Fisher’s STOLEN FACE (1952)
Classic movie enthusiasts usually associate Britain’s Hammer Films with horror, fantasy and science fiction but the ‘studio that dripped blood’ also released a significant number of crime thrillers....
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The Bill: Warner Archives’ Bill Elliott Mysteries reviewed!
Up until a week ago I had no idea that Monogram cowboy actor “Wild Bill” Elliott (1904-1965) had capped his estimable career (some 70 pictures in 15 or 16 years) with a series of signature detective...
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Marilyn Monroe 2.0
Don Murray got an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his part in Bus Stop (airing on TCM in just a couple of days). Were they trying to make Marilyn Monroe go insane? Prone to...
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What’s your favorite color?
Be careful who you marry. Screening this week as part of the TCM Imports lineup is Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski’s (1941 – 1996) Three Colors trilogy. As a film exhibitor I have very fond...
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Pirates 101: Of Wenches and Ladies, Corsets and Balloon Pants
I love pirates who swashbuckle their way through high adventure on the high seas, but I am not always thrilled with the women who try to tame them. For this second installment in my series in support...
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Oedipus West: The Man From Laramie (1955)
The five Westerns that Jimmy Stewart made for director Anthony Mann proceed with the inexorable grim fates of Greek tragedy. The Man From Laramie (1955), their final collaboration, circles around the...
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When the Love Affair Ends
I had a healthy conversation the other day on Twitter (yes, that is possible, it just takes a lot of back and forth) about Brian De Palma. I made an offhanded joke implying, rather unfairly, that De...
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Summer Reading Suggestions
Like many people, I tend to do a lot of reading when the weather warms up and with summer officially about to start on June 21st I thought it would be a good time to share some of the books I’ve been...
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Monster! (or Come into to my arms, bonnie ‘zine)
Video Watchdog, for whom I first wrote in 1997 and for whom I have been writing regularly since 1999, has entered its 25th year of publication. A quarter of a century! Editors/publishers Tim and Donna...
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A cheap holiday in other people’s misery
Key Largo (tonight on TCM) is one of those venerable mainstays of TCM and likely something everyone here has already nearly memorized. I remember once I made a point of watching it in Key Largo, while...
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Is Restraint About to Make a Comeback?
As I look at the movies on TCM’s schedule today, I see both the original Godzilla and Mighty Joe Young, two films employed special effects that may look unconvincing to the modern eye and, yet, seem...
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Pirates 101: From Swan to Sparrow, From Flynn to Depp
Pirates of the Caribbean did not resuscitate the pirate picture, but it did prove that the swashbuckler was still a fun genre capable of making money. Previous attempts to update the swashbuckler had...
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On The Road: Dust Be My Destiny (1939)
Though it was made in 1939, Dust Be My Destiny has the feel of a Warner Brothers production at the turn of the decade, with its story of a railroad tramp framed for murder. The recession of 1937-’38...
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So How Do You Follow The Blue Angel?
The other day, my Netflix account provided me with a strange couple of recommendations based on something I had recently watched. This is something to which every user of Netflix has grown accustomed,...
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“I wonder if my brother remembers his brother?” – Remembering Eli Wallach...
“I wonder if my brother remembers his brother?” - Tuco (Eli Wallach) in THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (1966) We lost Eli Wallach on June 26th at the ripe old age of 98. The talented actor was beloved...
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If I may…
… I’d like to play the Get Out of Blogging Free card today. There are no hard and fast rules about these things but I intend this to be single use, for my benefit, though I encourage my fellow...
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Caligari Glen Ross (Expressionism is for Closers)
Now that the announcement has been made official I can go ahead and ‘fess up: I recently recorded an audio commentary for the newly restored Cabinet of Dr. Caligari for the UK Blu-Ray release by...
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