I think there's something to be said for that. Fritz Lang basically lived on amphetimines, martinis, and Viennese deserts and lived to 86. Hunter S. Thompson was an astonishingly prodigious drug-user and he was productive and healthy up until the end of his life (he commited suicide at 68). For all ...

Wallace Reid was prescribed morphine after an accident during filming, and that lead to his downfall and eventual death. I Think Mabel Normand may have also had a morphine addiction. Not quite the same, but my understanding of Olive Thomas' death was that she accidentally ingest her husband Jack Pic...

Ok so I watched Story of Mankind last night, and yes it is actually that bad. It felt like it went on a long time, seemed really cheaply made...complete with lots of stock footage, and almost every seemed to be sleepwalking through there parts. Agnes Moorehead showed some energy but that's about it....

Just looking at the cast of Story of Mankind it sounds incredible...Dennis Hopper as Napoleon (!!!).

They really should have put Wonder Bar out with one of the Berkeley sets...it would have balanced out the crumminess of the 2nd volume.

I think The Shining comparisons come through the lineage of films like Night of the Hunter , where adults essentially terrorize children to the point of virtual despair. Sparrows is much tamer than either film...even though the systemic abuses strike me as far more appalling than a money-grubbing cr...

Sparrows (1926) - Continuing my Mary Pickford expedition, this one was quite good, though it looses a lot of steam in the conclusion. I'd read reviews comparing it to The Shining for its assault on children, and while it almost reaches those heights of terror, the convoluted kidnapping plot and the...

Ooh, love the Hepburn pic...and glad to see my man George Cukor in the mix too.

I really like Love Me Tonight , I think it might be Myrna's funniest film. She steals every scene she's in, which is kind of the antithesis of her style as she was usually at her best in complementing her co-stars. Myrna and Cary Grant get close in Wings in the the Dark (1935) http://img.photobucket...

Mitchell is one of those actors that if I see his name in the opening credits of an unfamiliar movie, I'm comforted to know that if nothing else, at least he'll be worth watching. He's up there with people like Franklin Pangborn, Edward Everett Horton, John Qualen, Walter Brennan, and Guy Kibbee. Ho...

I think the rapport she has with Fredric March in The Best Years of Our Lives is big part of why I love that film so much. I think it's kind of a shame that no one ever tapped into her exotic beauty in a meaningful way. The Mask of Fu-Manchu is a lot of fun but it's pretty trashy, ditto Thirteen Wom...

So I've decided in my finite wisdom (and with some inspiration from Lawrence J. Quirk's The Films of Myrna Loy) that his site needs a dedicated Myrna Loy thread. So here goes: Those eyes: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v62/Justinthyme/Annex-LoyMyrna_11-1.jpg The menacing Fah Lo See in The Mask of...

Jeffrey,

I received the DVDs about 10 days ago. I haven't watched anything yet, primarily because I'm working through some films on my hard drive.

I have the wonderful 2-DVD set of The Life Story of David Lloyd George from the Welsh film archive, and in the Kevin Brownlow interview on the disc he talks about how attempts to show the film on British television were rebuffed because the film wasn't commercial enough. I mean here you have a film ...

CCF - Scarface is pretty grand stuff, might be my favorite pre-code gangster film, though Beast of the City is right there too. Muni's performance is pretty remarkable given the fact that he was an unknown, and that he was pretty much the antithesis of Tony Carmonte in real-life. Love the chemistry ...

Yeah that's a really weird list. Bringing Up Baby is much more kid-friendly than To Have and Have Not , if you want a Hawks film in there. Though I would love to see a generation of kids growing with a love for Walter Brennan and Hoagie Carmichael. M. Hulot's Holiday could definitely have some appea...