Lonesome (1928): ?A ?Coney Island of the Mind’?
This post was written for the epic Criterion Blogathon sponsored by?Criterion Blues,?Silver Screenings, and?Speakeasy, running from November 16-21 with more than 170 entries (!). Do yourself a favor and check out the roster?it?s amazing, it?s colossal, it?s? really...
Dickie Moore (1925-2015), Lost and Found
Where all parents are strong and wise and capable, and all children are happy and beloved? ?H.I.,?Raising Arizona It?s an intense little face. The Cupid?s Bow mouth and tiny, turned-up nose sit beneath large, dark, deeply?serious eyes. Dickie wasn?t just cute, he was...
I Know Where I’m Going (1945)
Joan (Wendy Hiller) is so bent on getting to Kiloran she doesn't realize she's already there. Torquil MacNeil (Roger Livesey), the laird of Kiloran, is as likely to be called Kiloran as Torquil. I Know Where I?m Going (1945) gets under people's skins. It?s not exactly...
A Dickie Moore Primer (1925-2015)
TCM?s tribute to Dickie Moore starts this morning at 6:15 a.m. Dickie Moore?was one of those very rare people you can watch grow up onscreen, starting when he was 11 months old. That?s when he made his screen debut, playing John Barrymore as a baby in?Beloved...
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)
??Where have you been all my life?? That?s how I feel when I see a movie for the first time and fall totally in love with it.?The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?was a movie I had certainly heard of, but I knew the title from the Hope Lange TV series of the same name in the...
The Lusty Men (1952): Robert Mitchum is the Sweetheart of the Rodeo
Summer Under the Stars presents Nicholas Ray’s The Lusty Men, part of TCM’s 24-hour tribute to Robert Mitchum “There never was a bull that couldn’t be rode, there never was a cowboy who couldn’t be throwed. You eat a little dirt if you have to. —Jeff McCloud Hayward...
Newsreels of the Early 1930s: Two Huge Stories About the Two-Way Mirror Between Fact and Fiction
Real life and entertainment, politics and policy. The Bonus Army?Herbert Hoover, FDR, and William Randolph Hearst,?Gabriel Over the White House;?Busby Berkeley and ?Remember My Forgotten Man? in?Gold Diggers of 1933 The movie industry?s successful smear campaign...
The More the Merrier (1943): Kissin’ on the Stoop
I Like a Man That Takes His Time ”You look like a high-type, clean-cut, nice young fellow.” What’s really hard with a movie this delightful is to write just about one scene, even a scene this great. A brief digression: I’m posting this an hour before leaving for...
Joyeux Anniversaire! Godard?s Alphaville at 50
Godard and Karina What happens in Alphaville, stays in Alphaville. Fifty years ago, during the coldest January the city had seen in years, Jean-Luc Godard and his crew took to the streets of Paris to film?Alphaville, une ?trange aventure de Lemmy Caution.?Godard was...
The Fabulous Films of the 30s: The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Eighty years after its original release, James Whale?s?The Bride of Frankenstein?just keeps getting better That wasn?t the end at all?. Would you like to hear what happened after that? I feel like telling it?. It?s a night for mystery and horror. The very air is...