REMEMBERING JUNE FORAY
Little did I dream, when I began watching Rocky and his Friends and The Bullwinkle Show, that the day would dawn when I could call June Foray—the voice of Rocket J.Squirrel and Natasha Fatale—a friend. She was indomitable and…
NITRATE CAN’T WAIT: IS HOPALONG CASSIDY DISINTEGRATING?
[My longtime friend Dick Bann, with whom I wrote a book on Our Gang years ago, had no training as a film archivist, but spent a number of years working with the late David Shepard at Blackhawk Films and…
FILM FESTIVAL DIARY: KARLOVY VARY
It’s been a while since I attended a major film festival outside the U.S., and I didn’t know what to expect at the 52nd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic. This venerable and prestigious event is…
THE FORGOTTEN ARTWORK OF SILENT FILMS
By now most film buffs know how good silent movies looked, in contrast to popular opinion based on the scratchy, washed-out excerpts shown on television for years. But in watching Olive Films’ Blu-ray release of William S. Hart’s Wagon…
THE DEATH OF VHS—AND WHAT WE’VE LOST
Amidst the various “in memoriam” pieces for 2016 one name was missing: not an actor or a filmmaker, but a format familiar to all of us–vhs. Several sources reported that the manufacture of videocassette recorders, or vcrs, was discontinued…
FLASHBACK: MEETING GINGER ROGERS
The prospect of meeting a legendary movie star was daunting to me at the age of 16, but I wasn’t going to let nervousness intrude on such a great opportunity. My benefactor was Raymond Rohauer, whose work in the…
JOHNNY DEPP AND ZOMBIES MAKE A BOY’S DREAM COME TRUE
Less than a month ago Andy Shapiro over at Legendary put Jessie and me in contact with Tamika Lamison, founder and head of the Make a Film Foundation. As soon as I watched a TV news story about the organization,…
