I don’t mean that literally, of course… it just feels that way sometimes, that there is a whole other side to Peter Cushing that no one ever talks about. Fans of the late and greatly missed actor are as one in their belief that the man was a consummate performer but it saddens me how few of that number will follow him into a non-horror film. Getting the jump on Pierre Fournier’s Peter Cushing Centennial Blog-a-thon by one day, I’ll be taking a look at just a scattering of the man’s non-genre roles, made before and during his tenure as one of the Kings of Hammer Horror.

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Bold, brave and beautiful. Elizabeth Taylor in a promotional photo for CLEOPATRA (1963)

This week the 50th Anniversary of CLEOPATRA (1963) is being celebrated at the Cannes Film Festival where a digitally restored print of the film is making its debut followed by a limited theatrical release and a new lavish double disc Blu-ray set will arrive in stores on May 28th. The film has been marred in controversy since it went into production and reviews and articles about CLEOPATRA tend to focus on the scandal that rocked Hollywood after Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton began their very public affair on the opulent sets of this big-budget historical epic. Instead of treading down that tired old path I thought I’d take a different approach and share some thoughts about why I enjoy the film and how it helped make Elizabeth Taylor one of the most influential style icons of the ‘60s.

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With the release of the new movie version of The Great Gatsby (I haven’t seen it yet), the subject of book versus movie rears its ugly head yet again.   Some books are said to be unfilmable and Gatsby usually falls in that category.  Others include Moby Dick, Catcher in the Rye (never made into a movie due to the wishes of the late author and his estate) and The Sound and the Fury.  Still others have been made into movies far more successful than the books they’re based on, such as The Godfather, Psycho and Jaws.  And some authors, Charles Dickens comes to mind, wrote books that absolutely welcome the cinematic adaptation, repeatedly.   Everyone has their ideas about why certain books work as movies while others don’t but the one thing that often makes or breaks the deal is the narrator:  Who it is and how distinctive is their voice.

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One of these images is from James Benning’s long-take experiment in landscape photography, 13 Lakes (2004), and the other is from the hit Japanese anime of 2012, Wolf Children. I’ll let you figure out which is which. Outgrossing Pixar’s Brave in its home country, Wolf Children crowned director Mamoru Hosoda as a legitimate heir to Hayao Miyazaki (for whom he initially developed Howl’s Moving Castle), and is now available to English speakers on Hong Kong Blu-Ray and DVD. Both directors are concerned with the relationship between nature and civilization, but while Miyazaki’s eco-parables soar into faraway lands, with Wolf Children Hosoda had directed his focus on the miniature dramas of everyday life. Wolf Children uses lycanthropy as an excuse to mount a gorgeous melodrama about the hard work of motherhood, and the resulting heartbreak when children heed the call to the wilds of adult life, away from home.

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Last year when I attended the TCM Classic Film Festival, I was hoping to find remnants of the film industry’s mythic, glamorous past.  But, Hollywood’s enchanted past is well hidden beneath a tacky veneer of souvenir shops, never-ceasing traffic, noisy crowds, shiny modern buildings, and those would-be “actors” costumed as movie superheroes who stroll up and down Hollywood Boulevard. With the help of some research, I did find the ghosts of Old Hollywood, which lifted my spirits and reminded me that the past is always a part of the present, even if we don’t immediately see it. This year, I went in search of Old Hollywood once again, and some of the “ghosts” I found were literal ones, because I spent an afternoon in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

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A few months back I wrote a post on The Other Great Performance in the Movie, about great performances (usually by supporting actors) in movies with famously great lead performances.  I’d like to further that theme now, only with great scenes.   Last night, my wife, daughter and I took in Black Narcissus at the AFI Silver and enjoyed it as much as we always have (only more so because it was in the gorgeous main theater projected on a huge screen) and afterwards I started thinking about movies with very famous scenes, so famous that most casual film goers might know it (or have a vague sense of familiarity with it) even if they don’t know the movie.  But for every great scene in a great movie, there is often another scene just as powerful but perhaps not as famous, or revered.

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This week TCM debuts some super-rare Harold Lloyd shorts from the early years of his career.  I cannot overstate the significance of this find.

I was asked by TCM to write some material for the web site to introduce Harold Lloyd in general and some of these shorts in particular, but the specific remit of that assignment was kind of limiting, so I have a lot else to say about these films that didn’t fit into the website content.  But hey—I have a blog!

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… that guys in movies will never again wear top hats. READ MORE

I’m fond of mysteries that evolve through conversation and unravel in small spaces such as Alfred Hitchcock’s ROPE (1948) and Robert Hosseins DOUBLE AGENTS (1959). The claustrophobia they evoke seems directly linked to our primal fears and primitive suspicions. One of the most interesting films in this vein is Giuseppe Tornatore’s A PURE FORMALITY aka Una Pura Formalita (1994). I recently revisited this opaque thriller after almost 20 years and was surprised by how effective it still was. Even though I was well aware of the surprise twist ending I was mesmerized from start to finish thanks to Tornatore’s deft directing choices, Pascal Quignard’s brilliant dialogue and the masterful performances etched out by two powerhouses of European cinema; Gérard Depardieu and Roman Polanski.

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