Clik here to view.
We All Go a Little Mad Some Times. . .
TCM in conjunction with Fathom Entertainment brings Psycho to the big screen on September 20 and September 23 at participating theaters. Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece, which shows at 2:00pm and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Passing Fashion: Kay Francis at Warner Brothers
In 1935 Kay Francis was one of the highest paid women in Hollywood, a glamorous star who set fashion trends based on the gowns Orry-Kelly designed for her. In 1939 Warner Brothers terminated her...
View ArticleClik here to view.
This week on TCM Underground: The Mack (1973) and Three the Hard Way (1974)
This week on TCM Underground, it’s a double dose of vintage 70s crime films with largely African-American casts. We are quick to call these movies “Blaxploitation” nowadays, and that particular...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Every Dog Must Have His Day
“What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight–it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” — Dwight D. Eisenhower One of the best new films I’ve seen in recent months is WHITE GOD...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Comedy Teams That Weren’t, Yet Were
Tonight on TCM, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello team up, as they’re wont to do, for a few Abbott and Costello classics, Hold That Ghost, Buck Privates, and In the Navy. Abbott and Costello were one of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Projector Love
Above is a picture of one of my most treasured possessions. Like most items of great value, it isn’t something I bought. My mother bought this Bell and Howell Regular 8mm home movie projector with her...
View ArticleClik here to view.
PICKPOCKET
(Editor’s Note: Pablo Kjolseth unexpectedly found himself on the road assisting with Cory McAbee’s latest film project, so he handed over the reigns for today’s post to Michael J. Casey, film critic...
View ArticleClik here to view.
James Dean on the Small Screen
Long ago, in a former life, I edited a coffee-table book on James Dean called James Dean: Tribute to a Rebel. My favorite part of Dean’s life story was the time he spent in New York during the early...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Out For the Count: Fat City (1972)
Fat City (1972) is a major bummer in a minor key, detailing the apathetic lives of a couple of down-on-their-luck boxers in Stockton, California. Director John Huston had been trained as a boxer when...
View ArticleClik here to view.
This week on TCM Underground: Hausu (1977) and The House of Seven Corpses (1974)
This weekend on TCM Underground we’re going house to house! The phrase “shit happens” was never more on-the-nose, cinematically, than in regard to Nobuhiko Obayashi’s HAUSU (1977), or HOUSE, as we...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Power of the Pantsuit
TCM’s Star of the Month, Susan Hayward, in a publicity still for VALLEY OF THE DOLLS (1967) airing tonight on TCM at 11:45 EST/8:45 PST “What we have here is a dirty soap opera. It is dirty because it...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Anthologize Me
Tonight on TCM, anthologies rule the night. Studio One, Kraft Theater, Philco-Goodyear Playhouse, they’re all here, showing their brand of short, stand-alone story telling, the kind television did so...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Preston Sturges Origin Story
Preston Sturges was a born storyteller, he just didn’t know it. For a very long time. He was also born to make screwball comedies—for a while, he actually lived a screwball plot. He started dating...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Who Played That Part the Best?
Today on TCM, Anna and the King of Siam plays, the 1946 classic starring Rex Harrison as the King of Siam and Irene Dunne as Anna. As most people on the planet earth know, the movie was remade as a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Of Flappers, Hoppers, and Shifters
Tonight on TCM, bubbly Colleen Moore stars as flapper Pert Kelly in Why Be Good?, a 1929 romantic melodrama that turned out to be the last gasp of the flapper archetype. When the stock market crashed...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Thrill Kill: 10 to Midnight (1983)
Charles Bronson’s association with the exploitation mavens at Cannon Films started with Death Wish II (1982), and continued through six years and seven more movies of profitable urban bloodshed. The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
This week on TCM Underground: Rattlers (1976) and The Swarm (1978)
This week on TCM Underground, two “animal revenge” shockers from the latter half of the 1970s. Before I begin, a confession: when I was a pre-teen I killed a snake in the side yard of my childhood...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Nameless Fear: The Lost Moment (1947)
“I felt the past closing all around me like a fog, filling me with a nameless fear.” - Lewis Venable (Robert Cummings) After enjoying many of the Susan Hayward films that aired on TCM last month, I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why Do We Complain About Horror?
Have you ever heard anyone complain that “family drama” has been done to death? Whether it’s The Magnificent Ambersons, Ordinary People, or In the Bedroom, family drama has been around for a long time...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Dance, Girl, Dance
It is one of Hollywood’s most revered myths—the talented yet undiscovered starlet from some flyover backwater, desperate to make it big in the city. Forget The Voice, this stuff goes all the way back...
View Article