I love a good horror anthology so you can imagine how thrilled I was when I recently sat down to watch THREE CASES OF MURDER (1955) for the first time. This unusual British film seems to have gone relatively unnoticed by numerous horror film historians and if it does warrant a mention it’s usually dismissed without much afterthought. But with a cast that includes Orson Welles and a segment directed by one of Britain’s first female directors (Wendy Toye), THREE CASES OF MURDER stands out as a wonderful example of early British horror cinema that rivals the highly acclaimed anthology DEAD OF NIGHT (1945).

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With the release of the Oscar nominations for 2011, I’m once again forced to acknowledge my utterly pointless, irritating and relentless love-hate relationship with the Academy Awards.  First of all, Academy?  Har, har, give me a break!  Here’s why the “prestigious” Academy formed (from Wikipedia):

“The notion of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) began with Louis B. Mayer, head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). He wanted to create an organization that would mediate labor disputes and improve the industry’s image.”

I’d tell you the whole story but I don’t hate you so I’ll just link back to the Wikipedia entry on it instead.   Last week, I wrote up romcoms and the Oscars (it’s Oscar time, folks, expect more Oscar posts from me as TCM kicks off its 31 Days of Oscar) and in the comments (and the comments on a previous post about Oliver! taking Best Picture) we had a good discussion about how the Oscars may not mean much, quality-wise, but how they do reflect the attitudes and trends of their time.   More often than not, I don’t agree with their choices but I can’t deny, sadly, that they affect me, usually in the form of disappointment or anger, almost every single year.

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The intrepid Twilight Time label continues their line of limited edition Blu-Ray releases with an absolutely gorgeous version of Picnic, Columbia’s romantic smash of 1955-1956. Sold exclusively through on-line retailer Screen Archives, it presents James Wong Howe’s Technicolor cinematography in eye-titillating detail. Based on William Inge’s Pulitzer Prize winning play from 1953, Picnic is a garishly entertaining melodrama that sets earthy he-man William Holden after prim beauty queen Kim Novak, upending a small Kansas town in the process.

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Last week I offered an overview of the Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) as a sort-of “taste of the fest.” This week, I will tout the three films that I enjoyed the most so that our movie-loving readers can seek them out in theaters, on cable, or on DVD.

The first film I caught at the festival was an American indie called Thin Ice, which opens in limited release on February 17. I knew nothing about the film, selecting it because it was convenient to my schedule. I consider myself lucky because it turned out to be one of my favorite films of the entire week. Thin Ice tells the story of Mickey Prohaska, played by Greg Kinnear, who is a less-than-honest insurance agent in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Mickey is always looking for a big score via his insurance racket and is willing to lie, scheme, and cheat his small-town customers to land it. At an insurance convention, Mickey hires an additional agent, Bob, played by David Harbour (also in Madonna’s upcoming W./E.), simply because he doesn’t want a rival agency to land him.  Bob introduces Mickey to Gorvy Hauer, a lonely, old man who lives alone in a farmhouse filled with old furniture, knick-knacks, and junk. Mickey visits Gorvy regularly to persuade him to buy insurance he doesn’t really need, but he switches tactics when he discovers that Gorvy owns a rare violin. Mickey decides to steal the violin, replacing it with a worthless fiddle believing that the foolish old man won’t notice. One of the pleasures of this film is Alan Arkin’s performance as Gorvy. Near the end of the film, he will break your heart as his defeated character ruminates on the cold-hearted nature of contemporary society; and yet, there is more to Gorvy than Mickey—or, the viewer—realizes. My advice is to recall all of Arkin’s roles and characters as he skillfully pulls you into Gorvy’s world so that you do not take the character at face value.

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MILLIONAIRES IN PRISON. Great title and the sort of news headline I’d like to see in an era where Wall Street robber barons and corporate raiders are creating a new society of haves and have-nots.      READ MORE

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been exploring competing claims on the creation of movies.  The Lumière brothers hold a sizeable claim, for having pioneered the exhibition model that became the norm–and even if modern trends are moving back towards the Edison-style intimacy of one-movie-one-viewer, the bulk of film history belongs to the Lumière tradition.  I’ve also given props to Louis LePrince for his role in innovating the technology by which movies are recorded, even if he doesn’t get the credit for that.

