Fin de Cinema (Free subscription) | 11/15/2009
The St. Louis International Film Festival has kept me busy, so I'm just now getting around to posting the February Criterion additions, which were announced on Friday. Through IFC, Steve McQueen's Hunger will make its way to DVD and Blu-ray; Max Ophüls' Lola Montès will be upgraded from the old (lousy) Fox Lorber disc on DVD and Blu-ray; Janus Films' first-run release of Götz Spielmann's...
The One-Line Review Presents (Free subscription) | 11/14/2009
L'Atalante (1934) .. Jean Vigo The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) .. Victor Erice Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) .. Robert Bresson Tokyo Story (1953) .. Yasujiro Ozu Man with a Movie Camera (1929) .. Dziga Vertov La Règle du Jeu (1939) .. Jean Renoir Playtime (1967) .. Jacques Tati L'Avventura (1960) .. Michelangelo Antonioni Sunrise (1927) .. F.W. Murnau The Conformist (1970) .. Bernardo Bertolucci...
Divers and Sundry (Free subscription) | 11/14/2009
The Awful Truth is a 1937 screwball comedy starring Cary Grant , Irene Dunne and Ralph Bellamy . Leo McCarey is the director/producer. The dog in this film is the same one that plays "Asta" in the Thin Man movies. It won an award and received some positive recognition. This is another of my presents to The Husband to keep him supplied with happy movies. It's online at youtube in 11 parts....
Something Old, Nothing New (Free subscription) | 11/14/2009
Criterion's February announcements include, at long last, a DVD of Leo McCarey's masterpiece Make Way For Tomorrow , as well as a DVD and Blu-Ray of Max Ophuls' Lola Montes. The McCarey disc doesn't have as many special features as it deserves, though in this case I'm OK with Peter Bogdanovich being interviewed, since he was one of the few people who ever interviewed McCarey. And any McCarey-centric...
Self-Styled Siren (Free subscription) | 11/03/2009
Today the Siren fulfilled the dearest dream of many a classic-film buff: Thanks to Jack Warner, New York Post film critic Lou Lumenick , and the wonders of email, she helped program a film series at Turner Classic Movies. Here's the TCM press release. This January (the Siren's birthday month, and what a present it will be), TCM is screening a month-long film series, Shadows of Russia . The selections...
Marc Valdez Weblog (Free subscription) | 10/20/2009
I finished reading this book, lent to me by Jetta. It's amazing, considering how pinched the circumstances most people faced during the Depression, just how expansive and interesting a life that Briton Archibald Leach (aka Cary Grant) was able to fashion for himself, based on his grace (he started life in the circus as a stiltwalker), his physical conditioning, his fine acting talent, and his extraordinary...
Some Came Running (Free subscription) | 09/06/2009
Charley Chase oblivious in Hello, Baby!, Leo McCarey, 1925. I wish I had more time to watch Charley Chase shorts. Maybe it's just a matter of discipline and time management. Either way. I wish.
The Computers Blog (Free subscription) | 08/30/2009
By Brandon Hurley For a long time we have used the video store as one of our main ways to access movies. You can now save a trip to the video store and download movies right off the internet. Let's look at what you might find to watch using a movie download site. Di Donna: Agonizing domestic complications with a spouse of sixteen years old Giorgi, Manfredi gets to be infatuated with a nude rear view...
Cinematical (Free subscription) | 08/10/2009
Over the course of earning a degree in Cinema Studies, I'll be honest with you; I hardly ever got to watch the kind of movies that I liked. Call me lowbrow if you must, but remember, I'm talking about my university years, and getting up at eight AM to watch Berlin: Symphony of a Great City wasn't the best way to nurse a hangover. Don't get me wrong, I learned plenty and I was happy for the chance...
FeckenOdeon Films (Free subscription) | 08/10/2009
1933 - Dir.: Leo McCarey Shown at The FeckenOdeon on September 29th, 2001 - our opening film. "Duck Soup" is a fast moving anarchic satire. It lampoons the posturing of blundering dictators, fascism and authoritarian government. It proved a hot political potato for Paramount in the nervous period before WW2 - Mussolini banned it outright in Italy. The plot sees Groucho as Rufus T. Firefly...
Mae West (Free subscription) | 08/04/2009
The censors made the summer of 1934 unforgettably hot and uncomfortable for MAE WEST . Famously funny in her blockbuster Pre-Code motion picture comedies, Mae found her one-liners burnt to a crisp in a Will Hayes moment. The frisky screenplay that was conceived as " It Ain't No Sin " was considerably more scrubbed when it was delivered by August 1934 as a more demure " Belle of the...
Vinyl Is Heavy (Free subscription) | 07/27/2009
by Ryland Walker Knight A Matter of Life and Death [Powell & Pressburger, 1946] Gorgeous fantasy in delicious technicolor, weird-to-great propaganda. Nivens' charm is unending and the Cardiff-lensed images pool light in otherworldly ways, as you'd expect. The loveliest P&P theme is the beauty of the imagination, though it can spell peril, too, with actual consequence. The International [Tom...
DaveKehr.com (Free subscription) | 07/26/2009
Curated by David Kalat (of last year’s impressive Harry Langdon collection), “Becoming Charley Chase” draws primarily on the community of private collectors for an illuminating array of rare one and two reel comedies starring or directed by Charley Chase. Chase remains an underrated talent — a key figure in the transition from Sennett grotesque [...]
Premium Hollywood (Free subscription) | 07/16/2009
This two-disc set is basically the agony and the ecstasy from the collected works of film critic/scholar turned boy wonder writer-director-actor Peter Bogdanovich. Placed in reverse chronological and quality order, Disc One is 1975’s agonizing “Nickelodeon,” one of a series of box office and/or critical failures that ended the young director’s early career hot streak. [...]
The One-Line Review Presents (Free subscription) | 07/09/2009
Alfred Hitchcock Stanley Kubrick Francis Ford Coppola Orson Welles Akira Kurosawa Billy Wilder Martin Scorcese John Ford Steven Spielberg Ingmar Bergman Jean Renoir Federico Fellini Jean-Luc Godard Woody Allen Howard Hawks Andrei Tarkovsky Yasujiro Ozu F.W. Murnau David Lynch Robert Altman Luis Buñuel Roman Polanski David Lean Carl Theodor Dreyer Charles Chaplin Fritz Lang Robert Bresson Michael...
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