Disembodied: Waldo Lydecker, the Voice in the Dark in Laura (1944)

Disembodied: Waldo Lydecker, the Voice in the Dark in Laura (1944)

“McPherson, if you know anything about faces, look at mine. How singularly innocent I look this morning. Have you ever seen such candid eyes?” “Laura considered me the wisest, the wittiest, the most interesting man she’d ever met. I was in complete accord with her on...

TCMFF 2016 Sunday: Church: Sirk, Chaplin, Ford, Minnelli, Final Wrap and Coda

TCMFF 2016 Sunday: Church: Sirk, Chaplin, Ford, Minnelli, Final Wrap and Coda

And so we come to the last day of TCMFF 2016. I was already feeling it on Saturday, and of course Saturday?s events and pace and the least sleep yet went a long way toward creating a detour from my still excited but increasingly weary mind and my mouth, which began to...

TCMFF 2016: Recap of Saturday, Day 3: Vitaphone, Reiner, Gould, Karina

TCMFF 2016: Recap of Saturday, Day 3: Vitaphone, Reiner, Gould, Karina

From my comfortable perch back at my friend?s house in North Hollywood, ?the intensity, mad dashes, glorious experiences, and occasional frustrations of TCMFF 2016 seem rather remote, Gentle Reader, but at this time a little over one?week ago I was watching?Dead Men...

Elizabeth Taylor?s Best Actress Oscars: BUtterfield 8 (1960) and Who?s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

Elizabeth Taylor?s Best Actress Oscars: BUtterfield 8 (1960) and Who?s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

Elizabeth Taylor won two Best Actress Oscars, for?BUtterfield 8?(1960) and?Who?s Afraid of Virginia Woolf??(1966). The first she perhaps rightly dismissed as a pity vote. The second she won fair and square, and I hope it meant something to her. Until fairly recently I...

A Viewer?s Guide: How to Watch The Gang?s All Here (1943)

A Viewer?s Guide: How to Watch The Gang?s All Here (1943)

sten ?your seat belts.?The Gang?s All Here?is too much. It?s the thrill ride of Hollywood musicals. If you?ve not seen it but have seen other Busby Berkeley movies you?re thinking, Yeah, got it. But all the fabulous excesses of Berkeley in black-and-white pale in...