But if we talk about the creation of movies as being all about the technology of cinema, or the business models of exhibition and distribution, we leave out the heart of the matter–it is the content of movies that enthralls audiences and creates shared dreams.  And if we want to talk about who pioneered what movies ought to be about, then it’s time to talk about George Méliès.

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This week, two screenwriter friends of mine were retained to write monster movies for a new production company called The Monster Machine. David Rosiak and Matthew Chernov have already written the made-for-TV chompalooza SHARK SWARM (2008) and are pushing forward to craft more supersized and hybridized horrors for the producers of DINOSHARK (2010) and SHARKTOPUS (2010). I’m happy for my friends and the news evoked in me the kneejerk response “Good… I miss monsters.” And then the strangeness of that reaction struck me — there are monsters everywhere these days, so what’s the big deal? Watch any SyFy and it’s back-to-back ads for video games and made-for-TV movies and theatrical releases offering all manner of freakish folderol and dedicated reality TV shows for Bigfoot, river monsters and ghosts foreign and domestic. We’re actually living in what could be called, quantitatively, a monster renaissance akin to the glory days of the 1940s and 1950s, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and sent real estate values crumbling like so many scale model metropoli… but it’s not the same. It’s just not the same. READ MORE

By the early 1960s American International Pictures (AIP) had established itself as a purveyor of popular teen films. From rock and roll dramas to hot rod thrillers and teenage monster movies, AIP made a lot of money making cheap films that were quickly cobbled together and rushed into production. These films appealed to young people eager for a brief escape from their parents, homework, after school jobs or other typical teenage problems. In 1963 AIP produced their first BEACH PARTY movie starring America’s sweethearts, Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon, and the budget conscious studio quickly realized that it had a huge hit on its hands. Teenagers across the country flocked to their local drive-ins to see BEACH PARTY, which contained lots of silly sight gags as well as some good pop songs. AIP followed it up with many similar films including MUSCLE BEACH PARTY (1964), BEACH BLANKET BINGO (1965), HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI (1965) and my personal favorite, THE GHOST IN THE INVISIBLE BIKINI (1966). These beach movies usually featured popular and not so popular musical acts as well as familiar guest stars including funnymen like Buster Keaton, Mickey Rooney and Don Rickles as well as horror icons like Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Elsa Lanchester. Much like popular teen movie franchises today (TWILIGHT, AMERICAN PIE, FAST AND FURIOUS) the beach movies were a winning formula and AIP tried to milk it for all it was worth. After the success of the beach movies AIP released SKI PARTY in 1965, which followed the BEACH PARTY blueprint but the idea of a winter-themed bikini party apparently didn’t have the same allure for audiences. AIP didn’t bother making any SKI PARTY sequels but that didn’t stop bigger studios from trying to cash in on their idea. Columbia Pictures decided to give this odd subgenre a whirl and the result was WINTER A GO-GO (1966)

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Since the beginning of the movies, romance has played a central role.  Going back to 1896 and The Kiss, two people expressing their love on camera was something the movies exploited and well (the hilarious tagline for the 47 second long The Kiss: “They get ready to kiss, begin to kiss, and kiss and kiss and kiss in a way that brings down the house every time.”).  Mixing romance with comedy didn’t take long to figure out and a mere six years after the creation of the Academy Awards, the first romantic comedy to win Best Picture was born, It Happened One Night.   Romantic comedies in the thirties employed lots of antics and outrageous situations to turn the basic romantic comedy (romcom) into a screwball comedy.  The underlying premise was the same (man and woman meet and fall in love) but situations often involved leopards, lost men and Ralph Bellamy getting duped.

The romantic comedy kept plugging along quite successfully (and still does today) but it could be argued it reached its height of success, both commercially and critically, in the seventies.  They got a newfound sexual freedom, modern day family complications and an unlikely new Queen.

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