Smart Words About Cinema
[Originally published in Movietone News 51, August 1976] One tends to think of Luis Buñuel’s “early” career in terms of long desert spaces between highly personal landmarks: almost two decades of relative anonymity between the collaboration with Dalí—Un Chien andalou (1929) and L’Age d’ôr (1930)—and the explosive resurfacing occasioned by Los olvidados (1950), and then [...]
By sheer numbers, the 84th Annual Academy Award Nominations seems to belong to Hugo, with 11 nominations. But given those are largely in the technical / craft categories, the success story this year is The Artist, a modern silent movie, shot in black and white, with two French stars practically unknown in the United States. [...]
Marrow, the second feature from Seattle filmmaker Matt Wilkins, screens at Northwest Film Forum for two nights, on Tuesday, January 24 and Wednesday, January 25, with director Wilkins in attendance. I wrote a profile of Wilkins and his film for the film’s local debut at SIFF 2011. I reprint the feature, originally published in Seattle [...]
Have not awakened from deep Streep mode over here. Partly because the Weinstein Company has been working her like a dog to see that The Iron Lady gets a decent lift-off. Thus her Kennedy Center Honors now, a Vogue cover, a Newsweek cover, plus an appearance – and an unsurprising win — at the otherwise [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 51, August 1976] Lamont Johnson’s Lipstick is not as bad as it has been reported to be by many critics and reviewers, nor yet as good as it might have been. The ultimate failure of the film may be attributed to an insurmountable discrepancy of intention among writer, director, and [...]
The Andy Hardy Collection: Volume 1 (Warner Archive) The Andy Hardy films are a snapshot of Hollywood’s idea of small town Americana, circa 1936-1944. Simple, familiar, full of family values and homespun wisdom handed down by the thoughtful, white-haired patriarch (who just happens to be the local judge), these films defined MGM head Louis B. [...]
From her first moments on-screen, Meryl Streep commanded the camera’s — and our — rapt gaze. It wasn’t just her luminous beauty. Even in early supporting roles, Streep’s acting radiated such remarkable passion and intelligence the Golden Girl stole center stage from anointed stars like Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro. Delivering stellar performances that [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 51, August 1976] Take the Money and Run and Bananas, Woody Allen’s first films as a writer-director-actor, were energetic messes redeemed by the novelty of seeing Allen’s comic vision transferred to the screen minus the dilutions of What’s New, Pussycat? and Casino Royale, on which he performed script and acting [...]
At the onset of World War I, young Albert Narracott of Devon, England, watches heartbroken as his horse Joey is commandeered for use by the cavalry in France. As the war rages, Joey will bear both British and German riders before being cast adrift in no-man’s-land. And eventually, Albert, never having forgotten his beloved steed, [...]
The standard wisdom about Orson Welles’s 1946 thriller The Stranger—broadly, that it’s Welles’s weakest film, the runt in his otherwise superlative litter—needs challenging, even if Welles himself seemed mostly disinclined to do so. Only in 1982, three years before his death, did he appear to suggest, to BBC interviewers, that it wasn’t so terrible after [...]
“Lives Worth Living” premieres on the PBS series “Independent Lens” on October 27th at 10:00 p.m. (ET/PT). For more information, visit the film’s PBS website and filmmaker Eric Neudel’s website. To be disabled in America, in 2011, is to occupy the midpoint of a metaphorical highway, some stretches smooth and evenly paved, others rocky and [...]
[Written in 1996 as part of a cine-bio project that never saw the light of day.] Richard Lester aka Dick Lester Birth: January 19, 1932; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Education: University of Pennsylvania (clinical psychology) My whole metabolism is that I’m inclined to do the sum at the end and then realize that I’ve left out one [...]
For a variety of reasons, the next few weeks in the Cornfield will be devoted to “Ten Years Gone”: movies released in 2001. This is my Film.com review of an under-appreciated gem. Gillian Anderson’s performance as Lily Bart in The House of Mirth is weirdly un-modern—the actress seems to have tapped directly into the mindset [...]
[Expanded from a feature originally published in 1997 in Seattle Weekly] “Amateurs borrow, professionals steal,” goes the maxim. Quentin Tarantino steals like a pro. Where directors of the previous generation peppered their films with classic cinematic quotes, Tarantino plunders the films of his formative years for ideas – mostly B-movies and exploitation films about cars [...]
O listen … listen well: Listen to the Legend of Chuck-a-Luck, Chuck-a-Luck, Listen to the song of the gambler’s wheel, A souvenir of a bygone year, Spinning a tale of the old frontier And a man of steel, And the passion that drove him on, and on, and on. It began, they say, one summer’s [...]