EMERGENCY: A MUST-SEE SUMMER SLEEPER
I’ve been hesitant to write anything about Emergency because I wish everyone could see the film as I did, knowing absolutely nothing about it ahead of time. Given that it won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award and was nominated…
THE FASCINATING BACKSTORY OF ‘FIDDLER ON THE ROOF’
Fiddler’s Journey to the Big Screen is no ordinary behind-the-scenes documentary. For one thing, it chronicles the adaptation of a musical play that qualifies as a genuine phenomenon. Based on a story originally told in Yiddish, it has turned out…
ALL HAIL ‘THE DUKE’
If the rampant bloodiness of The Northman and the hyperkineticism of Everything Everywhere All At Once don’t strike your fancy you would do well to check out The Duke, an unmistakably British import starring Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren. Its quiet charm stakes a…
BUSTER KEATON: A FILMMAKER’S LIFE
BUSTER KEATON: A FILMMAKER’S LIFE by James Curtis (Knopf) At more than 600 pages, this is not the kind of book one takes up casually. I cleared time on my calendar to read it cover to cover. By the…
OLD MOVIES MADE NEW ON BLU-RAY AND DVD
REPEAT PERFORMANCE (Flicker Alley) Joan Leslie, Louis Hayward and newcomer Richard Basehart top the cast of this intriguing drama that takes place on New Year’s Eve and enables its leading character to relive a painful and upsetting year. It…
REMEMBERING DOUGLAS TRUMBULL
DOUGLAS TRUMBULL’S GREATEST VISUAL EFFECT Sometime in the late 1980s my wife and I were invited to a warehouse-type building in Marina del Rey for a demonstration of Douglas Trumbull’s Showscan. A new film format from the man who…
WHAT DID THE RKO LOGO HAVE THAT LEO THE LION LACKED?
Enough is enough: I’ve been watching old movies my whole life and never understood why the end card of every RKO Radio Picture included the words “Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.” With pandemic time on my hands I set out…
