I rewatched The Crowd for the 3rd time, and was again very impressed. There's a lot of great camera work, from the use of expressionist imagery to the almost documentary-like feel of the street scenes. I keep thinking how bold it was to tell the story of a remarkably average man, someone who isn't e...

I wanted to add-- that when Irene Dunne did her blackface "Gallivantin' Around," there was a collective cringe in the audience when I saw the film. Myrna Loy always appologized for playing a blackface spy in one of her silent films, but I don't recall Dunne ever expressing any regrets for...

I just ordered a copy of Meet Me In St. Louis off of Amazon about 10 minutes ago.

She's a gooder.

I've been working on watching the films that are in the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress, so I've seen alot of cartoons lately. God Bless Youtube. Anyway, Porky in Wackyland is excellent, so many ideas in a 7 minute cartoon. I really liked Tex Avery's Magical Maestro , a great idea,...

Well I watched 3 pre-code films today, and surprisingly enough they were all quite good. Barbara Stanwyck's Ladies They Talk About was a fun ladies prison romp, that tacked on a relatively ambiguous ending, in which Stanwyck goes unpunished. It's good stuff, with Stanwyck being her usual awesome sel...

So I adore Claudette Colbert, she's got great comedic timing, and she's really versatile. She's one of the finest actresses ever really. I've read from numerous sources that she refused to be shot from her right side. So every scene she's in she is shot from her left. Because I know about this, I am...

I watched 1930's The Office Wife today, and it's not very good. The title implies salaciousness and there is none. The story is weak and pointless. Really the only redeeming quality was that it was Joan Blondell's first film, and she is great as always. She already shows the life and energy that cha...

Movies: Stage Door and Holiday : Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, and Ginger Rogers, plus a glorious mix of comedy, romance, iconoclasm, and melancholy. Books: The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract and The Catcher in the Rye . The 2 formative books of my teenagehood. Luxury Items: Laptop. Record...

Pro-South carries with it a lot of connotations, many of them racially driven.

Having read Gene Tierney's autobiography she comes off as very smart and quite open about her struggles with mental illness. But she was also brought up pretty high class, and she studied in Europe. I think she had a bit of a snobby quality too. I think she probably had a snobby quality combined wit...

Yeah, those are really cool. I collect old baseball cards off and on, but at some point I wouldn't mind collecting some old 1930's movie cards and magazines, especially because they are much more affordable. And I am even more fascinated by Myrna Loy and Katharine Hepburn, than Joe Jackson and Ty Co...

I like realism, not necessarily in terms of blood and guts, but rather the idea that something could actually happen. The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre works because it's a bunch of hillbillies, not zombies, or the undead, or ghosts. I find Deliverance works in a similar way. It's the fear of the...

Do you realize what that means?

A guy walks into a bar.

What does he say?

Owww!

So I've now seen 7 of David Lean's films and I like them all very much except for Lawrence of Arabia . I've seen Summertime , Great Expectations , The Bridge on the River Kwai , Brief Encounter , Lawrence of Arabia , Dr. Zhivago , and Ryan's Daughter My concern is that Lawrence is supposed to Lean's...